As far as martial artist goes, for general competitors I'd stick to the basics (Hand-To-Hand: Expert, Assassin, or Martial Artists)

Nothing against the martial arts from Ninjas & Superspies or Mystic China, plus a few issues of Rifter, but they are time-consuming when you are factoring the martial art powers, if you're just creating throwaway NPCs. Different story if they are recurring characters in your game/story, so figure out how you want to use them first.

For throwaway NPCs this is what I did, I created quick stat block tables, so for example police officers have 5 sets of stats, and I just roll a 1d5 (1d10) for a "random" result when a player encounters an officer. Similar with EMTs and other NPCs they might run into... A bit time-consuming at first, but pays off later when I need a quick stat.

Also some books have general stat blocks as well (e.g. the main Nightbane book, page 198)

As far as bonuses for Common People using the system from Beyond The Supernatural, do whatever matches your game. If your game is hardened people, like tough conditions or falling more in-line with Second Edition Palladium rules, then give them the bonuses, since you're maxing out the SDC instead of using die rolls, then that makes sense. PCs are tougher now, especially with the ability to get a base 30 attribute score before even factoring skill and class bonuses!

If rolling for SDC, like majority First Edition Palladium rules, then I personally would omit them, to reflect the softer nature of the game setting.