Mr. X

I use to try and stat up all the NPCs for the games I ran, and quickly found that this was a huge waste of time. Most of the NPCs that the players interacted with didn't need detailed stats, and many of the "random" folks that they met along the way did.

I developed a few generic templates that I could use for guards, merchants, bandits, etc. but even this was cumbersome to port from one genre to the next.

So, now when I need an NPC on the fly, I just stat it up as Mr. (or Ms.) X, where X is the highest level attributes they have. They might have all attributes at X, or have 2 at the X level, 1 at X -2, and 1 at 10 (Unless needed stats rarely go under 10 for these generic characters). I then just decide that any skill that is part of the primary focus for that character is at Attribute+2.

Sometimes I give the character all 12s

Here is an example:

Mr. 10: All stats 10, skills 12

Mr. 12: All stats 12, skills 14

Mr. 14 (combat): ST 14, DX 14, IQ 10, HT 12, Broadsword 16

And so on...

A table with basic damage and listing the common weapons and armor of the setting is the last bit if these are going to be primary combat types.