One thing I didn't really get from the book was, do you normally "allow"/make NPCs to have spiritual attribuites?

I can see a few reasons against it, such as

1)Spiritual Attribuites are largely a matter of what a player wants their character to be about. GMs have alot more control in what their NPCs are about, so it wouldn't aid anyone in that matter.

2)A very good part of The Riddle Of Steel is that SAs reward players for doing things that they care about and have been made important to the story, however, if antagonistic NPCs had SAs, than the players would be penalized for fighting the antagonists on grounds that the antagonists care about. I'm not intirely sure this is in itself a big thing, but I think it would discourage players working towards big, emotionially packed moments of conflict.

It sort of goes with that I'm thinking of running a game in the future that is based much on the Ways to Play articles by Chris Chinn on RPG.net, and I was going to make it so that all of the characters motivations are spiritual attribuites, and that the focus of the situation follows very closely to how the spiritual attribuites chgange. I thought it would add more unity to the design of the story if the NPCs conformed to this as well.

The spiritual attribuite system seems like an excellant way to judge dramatic importance, so I want to use it to it's fullest extent. But would doing so detract from the point of SA's in protagonizing the PCs?

I absolutely give my bad guys SA's, its also what drives them and makes them genuinely interesting bad guys. Just as SA's define a hero, tehy can define his nemesis. Plus its fun to give the villain the SA : Passion -Hate PC Bob for foiling my plan!

It also makes it fun to have the bad guy fire up some sa's with teh PC in that final fight. It also makes the fight last longer as a villain with a base cp of 15 would get romped by a pc with a cp of 8 and 20+ sa's firing. Villains with SA's make the combat a bit more dicey and a lot more fun.

Such has been my experience anyways. I once had my character facing off with the arch villain. Between us we were rolling over 100 dice per round. It was a lot of fun to play and from what I heard watch.

I generally give SAs to those antognists and side characters that I want to impact the story. Even if everybody has them, they don't apply to the given scenario or to their interactions with the PCs, so it doesn't matter.

Jake

Just think about a merchant living in a town with a SA Drive: "defend my goods agains theft". You can perfectly use it when the thief of your party is on his next job.
Or the 12 year old peasant girl who steals with his "Luck" and "Destiny: (care for younger brother)" some fruits from the party characters or maybe from the above mentioned merchant.