Monster Manual advancing NPC question

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1

In the Monster Manual, I need some help understanding the process for making people/humanoids more dangerous and giving them gear and new proficiencies. Since everything else seems to have a full and formal procedure, I just assume I am missing something. Page 54 has a very helpful section for advancing beastmen, but there’s nothing equivalent for the other humanoids.

For example, on the bandit entry (page 217) it references on xp “20 (hood), 50 (robber), 200 (rogue)”. But nowhere are there stats for hoods, robbers, and rogues.
If a hood is worth 20 xp, then the Monster XP table on page 395 suggests it is 2 HD and not 1+1* which would be 21 xp. It calls their higher rank members thieves, so that covers the proficiencies, But on the gear I only see the reference to magic items using the judges journal rules not the treasure table. So does that also get used for all ranks of bandit for all their gear or just the Rogues? Is there any guidance about stats or roll them randomly using the level 0 NPC guidance also in the JJ? Do they all have the same armor and weapons? Should I use the monster damage by weapons table that indicates a 2 HD mosnter should deal 1d8 damage (seems a little off when moving up to the higher HD and they appear to be backstabbing with two-handed weapons).

So, yeah. Is there clear guidance in one spot? Something like the beastmen got?

Thanks in advance!

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The reason there’s no rules in the MM for making people more dangerous is that those rules are found in the Revised Rulebook and Judges Journal. All of the human and demi-human “monsters” are characters built using the RR and JJ rules.

A hood, robber, and rogue are respectively just a 2nd level thief (“Hood”), 3rd level thief (“Robber”) and 5th level thief (“Rogue”). If you look at RR p. 30, check the Titles by Level on the Thief Level Progression table. You’d just build them like you build a player character or henchman of those levels. You can find rules for building and equipping NPCs on p245 - 271 and 88 - 390 of the Judges Journal, which gives guidance on how many magic items they’d have, how to roll stats, and so on.

This is notably different than how D&D 4E and D&D 5E handle such matters. In D&D 4E or 5E, an NPC “wizard” follows totally different rules than a player character wizard. In ACKS, an NPC wizard and a PC wizard use the same rules.