The joy of templates

[Ziggy]

Hi!

For last night's session I wanted to create a unique monster; something my players had never met before, and thus had to guess at its powers and how dangerous it really was.

What I did was to take a standard owlbear, slap a two-headed template on it (from Sean Reynolds) and then finally making it into a ghoul (using the template from Monte Cook). It was all done in less than 5 minutes, with all stats and capabilities.

While they took it down pretty comfortably, it was tremendous fun having them trying to figure out what the thing really was. The ranger figured it out after a couple of rounds (using his Knowledge: Nature), but several of the others were very confused by the strangly colored, two-headed, beaked thingy with wings (sort of).

I just love the flexibility of how templates work in 3E I'm really impressed with how seamlessly they work with the basic monsters, and how easy it is to get unique monsters without lots of design work.

If any of other GM's out there have similar experiences with templates, please tell, and maybe I'll steal them for a later session.....

.Ziggy

 

[BluWolf]

I whole heartedly agree with you. templates are great and I think probably the most impressive part of the 3E concept.

I use them in different categories. Environmental-basically anything that affects a being such as Inferanl, celestial, elemental. works great in my campaign world as the prime material is fractured and you run into things like elemental fire squirrels all the time.

Social- I sue social templates to give mechanics to benefits or penalties all the time. In my game if you join a thieves guild you don't take a prestige class you add a template that gives you benefits and penalties that scale with levels.

This system also makes it easy to "remove" these benefits. As an example, if you are a member of a thieves guild but are not in the city your guild is in you lose all the benefits of that template.

Economic- while this tends to bleed into social templates they are a littel differnet as they aren't as easily gained or removed. This reflects things like owning businesses, property, trade routes....

Racial- This is stuff like genasai, teiflings, vamiperism, lycanthropy..

Some fo the monsters/NPCs my party have encountered;
A Vampire Goblin Sorcerer
A Fiendish Huge Spider
A Curst Bard
Earth Elemental Wolves
An earth Genasai Monk
A mechanized (construct) Huge Spider
A Fiendish Minotaur barbarian

 

[Carnifex]

Well, I too love templates - my players still remember Palanar, who had both the half-fiend and half-dragon templates and was an anti-paladin

I recently used a Fire element template in place of the fiendish one on a large viper as a summoned monster from a magic item. The MotP is great for that, since the element, axiomatic and anarchic can be easily interchanged with the fiendish and celestial ones.

Go templates!

 

[Ziggy]

Social- I sue social templates to give mechanics to benefits or penalties all the time. In my game if you join a thieves guild you don't take a prestige class you add a template that gives you benefits and penalties that scale with levels.

This system also makes it easy to "remove" these benefits. As an example, if you are a member of a thieves guild but are not in the city your guild is in you lose all the benefits of that template.

Hm, very interesting concept, I can see how that could be a very elegant solution to how to model involvement with different social and political groups. I have to think carefully about this, I might use it for a couple of secret organizations IMC.

I guess these templates mainly give skill and circumstantial modifiers, or are you including aspects like weapon proficiencies and magic in them as well ?

The only thing I'm a bit worried about is templates that scale with level. I like my templates to be independent of the creature you apply them to, this eases book-keeping a great deal. I know there are a few level-scaling templates from WoC (e.g. half-celestials), but these are IMHO not as elegant as the others.

.Ziggy

 

[d20Dwarf]

Sweet, Bluwolf, mind posting one of your guild templates? It sounds awesome.

 

[Carnifex]

Bluwolf, your idea for the 'social' templates sounds similar to one of the ideas that has been tossed around the planescape and planewalker mailing lists for how to do the Factions in 3e - one side supports prestige classes, the other view is that templates would be ebst.

Me? I think a combination would be good. Templates are an excellent tool that a DM can get a lot of use out of.

 

[BluWolf]

Here is an example of a social template;

TEMPLATE-MEMBER OF THE JACKS THIEVES GUILD
Narrative text
Requirements:
1) Must be inducted into and remain a member in good standing of the Jack?s thieves guild. Standing in the guild is a determination of the leadership of the guild (i.e. leiutenants, captains and the guild master).


2) Must meet the minimum honorarium each month.
A guild member is responsible for generating revenue for the guild. While the guild usually has sanction over ways and means, ultimately it is up to the member to make his honorarium each month.

A guild member is required to give 30% of all his income per month to his boss. At a minimum, a guild member is required to produce 100GP X CL each month.

Guild members that miss a monthly honorarium lose all benefits of guild membership, but is not thrown out of the guild, until they come current. A guild member that misses several months, or is discovered to be sandbagging or skimming, can find himself, at the least, out of the guild. At worst, set up or dead.

Benefits:
1) Gather Information: While in the city of Odessa a member of the guild gains an environmental bonus to Gather Information checks equl to ½ half his level in rogue, minimum of +1. In order to gain this bonus the member must be in Odessa and be leveraging guild assests.
2) Innuendo: Guild members gain a situational bonus to Innuendo skill checks equal to their CL. This bonus is only useful with other members of the guild.
3) Intimidate: Guild members gain an environmental bonus to Intimidate skill checks equal to ½ their CL. In order to gain the bonus the target(s) of the intimidation must be know the PC is a member of the guild. This bonus does not apply against other members of the guild or enemies of the guild.
4) Guild Wharehouse: Guild members can procure equipment from the guild at a discount. A guild member can request to purchase equipment from the guild the DM will make a determination if the equipment is available. If so the guild will traditionally charge 20% than street price. If the member was invovled in procurin gthe item or components of the item this discount can increase to 50%.
5) Accomodations: The guild usually provides housing for members. This locations can range from condemmed buildings to small apartments located in guild controlled buildings. This housing can be considered a safehouse or secret location in regards to conventional search or inquiries about where that PC lives. Housing is usually a perk of status with in the guild. In game terms a player can assume he has a safe location equal to 10 sqft. / CL .
6) Access to specialists: The guild has access to many people of varying degrees of skill and morality. Guild members can make a request of the guild for help in locating someone of a specifc skill set or attribute. If the guild can provide this individual, the member takes all responsibilty for the individual to include compensation for services rendered. While the guild is capable of providing this service it is not a common pracitce and is frowned upon when abused.

In game terms a PC can make a request 1/mo, if nothing went wrong with the last request. The person recruited can be of the maximum level equal to the leadership score of the guild leader the request has been made to. Take this into consideration when making the request. The guild is also under no obligation to fulfill the request. Whether or not a person is recruited on behalf of the PCs only 1 request can be made per month.

In answer to your question Ziggy, I have not created any social templates that would give WP bonuses and I don't forsee it either. The first rule I use when creating a social template is that it cannot give any ability/feature/feat that could not be taken away when one of the requiremetns is not met.
Example: The above template does not give a guild member a proficiency in Garrote though it may on the surface seem to fit. Why? Because it makes no sense that you would leanr how to use it in Odessa but then for some arbitrary reason, not be able to do it else where.

I could see situations where a social template would give you ACCESS to a magical item. Wizards guild or member of a religious order. I haven't done any of these yet but I will eventually. Oh there are no wizardly orders in my world though.

 

[Ziggy]

Here is an example of a social template;

TEMPLATE-MEMBER OF THE JACKS THIEVES GUILD
Narrative text

<snip>

Excellent ! Mind if I steal it ?

In answer to your question Ziggy, I have not created any social templates that would give WP bonuses and I don't forsee it either. The first rule I use when creating a social template is that it cannot give any ability/feature/feat that could not be taken away when one of the requiremetns is not met.
Example: The above template does not give a guild member a proficiency in Garrote though it may on the surface seem to fit. Why? Because it makes no sense that you would leanr how to use it in Odessa but then for some arbitrary reason, not be able to do it else where.

Agree, it makes no sense that you suddenly forget something just because you quit a guild.

But I wonder if you could include some supernatural abilities, at least if they are something given to the members of the guild by a deity (or some other entity). Then you could make e.g. a guild of assassins with a supernatural ability to see in the dark granted by a dark god. This ability would then be lost if anyone quit the guild.

.Ziggy (edited for clarity)

 

[BluWolf]

I would be more of the opinion that supernatural abilities would be tied to Prc Classes IMO. I don't think its a mechanics issue more than a preference point.

I would probably go about simulating that in a different way (the darkness vision example you gave).

But I have a limiting view on what an organization can do for someone and a very restrictive veiw on the ability to cast spells or evoke supernatural powers.

In my game, Rangers, druids, assassin..none of them can cast spells.

Again, its a style thing. Mechanically or balance wise I don't see a problem.