So, I’m brand squeaky new at the RPG, though I like to thing that I know a thing or two about the setting itself. I’m getting setup with a small ‘campaign’ with two friends to try and figure out how to design a campaign for the game, and I’ve hit a specific and I think important wall. I can’t figure out how to stat out enemies, for any of the combat modes. I’m not sure if it’s a simple as just porting their stats over from the most relevant wargame profile, but if I wanted to include, say, an ALEPH Asura or Combined Army Anathematic (or for that matter, say, a Tohaa Diplomat for a social enemy) as a top level enemy, I don’t really see how I’m supposed to figure out the stat block for them. Is there a page reference for this that I’m just missing, or do I have to try and reverse engineer the converter from the 2d20 RPG system to the 1d20 wargame system?
All Infinity books, source books, core rules and adventures, have stat blocks for a wide spread of adversaries for physical, social and quantronic conflict.
Which Infinity 2d20 RPG books do you own? Even in the core book there are lots of NPC stats given.
The many adversaries, NPCs, listed are those who live and can be encountered in the Infinity setting. So any and all player characters can get into contact with any and all of those NPCs.
If you need new NPCs, just write down, what you think the NPCs’ abilities fit the role in the game world and the intended competency of this NPC and you are good.
Unlike the miniatures game, there is NO numerical value of any kind of “challenge rating” for any NPC in the roleplaying game. Infinity PCs tend to be quite competent from the start, so you will need to raise the numbers of most NPCs encountered and their abilities (stats) to provide a challenge for your group. For this, the rules do not offer any support. You have to get the feeling by running the game for a while and see what your group can take, and what might be too much.
That was a typo, I meant to say ‘Statting’, as in setting up the stat block for enemies that don’t appear in the books. Some stuff I can work out from context (i.e. a lot of Remotes are basically just bigger Light Infantry from their faction that can be hacked), but it would be nice if there were rules that were a bit less complex then generating a full PC style character to figure out the combat statistics for an enemy or ally in case I need them. But I gather that the only real option in the book is to take existing NPC profiles and then tweak them as needed?
No, you can build your NPCs from scratch.
NPCs come in three categories (Trooper, Elite, Nemesis).
They have the usual Attributes all PCs have.
They only have six broad Fields of Expertise (instead of Skills).
Calculating their Stress tracks (Vigor, Resolve, Firewall) is the same as for PCs (only Minions get half the value than usual).
Assign them any weapons you think fit.
Calculate the damage bonus for each type of damage as you would for PCs (ranged, melee, social, infowar).
Decide how many, if any, Talents the NPC should have to support his role for your campaign.
And then comes the tricky part:
Think about special abilities, that are not covered by Talents, that such an NPC should have. There you can get inspiration from existing NPC stats.
And another tricky part:
Think about what kind of Heat spends such an NPC should have. Those are not “always on” as the special abilities, but cost Heat, the limited GM resource, so make them interesting.
That is all.
I concur, a step-by-step procedure to generate NPCs would be good to have in the core book or at least in the GM’s Guide.