JoeGKushner
Adventurer
A tremendous expansion of the original Book of Templates, including over 85 templates, 30 microplates (mini-templates), 120 new monsters, new PC races, over 50 new spells and rituals, and much, much more!
Book of Templates: Deluxe Edition 3.5
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- Start date
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Customization of creatures is a step away.
Book of Templates Deluxe Edition 3.5
Written by Ian S. Johnson & Chris S. Sims
Published by Silverthrone Games
www.silverthrone.com
192 black and white pages
PDF format
The Book of Templates Deluxe Edition was one of the first collections of templates for the D&D 3.0 engine. It was a treasure trove of ideas and methods of adding templates to monsters and using more than one template on a creature. It had a few stat errors here and there, but the fact that it collected templates from various sources and provided more than just game stats, really stood out in my mind.
Well, 3.5 has hit the stands, and monsters were one of the biggest areas affected in terms of game play. Damage reduction changed, as well as other bits, like certain types of monsters being eliminated (I’m looking at the beast type), or becoming subtypes. A good opportunity for the Book of Templates to get a nice revamp.
But a revamp in and of itself is often not enough. I’ll point to the Creature Collection Revised as an example. Making bad art larger and still having numerous errors with little expanded material beyond the original book, is not a good thing.
In this case though, there have been some good changes. First off, I applaud Silverthrone for taking the initiative and using John Cooper as an editor. For those who don’t know John, he’s a fellow reviewer who has a keen eye for monster stat blocks and from what I’ve seen, an excellent grasp on the rules of grammar usage. Hiring him, while not a guarantee or 100% error free stat blocks, is certainly a nod in the direction of quality control.
In terms of PDF use, there are two files. Both are standard landscape format, but one is meant for on screen viewing, with color borders and color use throughout for sidebars, and the other using no borders or gray areas for sidebars. This is a good thing as it’s something many PDF companies do, but not often as use in companies where there’s a print product and PDF. Usually the PDF is just the print product in electronic format. Both files make excellent use of bookmarks and are easy to navigate, at least when using Reader 7.0.
In terms of content, material has been selected from a wide range of sources. A quick look at the section fifteen, shows things like Plot & Poison, Rokugan, Undead, Dragons, Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed, Swords of Our Fathers, Heroes of High Favor, Librum Equitis, and other resources down at an individual level like Cleave Asunder and Cross-Class Learning. About the only weakness here, is that there is no index of creatures by CR, and no breakdown of the templates by CR. Such a table would be helpful for those GMs looking to give a monster either a little boost or a big one and cut down on page flipping. What’s worse, after speaking with Silverthorne, I realize that this book is much smaller than the 3.0 version. Turns out that a lot of the same templates were cut and where we once had two or three examples, it’s now down to one. Makes sense as for a print product the page count cut off has to come somewhere but hopefully those extra creatures will wind up as a bonus download.
Layout is standard two-column format with chapter being indicated on the outsider border. While there is no index, there is a generous table of contents that breaks down the contents of the book nicely, with a header for each chapter, and then a breakdown of what’s in each chapter. Art is handled by Cara Mitten and Jeremy Mohler, and since it’s only two artists, the book has a near unified feel in terms of appearance. Thankfully, it’s my type of art.
The only bad thing, is that this is indeed a text heavy book, even with the use of tables and sidebars, there are still pages of pure text that go by with nothing to break it up. My only complaint about the format is that not every creature gets an illustration. Not really necessary as a template is meant for multiple creatures, but I’m a big art fan and more good art is never a bad thing in my opinion.
As far as new content in this book versus the old book, well, it’s hard to say without having both books right in front of me and doing a line-by-line comparison. I know right off the bat that the cover is different. The PDF cover is even different from the print cover. Still in the dark red style of the older book, but with an ancient statue as opposed to a single symbol. Good. I’m so tired of seeing those efforts to copy the Player’s Handbook style. In 2000 it was new and innovative. Now it’s cheap and poor looking.
In terms of monster layout for the sample monsters, it’s fairly standard. I would have liked to see a breakdown of the initiative bonus, for example, the lesser shield guardian has a –1 initiative, but what’s the coming from? Reading on, it’s apparently from its low dexterity score of nine. Other things, like squares and speed, breakdown of armor class by size, dexterity, and type, including flat-footed and touch armor class, as well as bab/grapple, attack and full attack, are all included.
I didn’t see any errors in terms of game stats, like old damage reduction values requiring certain magical pluses to beat and as it’s John Cooper as editor, I’m not surprised at that. Another nice thing is that in terms of template use, there is both a challenge rating adjustment and a level adjustment. Great for those players looking to add a little something unusual to their character.
Another useful entry is that some of the new monsters created through the templates have racial traits that allow you to use them as a playable race. It’s a nice step in making the templated monsters more than just a single encounter.
Monsters are statted out with name, type, and stat block, description to be read aloud, and combat information.
Organization is different. It starts with a chapter on modifying monsters. This includes little things already in the Monster Manual, but handy to have at your side when applying a template. For example, we have tables to show changes by size, or damage by size, along with other utilities like how to read and apply a template, as well as creature statistics by type. You know, the old undead get bab at half their hit dice while outsiders get the full deal as a fighter. The material is useful for those looking at building their own templates, with advise on things like generating level adjustment, both positive and negative, as well as adjusting the CR of a creature. Another useful thing to have would be a table showing base CR and what the addition is depending on the % the DM has to add. For example, the Deep One template is CR +1 plus 10%. It’s not that the math is too hard, it’s that I’m lazy and a tool like that would see a lot of use.
The book then starts in on the templates. We have the following chapters:
Aberrations: This chapter presents a single template, but in addition, it has all sorts of sub-systems to it. For example, a table for appearance changes, one for special attacks, one for special qualities, and samples. The first is a petrifier fowl, a cockatrice and the actual template, the wretched, with a chocker as the base creature. The nice thing about the cockatrice example is that it goes into a little detail explaining how the special abilities effected the overall challenge rating, a useful discussion as CR is always something of a hit or miss game.
Animals, Magical Beasts & Vermin starts with Elder Beast, magical beasts with great wisdom and at least average intelligence and charisma. It’s a short chapter though, and ends with another template the nettlecloud. A vermin that uses a cloud of stinging hairs, based on a real tarantula and it’s abilities.
Augmenting is a chapter designed to make monsters more powerful. It’s one of the larger chapters, so I’m not going to do a creature by creature break down. I’ll just point out a few of my favorite ones.
I tend to like material that has multiple uses or classic uses. A vampire using it’s blood to power it’s servants is a classic bit and the Blood Pawn here is a good way to showcase that. The creature gains some abilities like minor fast healing and damage reduction among others, but has a dependency on the blood and is under the effects of a lesser charm spell if the donor vampire is still alive.
As a longtime fan of H. P. Lovecraft, I was glad to see a Deep One template. “Horrific, aquatic versions of the creatures they once were.” Leads to great stuff in a fantasy game. Why limit it to just humans when you can make huge monstrosities like Dagon or the sample here, a deep one ettin?
How about the Savage? Perfect for those GMs who want to create a lost world where everything is more primitive and more dangerous but also less sophisticated and elegant.
Constructs are perfect for templates in that they all have to be crafted and unless you’re playing in a highly industrialized world, they’re all crafted by hand. This gives the GM perfect reasons for making even common types of constructs unique. There’s a great section about automatons and customizing a creature based on it’s initial type and then the material its made out of. Good stuff for those who want to go crazy with mechanical mitrhal dragons and wooden soldiers.
Diminishing is the opposite of augmenting. Sometimes a monster just isn’t as powerful as its peers. It might be a case of blight, or perhaps suffering from inbreeding and corruptions, becoming a degenerate. It may be a miniature version or use the same template for a child version of a much larger monster, like the example of a miniature tyrannosaurus as an infant.
Dragons start off with the breath weapon. What happens if you change the breath weapon? How does the breath weapon work? How do those various energy types, like acid and fire, work? What about creatures with some dragon blood that aren’t quite half-dragons? Covered along with some variant half-dragons that provide a different breath weapon and some other notes like bonus to its DC saves and damage to its breath weapon at middle and old age. Makes sense as dragons get more powerful as they age.
Elementals include an elemental template that covers the different core elements and ice and thermic elements.
Metatemplates include things like half-templates. Here are rules for making a half just about anything. It goes over the various parts of the monster including skills, feats, organization, spell immunity, regeneration, and other common special abilities to allow you to make the best of the half breed. Included is a demigorgon template, half-troll template, and padrafyte (half medusa),
Oozes have never been my thing. I understand their role and can see how an ooze template can add some variety to the game, but things like an amorphous creature that can squeeze through small openings, is still a bit silly.
Outsiders on the other hand, are much like dragons in that their core type is one of the most powerful in the game. Here we see variants like apocalyptic. Ever want to end your campaign? Well, the apocalyptic template is for you with a huge CR boost and powers to make a creature with this template worthy for an appearance in a Mutants & Masterminds campaign. Take the sample creature, Kurnus, Hound of the End Time, it weighs in at a CR of 26, based off the Nessian warhound advanced as high as possible with maximum hit dice that increased it to Huge size and since it’s apocalyptic, it’s hit dice are doubled so it has 48d12+912 hit dice or 1,488 hit points.
On the other hand, perhaps you’re trying to emulate the old Elric tales where the albino summoner calls upon the various lords of different animal realms. In that case, the beast lord template would be useful as it gives a +10 boost to CR +20% and the sample beast lord, a 40=HD gargantuan dire tiger, is written up as Kaavaak, Lord of Noble Tigers. Yeah, another bad boy weighing in at a CR of 34.
One of the things I’ve been using from the old 3.0 book, is the Ebon Servitor. In my old game, the Ebon Maw, an abyssal lord that’s imprisoned, has many personal servants and this template was the perfect way to simulate that. Well, adding the taint rules from Unearthed Arcana was a good deal too, but you get the picture. The sample race of black orcs is another nice touch that allows you to have a long term foe for the campaign that’s on a higher level than the standard orc.
There are some other goodies here like the half-genie, immortal, shadowborne and the voidspawn among others. It’s one of the most solid chapters in the book, and for those who want to showcase the strength of the planes or the unusual nature of the planes, it’s a chapter that can serve as groundwork in making unique encounters for your campaign.
Plants are another area where I’m like, “Man, I didn’t know that Marvel’s Man Thing and DC’s Swamp Thing were so popular.” I can see the whole Treebeard thing but don’t need to have a ton of variety. Having said that, plantform is a nice template that has a nice listing of special attacks and special qualities so that no two need ever be alike .
Undead are another old favorite with many templates already out there. Here we get some varieties like corpse vampire, corpses animated by evil that aren’t sentient, merely corrupted bodies. Others like the skinhusk are hollow shell’s of the creature’’s skin that have been animated into undeath while others include variants on the favorite vampire or the mummy.
After all that, there is an appendix with other goods. Some of these are new skills, like saying Control Shape for those lycanthropes who’d like to avoid becoming a monster in front of the wrong people. Others are feats to help augment your monsters. An old favorite, Cleave Asunder, lets you smash a foe’s weapon and if successful, get a free attack against another target. Others like Cross Training, are great as they allow you to choose two skills that become permanent class skills for you regardless of what class you take. It’s something I think that D&D could really borrow from the other systems that’s in as opposed to having to spend a precious feat on it.
There are even new spells for those looking to augment their magical knowledge. The spells are broken down into simplified lists, like those found in the Player’s Handbook, by class and level, with arcane spells also getting a breakdown by school. For example, at 8th level, the Enchantment spells are separated from the Evocation spells and the Transmutation spells, but all are found under the 8th level umbrella.
The spells are a mixed bag of offense and utility. Some exist to add the creatures in this book to your campaign, like Animate Paleoskeleton, others to protect the user from constructs, like Anticonstruct Ward. It’s a good mix of spells that can add a touch of something unique to a spellcaster’s bag of tricks.
While some samples have been lost in the transition, it appears that all of the original templates have made the transition to the 3.5 edition. It’s utility, like that of the Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin, is not in the samples provided. It’s in the ideas provided. It’s in the themes provided. It’s in the fact that you can take these numerous templates and augment your existing monster collection by a factor of thousands.
Reviewer's Note: Goodman Games has a print edition of the book for $34.95 for those interested in a dead tree version.Goodmangames
Book of Templates Deluxe Edition 3.5
Written by Ian S. Johnson & Chris S. Sims
Published by Silverthrone Games
www.silverthrone.com
192 black and white pages
PDF format
The Book of Templates Deluxe Edition was one of the first collections of templates for the D&D 3.0 engine. It was a treasure trove of ideas and methods of adding templates to monsters and using more than one template on a creature. It had a few stat errors here and there, but the fact that it collected templates from various sources and provided more than just game stats, really stood out in my mind.
Well, 3.5 has hit the stands, and monsters were one of the biggest areas affected in terms of game play. Damage reduction changed, as well as other bits, like certain types of monsters being eliminated (I’m looking at the beast type), or becoming subtypes. A good opportunity for the Book of Templates to get a nice revamp.
But a revamp in and of itself is often not enough. I’ll point to the Creature Collection Revised as an example. Making bad art larger and still having numerous errors with little expanded material beyond the original book, is not a good thing.
In this case though, there have been some good changes. First off, I applaud Silverthrone for taking the initiative and using John Cooper as an editor. For those who don’t know John, he’s a fellow reviewer who has a keen eye for monster stat blocks and from what I’ve seen, an excellent grasp on the rules of grammar usage. Hiring him, while not a guarantee or 100% error free stat blocks, is certainly a nod in the direction of quality control.
In terms of PDF use, there are two files. Both are standard landscape format, but one is meant for on screen viewing, with color borders and color use throughout for sidebars, and the other using no borders or gray areas for sidebars. This is a good thing as it’s something many PDF companies do, but not often as use in companies where there’s a print product and PDF. Usually the PDF is just the print product in electronic format. Both files make excellent use of bookmarks and are easy to navigate, at least when using Reader 7.0.
In terms of content, material has been selected from a wide range of sources. A quick look at the section fifteen, shows things like Plot & Poison, Rokugan, Undead, Dragons, Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed, Swords of Our Fathers, Heroes of High Favor, Librum Equitis, and other resources down at an individual level like Cleave Asunder and Cross-Class Learning. About the only weakness here, is that there is no index of creatures by CR, and no breakdown of the templates by CR. Such a table would be helpful for those GMs looking to give a monster either a little boost or a big one and cut down on page flipping. What’s worse, after speaking with Silverthorne, I realize that this book is much smaller than the 3.0 version. Turns out that a lot of the same templates were cut and where we once had two or three examples, it’s now down to one. Makes sense as for a print product the page count cut off has to come somewhere but hopefully those extra creatures will wind up as a bonus download.
Layout is standard two-column format with chapter being indicated on the outsider border. While there is no index, there is a generous table of contents that breaks down the contents of the book nicely, with a header for each chapter, and then a breakdown of what’s in each chapter. Art is handled by Cara Mitten and Jeremy Mohler, and since it’s only two artists, the book has a near unified feel in terms of appearance. Thankfully, it’s my type of art.
The only bad thing, is that this is indeed a text heavy book, even with the use of tables and sidebars, there are still pages of pure text that go by with nothing to break it up. My only complaint about the format is that not every creature gets an illustration. Not really necessary as a template is meant for multiple creatures, but I’m a big art fan and more good art is never a bad thing in my opinion.
As far as new content in this book versus the old book, well, it’s hard to say without having both books right in front of me and doing a line-by-line comparison. I know right off the bat that the cover is different. The PDF cover is even different from the print cover. Still in the dark red style of the older book, but with an ancient statue as opposed to a single symbol. Good. I’m so tired of seeing those efforts to copy the Player’s Handbook style. In 2000 it was new and innovative. Now it’s cheap and poor looking.
In terms of monster layout for the sample monsters, it’s fairly standard. I would have liked to see a breakdown of the initiative bonus, for example, the lesser shield guardian has a –1 initiative, but what’s the coming from? Reading on, it’s apparently from its low dexterity score of nine. Other things, like squares and speed, breakdown of armor class by size, dexterity, and type, including flat-footed and touch armor class, as well as bab/grapple, attack and full attack, are all included.
I didn’t see any errors in terms of game stats, like old damage reduction values requiring certain magical pluses to beat and as it’s John Cooper as editor, I’m not surprised at that. Another nice thing is that in terms of template use, there is both a challenge rating adjustment and a level adjustment. Great for those players looking to add a little something unusual to their character.
Another useful entry is that some of the new monsters created through the templates have racial traits that allow you to use them as a playable race. It’s a nice step in making the templated monsters more than just a single encounter.
Monsters are statted out with name, type, and stat block, description to be read aloud, and combat information.
Organization is different. It starts with a chapter on modifying monsters. This includes little things already in the Monster Manual, but handy to have at your side when applying a template. For example, we have tables to show changes by size, or damage by size, along with other utilities like how to read and apply a template, as well as creature statistics by type. You know, the old undead get bab at half their hit dice while outsiders get the full deal as a fighter. The material is useful for those looking at building their own templates, with advise on things like generating level adjustment, both positive and negative, as well as adjusting the CR of a creature. Another useful thing to have would be a table showing base CR and what the addition is depending on the % the DM has to add. For example, the Deep One template is CR +1 plus 10%. It’s not that the math is too hard, it’s that I’m lazy and a tool like that would see a lot of use.
The book then starts in on the templates. We have the following chapters:
Aberrations: This chapter presents a single template, but in addition, it has all sorts of sub-systems to it. For example, a table for appearance changes, one for special attacks, one for special qualities, and samples. The first is a petrifier fowl, a cockatrice and the actual template, the wretched, with a chocker as the base creature. The nice thing about the cockatrice example is that it goes into a little detail explaining how the special abilities effected the overall challenge rating, a useful discussion as CR is always something of a hit or miss game.
Animals, Magical Beasts & Vermin starts with Elder Beast, magical beasts with great wisdom and at least average intelligence and charisma. It’s a short chapter though, and ends with another template the nettlecloud. A vermin that uses a cloud of stinging hairs, based on a real tarantula and it’s abilities.
Augmenting is a chapter designed to make monsters more powerful. It’s one of the larger chapters, so I’m not going to do a creature by creature break down. I’ll just point out a few of my favorite ones.
I tend to like material that has multiple uses or classic uses. A vampire using it’s blood to power it’s servants is a classic bit and the Blood Pawn here is a good way to showcase that. The creature gains some abilities like minor fast healing and damage reduction among others, but has a dependency on the blood and is under the effects of a lesser charm spell if the donor vampire is still alive.
As a longtime fan of H. P. Lovecraft, I was glad to see a Deep One template. “Horrific, aquatic versions of the creatures they once were.” Leads to great stuff in a fantasy game. Why limit it to just humans when you can make huge monstrosities like Dagon or the sample here, a deep one ettin?
How about the Savage? Perfect for those GMs who want to create a lost world where everything is more primitive and more dangerous but also less sophisticated and elegant.
Constructs are perfect for templates in that they all have to be crafted and unless you’re playing in a highly industrialized world, they’re all crafted by hand. This gives the GM perfect reasons for making even common types of constructs unique. There’s a great section about automatons and customizing a creature based on it’s initial type and then the material its made out of. Good stuff for those who want to go crazy with mechanical mitrhal dragons and wooden soldiers.
Diminishing is the opposite of augmenting. Sometimes a monster just isn’t as powerful as its peers. It might be a case of blight, or perhaps suffering from inbreeding and corruptions, becoming a degenerate. It may be a miniature version or use the same template for a child version of a much larger monster, like the example of a miniature tyrannosaurus as an infant.
Dragons start off with the breath weapon. What happens if you change the breath weapon? How does the breath weapon work? How do those various energy types, like acid and fire, work? What about creatures with some dragon blood that aren’t quite half-dragons? Covered along with some variant half-dragons that provide a different breath weapon and some other notes like bonus to its DC saves and damage to its breath weapon at middle and old age. Makes sense as dragons get more powerful as they age.
Elementals include an elemental template that covers the different core elements and ice and thermic elements.
Metatemplates include things like half-templates. Here are rules for making a half just about anything. It goes over the various parts of the monster including skills, feats, organization, spell immunity, regeneration, and other common special abilities to allow you to make the best of the half breed. Included is a demigorgon template, half-troll template, and padrafyte (half medusa),
Oozes have never been my thing. I understand their role and can see how an ooze template can add some variety to the game, but things like an amorphous creature that can squeeze through small openings, is still a bit silly.
Outsiders on the other hand, are much like dragons in that their core type is one of the most powerful in the game. Here we see variants like apocalyptic. Ever want to end your campaign? Well, the apocalyptic template is for you with a huge CR boost and powers to make a creature with this template worthy for an appearance in a Mutants & Masterminds campaign. Take the sample creature, Kurnus, Hound of the End Time, it weighs in at a CR of 26, based off the Nessian warhound advanced as high as possible with maximum hit dice that increased it to Huge size and since it’s apocalyptic, it’s hit dice are doubled so it has 48d12+912 hit dice or 1,488 hit points.
On the other hand, perhaps you’re trying to emulate the old Elric tales where the albino summoner calls upon the various lords of different animal realms. In that case, the beast lord template would be useful as it gives a +10 boost to CR +20% and the sample beast lord, a 40=HD gargantuan dire tiger, is written up as Kaavaak, Lord of Noble Tigers. Yeah, another bad boy weighing in at a CR of 34.
One of the things I’ve been using from the old 3.0 book, is the Ebon Servitor. In my old game, the Ebon Maw, an abyssal lord that’s imprisoned, has many personal servants and this template was the perfect way to simulate that. Well, adding the taint rules from Unearthed Arcana was a good deal too, but you get the picture. The sample race of black orcs is another nice touch that allows you to have a long term foe for the campaign that’s on a higher level than the standard orc.
There are some other goodies here like the half-genie, immortal, shadowborne and the voidspawn among others. It’s one of the most solid chapters in the book, and for those who want to showcase the strength of the planes or the unusual nature of the planes, it’s a chapter that can serve as groundwork in making unique encounters for your campaign.
Plants are another area where I’m like, “Man, I didn’t know that Marvel’s Man Thing and DC’s Swamp Thing were so popular.” I can see the whole Treebeard thing but don’t need to have a ton of variety. Having said that, plantform is a nice template that has a nice listing of special attacks and special qualities so that no two need ever be alike .
Undead are another old favorite with many templates already out there. Here we get some varieties like corpse vampire, corpses animated by evil that aren’t sentient, merely corrupted bodies. Others like the skinhusk are hollow shell’s of the creature’’s skin that have been animated into undeath while others include variants on the favorite vampire or the mummy.
After all that, there is an appendix with other goods. Some of these are new skills, like saying Control Shape for those lycanthropes who’d like to avoid becoming a monster in front of the wrong people. Others are feats to help augment your monsters. An old favorite, Cleave Asunder, lets you smash a foe’s weapon and if successful, get a free attack against another target. Others like Cross Training, are great as they allow you to choose two skills that become permanent class skills for you regardless of what class you take. It’s something I think that D&D could really borrow from the other systems that’s in as opposed to having to spend a precious feat on it.
There are even new spells for those looking to augment their magical knowledge. The spells are broken down into simplified lists, like those found in the Player’s Handbook, by class and level, with arcane spells also getting a breakdown by school. For example, at 8th level, the Enchantment spells are separated from the Evocation spells and the Transmutation spells, but all are found under the 8th level umbrella.
The spells are a mixed bag of offense and utility. Some exist to add the creatures in this book to your campaign, like Animate Paleoskeleton, others to protect the user from constructs, like Anticonstruct Ward. It’s a good mix of spells that can add a touch of something unique to a spellcaster’s bag of tricks.
While some samples have been lost in the transition, it appears that all of the original templates have made the transition to the 3.5 edition. It’s utility, like that of the Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin, is not in the samples provided. It’s in the ideas provided. It’s in the themes provided. It’s in the fact that you can take these numerous templates and augment your existing monster collection by a factor of thousands.
Reviewer's Note: Goodman Games has a print edition of the book for $34.95 for those interested in a dead tree version.Goodmangames
Psion
Adventurer
Book of Templates: Deluxe Edition (3.5) is a revamp of one of Silverthorn Games’ best known products, a resource containing a flurry of new templates for use with the game, along with intriguing advice and ideas for using them. The 3.5 update is not a simple rules revision; it is largely reorganized and features new material. This version is available in PDF format through RPGnow and DriveThru RPG, as well as in print through Goodman Games.
The book is written by Ian S. Johnston and Chris S. Sims, with additional material by Devon Apple, Erica Basley, Robert Blezard, Gregory W. Ragland, and Sean K. Reynolds. The book is edited by d20 statistics guru John Cooper.
This review is based principally on the print version, but the PDF version will be mentioned at points.
A First Look
The print version of Book of Template Deluxe Edition 3.5 is a 192 page perfect bound hardcover book priced at $34.99. The PDF version is currently available for $13.00 at RPGnow.
The two versions have different covers, suggesting that Goodman Games’ art direction went a different direction than Silverthorn Games’. The PDF cover looks like a Inca style stone carving. The Goodman Games’ cover looks like a book cover stitched together from parts of different creatrues.
The interior is black-and-white, predominantly using the same art (nicely done line art by Cara Mitten and Jeremy Mohler) as the 3.0 version. (The PDF version has black and white art, but the border and some headings are in color.)
The editing and layout are nice, an improvement over the 3.0 edition (which suffered from having the curiously deep indents). Many/most creature descriptions straddle pages, making it a bit less clear to read, but is probably necessitated by fitting a lot of material in the page count.
A Deeper Look
Given the title of the book, it should be of little surprise that the majority of this book is templates. It’s sandwiched by a few supplementary notes. The beginning has some brief advisory on using templates (though the popular stacking templates tutorial from the 3.0 version of the book is notably absent). The end of the book collects additional supplemental material referenced by the entries in the book, mostly spells, skills, and feats.
Notably absent are a list of templates by CR modifier and a list of sample creatures by CR. This is unfortunate and surprising, considering that the original Book of Templates Deluxe featured such tables. Again, the reason they might not include such tables (which would have been very helpful) could be that they were bumping up against a page limit with their word count.
The templates are not sorted alphabetically. Rather, they are arranged by creature type that it is produced or primarily intended for. Shuffled in amongst these is are chapters that aren’t linked to a specific creature or creature type. These chapters are augmenting templates (templates that improve but don’t fundamentally change the nature of the creature), diminishing (templates that weaken a creature), and the metatemplate chapter. The metatemplate chapter is a special case; it contains “metatemplates” that can be applied to a creature to make half-creature templates from a creature type.
The templates herein are predominantly the same ones that appeared in the 3.0 versions. There are a few new templates; I don’t remember seeing the Legion before, a large version of a normal creature that spawns normal sized brood, possibly inspired by the Legion from Scarred Lands).
Many of the templates that are not all new were refined in name and/or concept. One welcome refinement is the broadening of the ones that seemed too narrow; the nettlecloud spider template became the nettlecloud vermin, and the war angel template is now the war aspect, applicable to any outsider. War rasts or xills, ahoy!
A quick summary of some of the more interesting entries in the book is in order:
Most templates (or variants, but usually not both) have a sample of the template being applied, which is nice, because it lets you put the concept immediately into play. Though the book lacks the template-stacking tutorial that the prior edition had, some of the same sensibilities persist here, and they try to show you how you can use templates as a tool to create new and interesting creatures vice just a power up for an exisitng creature.
Conclusions
The Book of Templates remains one of the most useful tools in creating new and interesting creatures out there. The author are not simply content to just translate the templates to 3.5. They jazz the whole up with a few more templates, and some nice rethinkings of the existing templates.
Comparisons with Green Ronin’s Advanced Bestiary are almost inevitable. Both are excellent resources for templates, but their emphasis seems somewhat complementary. Advanced Bestiary seems more an interesting group of concepts looking for a creature, whereas Book of Templates Deluxe edition is more the sort of book you pick up when you find yourself saying “I need a template that does this” or if you need a template that applies specifically to a certain creature or group of creatures.
As mentioned, I did miss the template stacking tutorial somewhat, and tables of templates (and sample creatures) by CR is an unfortunate omission.
Overall Grade: A-
-Alan D. Kohler
The book is written by Ian S. Johnston and Chris S. Sims, with additional material by Devon Apple, Erica Basley, Robert Blezard, Gregory W. Ragland, and Sean K. Reynolds. The book is edited by d20 statistics guru John Cooper.
This review is based principally on the print version, but the PDF version will be mentioned at points.
A First Look
The print version of Book of Template Deluxe Edition 3.5 is a 192 page perfect bound hardcover book priced at $34.99. The PDF version is currently available for $13.00 at RPGnow.
The two versions have different covers, suggesting that Goodman Games’ art direction went a different direction than Silverthorn Games’. The PDF cover looks like a Inca style stone carving. The Goodman Games’ cover looks like a book cover stitched together from parts of different creatrues.
The interior is black-and-white, predominantly using the same art (nicely done line art by Cara Mitten and Jeremy Mohler) as the 3.0 version. (The PDF version has black and white art, but the border and some headings are in color.)
The editing and layout are nice, an improvement over the 3.0 edition (which suffered from having the curiously deep indents). Many/most creature descriptions straddle pages, making it a bit less clear to read, but is probably necessitated by fitting a lot of material in the page count.
A Deeper Look
Given the title of the book, it should be of little surprise that the majority of this book is templates. It’s sandwiched by a few supplementary notes. The beginning has some brief advisory on using templates (though the popular stacking templates tutorial from the 3.0 version of the book is notably absent). The end of the book collects additional supplemental material referenced by the entries in the book, mostly spells, skills, and feats.
Notably absent are a list of templates by CR modifier and a list of sample creatures by CR. This is unfortunate and surprising, considering that the original Book of Templates Deluxe featured such tables. Again, the reason they might not include such tables (which would have been very helpful) could be that they were bumping up against a page limit with their word count.
The templates are not sorted alphabetically. Rather, they are arranged by creature type that it is produced or primarily intended for. Shuffled in amongst these is are chapters that aren’t linked to a specific creature or creature type. These chapters are augmenting templates (templates that improve but don’t fundamentally change the nature of the creature), diminishing (templates that weaken a creature), and the metatemplate chapter. The metatemplate chapter is a special case; it contains “metatemplates” that can be applied to a creature to make half-creature templates from a creature type.
The templates herein are predominantly the same ones that appeared in the 3.0 versions. There are a few new templates; I don’t remember seeing the Legion before, a large version of a normal creature that spawns normal sized brood, possibly inspired by the Legion from Scarred Lands).
Many of the templates that are not all new were refined in name and/or concept. One welcome refinement is the broadening of the ones that seemed too narrow; the nettlecloud spider template became the nettlecloud vermin, and the war angel template is now the war aspect, applicable to any outsider. War rasts or xills, ahoy!
A quick summary of some of the more interesting entries in the book is in order:
- Wretched: This reads like something an alchemist from The Dying Earth might make by happenstance: an artificial creature that is a fraction of what it should be, having an amorphous form.
- Blind Oracle: A creature gifted with the ability to see the future, at a grim cost.
- Psionic (and Spellpowered): I am always pleased to see psionic support. The 3.0 Psionics Handbook had a psionic template; it was easily abused and was replaced by the phrenic template in the Expanded Psionics Handbook, which is a more balanced, but less flexible creature. The psionic template provides a flexible template that allows a GM to build creatures with psi-like ability, with some choice as to which psi-like powers they get, yet more balanced than the old psionic template. The spell powered template is useful in a similar vein to provide creatures with spell like abilities.
- Phantasmal: Here’s a cool little template – it makes constructs that are entirely illusory versions of creatures. I imagine a scenario in which a gnomish town is being plagued by wild magic gone awry...
- Elemental: A template type that has been around for a while, but it’s nice to have an OGC/3.5 take on the idea. C’mon, admit it. When you saw Sinbad (recent animated version), you wanted to make water elemental sirens too, didn’t you? More generally, this template is great to populate forays into the elemental planes or other themed element related games.
- Amorphous: An amorphous creature appears as a normal creature, but can assume an amorphous form. The evocative drawing of the giant stepping through a portcullis sort of drives this concept home.
- Mindbender: Originally the non-Euclidian template, this template describes a creature that has “impossible geometries”; viewing such a creature tends to cause problems for intelligent creatures observing it. Given the increasing popularity of the idea of creatures from alien dimensions in D20 fantasy, this template has some interesting gaming possibilities.
- Spirit: Adopted from the 3.0 Shaman’s Handbook by Green Ronin, it’s nice to see the template given a refresh. Never the slouches creatively, the authors of the Book of Templates put forth some ideas on how you can use the spirit template to make interesting changes to the standard cosmology.
- Fleshbound Vampires and vampire variants: Another OGC inclusion, the fleshbound vampire was originated by Sean K. Reynolds in the NPC books he did for Malhavoc; the fleshbound vampire has a more human nature and less intimate connection to the negative energy plane. The chapter also has some vampire variants that will let you throw the players even more curveballs.
Most templates (or variants, but usually not both) have a sample of the template being applied, which is nice, because it lets you put the concept immediately into play. Though the book lacks the template-stacking tutorial that the prior edition had, some of the same sensibilities persist here, and they try to show you how you can use templates as a tool to create new and interesting creatures vice just a power up for an exisitng creature.
Conclusions
The Book of Templates remains one of the most useful tools in creating new and interesting creatures out there. The author are not simply content to just translate the templates to 3.5. They jazz the whole up with a few more templates, and some nice rethinkings of the existing templates.
Comparisons with Green Ronin’s Advanced Bestiary are almost inevitable. Both are excellent resources for templates, but their emphasis seems somewhat complementary. Advanced Bestiary seems more an interesting group of concepts looking for a creature, whereas Book of Templates Deluxe edition is more the sort of book you pick up when you find yourself saying “I need a template that does this” or if you need a template that applies specifically to a certain creature or group of creatures.
As mentioned, I did miss the template stacking tutorial somewhat, and tables of templates (and sample creatures) by CR is an unfortunate omission.
Overall Grade: A-
-Alan D. Kohler
Crothian
First Post
Book of Templates Deluxe Edition 3.5
[imager]http://www.goodman-games.com/images/GMG4340CoverLarge.jpg[/imager]
Sometimes it feels like I have reviewed a book before. But rarely is it this true. In fact I have in one way of looking at it reviewed this book twice before. The first time was when it was just the Book of Templates and then the second time when it became the Book of Templates Deluxe. Now it is the Book of Templates Deluxe 3.5 Edition and with each change it has gotten a great improvement and been one of the most used books at my gaming table. It is really cool to see such a great book finally come out in print as well as PDF like the first two were. Silverthorne Games and Goodman games should be very proud of this book and it has to be rare if not unique for a non core gaming book to get three releases with two significant improvements over the original which was a very solid and useful book in its own right.
Book of Templates 3.5 Deluxe Edition is a great looking hardbound book. It is one hundred and ninety two pages long and all black and white. The layout is well done with many table for the templates and also rules for helping the DM improve monsters. The pictures are nicely done depicting some strange new creatures to show some of the example creatures created with the templates in here.
The book is very well organized with templates grouped with who they can be used for. If one needs a template for an undead there is a chapter filled with undead templates. The same goes for plants, animals, constructs, and other creature types. There is also one large chapter on templates that can pretty much be applied to any creature. Some of the chapters only have a single template like the plant chapter but all templates do have an example creature making this book partially a very different monster manual.
The book starts off strong with a chapter on applying the templates and modifying the creatures. The book is useless if people do not understand how to use the material and the book does a nice job of taking a person through the steps and considerations when doing so. There are tables for the different creature types, how to handle size increases and decreases, ways that challenge rating can be modified, working with level adjustments for players, and other key things that people will need.
The book is filled with interesting templates as one might imagine. One of the interesting ones is the Fallen. It is a template to be applied to Outsiders, more specifically good Outsiders that have well fallen to the evil side of things. There is the Degenerate Template that represents a creature in isolation or part diet that weakens a bit but becomes more unpredictable of its kind. There is the Metalvore template that represents a creature that eats metals much to the fear of fighters and clerics everywhere. I really like the example creature they use applying this template to a bulette. I also really like the picture of this thing as well. There are pages and pages of interesting possibilities and cool ideas in this book.
This is a book that I and lots of other people get a lot of use of. The only comparable book is the Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin which is another nice collection of templates. I do use the Book of Templates more though. But in reality both are very important in my quest for new and unique creatures to make my players lives more interesting and deadly. This book has a PDF and book version making it very versatile coming in the format the person will find most useful. This is a great book and about as close to a must have in the realms of fantasy d20 game books as we see.
[imager]http://www.goodman-games.com/images/GMG4340CoverLarge.jpg[/imager]
Sometimes it feels like I have reviewed a book before. But rarely is it this true. In fact I have in one way of looking at it reviewed this book twice before. The first time was when it was just the Book of Templates and then the second time when it became the Book of Templates Deluxe. Now it is the Book of Templates Deluxe 3.5 Edition and with each change it has gotten a great improvement and been one of the most used books at my gaming table. It is really cool to see such a great book finally come out in print as well as PDF like the first two were. Silverthorne Games and Goodman games should be very proud of this book and it has to be rare if not unique for a non core gaming book to get three releases with two significant improvements over the original which was a very solid and useful book in its own right.
Book of Templates 3.5 Deluxe Edition is a great looking hardbound book. It is one hundred and ninety two pages long and all black and white. The layout is well done with many table for the templates and also rules for helping the DM improve monsters. The pictures are nicely done depicting some strange new creatures to show some of the example creatures created with the templates in here.
The book is very well organized with templates grouped with who they can be used for. If one needs a template for an undead there is a chapter filled with undead templates. The same goes for plants, animals, constructs, and other creature types. There is also one large chapter on templates that can pretty much be applied to any creature. Some of the chapters only have a single template like the plant chapter but all templates do have an example creature making this book partially a very different monster manual.
The book starts off strong with a chapter on applying the templates and modifying the creatures. The book is useless if people do not understand how to use the material and the book does a nice job of taking a person through the steps and considerations when doing so. There are tables for the different creature types, how to handle size increases and decreases, ways that challenge rating can be modified, working with level adjustments for players, and other key things that people will need.
The book is filled with interesting templates as one might imagine. One of the interesting ones is the Fallen. It is a template to be applied to Outsiders, more specifically good Outsiders that have well fallen to the evil side of things. There is the Degenerate Template that represents a creature in isolation or part diet that weakens a bit but becomes more unpredictable of its kind. There is the Metalvore template that represents a creature that eats metals much to the fear of fighters and clerics everywhere. I really like the example creature they use applying this template to a bulette. I also really like the picture of this thing as well. There are pages and pages of interesting possibilities and cool ideas in this book.
This is a book that I and lots of other people get a lot of use of. The only comparable book is the Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin which is another nice collection of templates. I do use the Book of Templates more though. But in reality both are very important in my quest for new and unique creatures to make my players lives more interesting and deadly. This book has a PDF and book version making it very versatile coming in the format the person will find most useful. This is a great book and about as close to a must have in the realms of fantasy d20 game books as we see.
trancejeremy
Adventurer
My god! It's a gigantic amorphous many headed hypermiotic penguin!!!
The Book of Templates
Deluxe Edition
One of the bigger innovations of 3rd edition D&D over its predecessors, was the concept of "templates". Templates are something that can be applied to an existing monster (or NPC, really) to "tweak" them. Variations of monsters had existed, but there was never any real standard procedure.
As you can probably guess from the name, "The Book of Templates, Deluxe" is an entire book of templates. The Deluxe indicates that this is the latest version of a product that has evolved over the course of the last few years. It's published by Goodman Games, but it's from Silverthorne Games, who seem to be mostly famous for this product, but have a few others.
The book starts off with a nice, if chart filled, chapter on modifying (and creating) monsters in terms of d20 stats. Apparently there are actually proper rules for doing so, rather than just making them up willy-nilly. (Guess which one I do...)
The later chapters are all devoted to templates, with each chapter being devoted to a "theme" that the template turns a critter into, or variants of those sorts of critters. Aberrations, Animals & Vermin, Augmentations, Construct, Diminishings, Dragons, Elementals, Metatemplates, Oozes, Outsiders, Plants, and Undead. It sort of jumps around in theme.
These chapters pretty much follow a pattern of presenting a template, then giving an example of that template applied to a critter. (This style follows the templates in the Monster Manual, actually). Some of the chapters have 6-7, some have over a dozen, while others only have a couple, and one, Plant, only has a single template.
The Templates...
Books like this, which are basically just a big collection of small things, are tricky to review. I'm not going to list each template, obviously, I'm just going to cover what I thought were the highlights and mention what each chapter is like.
Aberrations are great for creating monsters for a horror-tinged game. These are basically normal critters with some sort of horrible mutation or alteration done to them. This chapter is a bit shorter than I would have liked - basically two templates. One is sort of a super-template, as it gives you lots of options to create an "Aberrant" tailored to either your whim or the roll of the dice. With 20 different options for both special attacks and special qualities. Also the "wretched", which is actually sort of a squished sort of version of the creature. All runny and oozing.
The Animals and Vermin chapter is even smaller, though also 2 templates. For animals, there is the "Elder" template, which turns them into a wiser, smarter, slightly tougher version of the animal. Smokey the Bear is apparently one of these, along with Woodsy the Owl (and the Owl from the old Tootsie roll pop commercial...). The example here is deer, and even includes the option to use the "Elder Deer" as a character. Also something that reminds me of a room mate from my college days, the "Nettlecloud". Basically, their hair falls out. In his case, it was all over the bathroom. In this case, it creates sort of a stinging cloud of hair, almost like that musical.
As you might guess, the Augmenting chapter deals with making monsters tougher. This can range from "Flying" and "Giant" which simply make a monster able to fly or bigger, to giving them some spell power, like the "Arcane Servitor" template.
Also of note is the "Dreadnaught", which makes a creature resistent to damage - perfect for movie villains. Then there is the "Relentless", which turns a critter into something Tarrasque-esque, a legendary monster almost impossible to kill.
This is one of the biggest chapters in the book. Lots of ways to augment critters.
The Construct template I liked the most was the "Skinrug". Basically it's something like an animated bear skin rug, but can be anything, not just a bear. There's also a template to make a mechanical version of any monster. Like that mechanical owl from Clash of the Titans. (Sadly, no template to duplicate Harry Hamlin's mechanical acting from that). And a few others.
The Diminishing chapter deals with templates that make a monster weaker. This is rather small, with only three options. The most interesting is "miniature", which makes a smaller version. While that's pretty mundane, the example is applied to a Cloud Giant, which makes a rather tough dwarf.
I guess since they are half the name of the game, "Dragons" gets an entire chapter devoted to them (albeit a small one). It's mostly giving some draconic powers to other critters. For instance, the dragon's breath weapon. Also ways to tailor the half-dragon template to a specific flavor of dragon. (Sadly, no "Puff" draggy or "Magic" dragon template...)
The Elemental chapter is also pretty thin. Just some variants of normal elementals as well as adding an element to a normal monster. Like a Fire Penquin. (Er "Fire Pegasus" is actually the example, though I like my idea better.)
Metatemplates deal mostly with creating "half" creatures. First some rules on how to create them in general, then some some specific examples of some.
One of the examples is the half-vampire, or "Dhampire". While not bad, it doesn't really fit either the traditional "Dhampir" (the name of the offspring of a vampire) or the most famous one, "Blade" (who really isn't the kid of one, but close).
Also the half-troll and the half-nymph. I would have liked to have seen an example of combining those two, which would basically give you Paris Hilton. (Or possibly Richard Simmons)
Which is actually an almost perfect segueway into the "Ooze" chapter. The most notable one in this small chapter is the "Amorphous", which is basically a normal critter, but they can go all squishy if they want, able to squeeze through tight holes, and stretch a little.
Outsiders are not so outside of this; they get the biggest section of the book, with 14 templates. Some are quite useful, like the "Immortal", which is like a chosen one of a Deity. Some seem a bit silly, like the "Apocalyptic", which lets you create one of the pets of the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, in case you needed to know the stats for Famine's pet pot bellied pig. (The example is actually "Kurnus, Hound of the End Time". ). Still, I think it could be tweaked a bit to make a pasable Kaiju. But at any rate, the power level is beyond most campaigns.
The two I find really useful myself in this chapter are the templates "Fallen" and "Redeemed". As you might guess from their names, "Fallen" is a template that can be applied to a good outsider who has fallen from grace. Not necessarily bad, but no longer good. Similarly, "Redeemed" is a template that an evil outsider can earn by redeeming themselves.
The plants chapter is rather small, basically one template. As I really started digging into this book about a week ago, I came down with some sort of nasty flu virus, and I was slightly delirious. I kept thinking "Why on earth is there only one plant template and no variants? Think of all the ways you can make plants into monsters. Maneating plants, ninja eggplants, and the dreaded show tune singing plant. But then when I got well, I realized, duh, there aren't really any stats for normal versions of trees or plants. (At least until WOTC gets really desperate and puts out the Plantinomicon. )
Anyway, the plant related template in this is "Plant form". Basically you apply it to any monster, and instead of a monster, it's a plant shaped like that monster.
The Undead section is probably the most interesting for me, as I like vampires, and they present some interesting takes on them, the "Fleshbound Vampire". Not as powerful as the D&D vampire, and is possibly more suited for the player, too.
Beyond that is a neat template for creating animated Dinosaurs (or other fossils). While perhaps not common, they do appear in one of my favorite fantasy novels, "Stalking the Unicorn" by Mike Resnick.
The Rest...
Lastly is an appendix on "Campaign Options". Which is actually new feats, skills and spells. While it's only 11 pages, they used small type so there is actually quite a lot of them.
The new skills are exactly just examples of the craft skill. Embalming and Taxidermy. These are tied into some of the templates, but also useful on their own. If you are into that sort of thing. But for this, they help make improved undead.
Some of the spells are tied into the templates, some are not. For instance, there are spells to fix or hurt constructs, some to create specific types of undead. In an interesting move, some spells are "Shaman" spells, suitable for use with the Shaman class from Green Ronin's Master Class series, and which also have some minor tie-ins throughout the book.
Some of the new spells don't seem to have much to do with the book, and are simply variations of existing ones , like Charm and Hold Person, only improved versions. Those two spells are actually fairly powerful, since one lets you basically control a person while the other basically lets you kill them (since once held, you can just do a coup de grace on them with no problem). But these are sort of crippled by only working on low level characters. While it's true they still give a saving throw, sometimes higher level characters do fail one of those. So I think it's a bit unbalancing.
The Looks...
Physically it's an attractive book. Not something you'd put on a coffee table, but nice. Also very functional. While the chapter subject changes somewhat haphazzardly (for instance, why not put the chapters on improving or reducing monsters next to each other, since they are complementary subjects), the layout of the book is quite nice. Very easy to read, and since the side margin has the chapter name in nice big letters (which I think all RPG books over 64 pages should do), it's very easy to find what you are looking for. Quite sturdy, too, with thick paper. I've actually put it through a fair amont of abuse so far (inadvertently) and it's held up quite well.
Somewhat curiously for a book this size, the art is done by only two artists, Cara Mitten (website seems to be down) and Jeremy (The credits say "Jeremey", but the website says different) Mohler. While I don't think I've heard of either one of them, the art is excellent. It's always obvious just what the monster is, and in a nice move, the art is often large, taking up half the page. One of the tricky things about doing monster art is it has to be believable, yet convey what sort of feelings a monster radiates. Be it creepy, or noble, or whatever. Both artists do a really good job of that. Usually when you get a book from a smaller press book, you get somewhat amateur looking art (and even from some bigger companies, as a cost cutting move), but this art is as good as any I've seen, save the big, expensive, color, artsy sort of books, and that's probably simply because the medium the artists used here was apparently pencil.
Last Thoughts...
It's a really great book, but I do have a few minor nitpicks. The book suggests that rather than simply name a creature you modify by it's original name plus the name of the the template, you create a whole new name, and itself uses that naming convention. Which caused me some confusion while flipping through the book at random. For instance, the miniature template's example is "Thunderhead dwarf". At first glance I thought this was a mistake, that "Thunderhead" was a template applied to "Dwarf", but there was no "Thunderhead" in the book. But upon close inspection, I saw that it was the miniature template applied to the Cloud Giant. Not a problem if you read the book sequentially, but for monster books that is not often the case, so it would have been nice for them to have put the template name and the original monster name after the "new" name in parentheses (or some note of the origins of the monster).
Well, also one thing - this book uses level adjustments for most of the templates. While that's okay, I personally prefer having racial levels. While it would have been asking a lot for that to be in this book for every template, some discussion of it would have been nice, and how to design racial classes like that. Though for all I know, racial levels was just a 3.0 thing.
(If you are unfamiliar with d20, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but if I were to explain, it would take too long.)
I am also amazed they made it through an entire book and didn't use one humorous or strange template.
Really, all those things are just personal opinion. I suppose it would also have been nice to see some of the smaller chapters have a few more templates, rather than sometimes just 2, and perhaps lose some of the extra spells that didn't tie into the book.
This book is definitely worth buying if you are a d20 fan. I own around 150 d20 books, and I am hard pressed to think of a more useful book for the DM besides the core books. Bastion Press's Arms & Armor is more all around useful, since it's for players & DMs. Though unlike that, this is also fairly useful for non-D&D d20 games as well, particularly d20 Modern. There are even a handful of templates that could be useful for d20 Cthulhu, most notably the "degenerate" template (also useful for <insert your own joke>), the "Wretched", and the "Deep One", the latter of which is not quite Lovecraft-ish, but close.
So a solid A.
One last note, there have been some complaints of the book cover coming unattached from the spine of the book, but I believe that's simply the way it was designed. It's a "hollow back" type of binding.
See
http://www.thebookbinder.com/html/structure.htm (down on the bottom)
The Book of Templates
Deluxe Edition
One of the bigger innovations of 3rd edition D&D over its predecessors, was the concept of "templates". Templates are something that can be applied to an existing monster (or NPC, really) to "tweak" them. Variations of monsters had existed, but there was never any real standard procedure.
As you can probably guess from the name, "The Book of Templates, Deluxe" is an entire book of templates. The Deluxe indicates that this is the latest version of a product that has evolved over the course of the last few years. It's published by Goodman Games, but it's from Silverthorne Games, who seem to be mostly famous for this product, but have a few others.
The book starts off with a nice, if chart filled, chapter on modifying (and creating) monsters in terms of d20 stats. Apparently there are actually proper rules for doing so, rather than just making them up willy-nilly. (Guess which one I do...)
The later chapters are all devoted to templates, with each chapter being devoted to a "theme" that the template turns a critter into, or variants of those sorts of critters. Aberrations, Animals & Vermin, Augmentations, Construct, Diminishings, Dragons, Elementals, Metatemplates, Oozes, Outsiders, Plants, and Undead. It sort of jumps around in theme.
These chapters pretty much follow a pattern of presenting a template, then giving an example of that template applied to a critter. (This style follows the templates in the Monster Manual, actually). Some of the chapters have 6-7, some have over a dozen, while others only have a couple, and one, Plant, only has a single template.
The Templates...
Books like this, which are basically just a big collection of small things, are tricky to review. I'm not going to list each template, obviously, I'm just going to cover what I thought were the highlights and mention what each chapter is like.
Aberrations are great for creating monsters for a horror-tinged game. These are basically normal critters with some sort of horrible mutation or alteration done to them. This chapter is a bit shorter than I would have liked - basically two templates. One is sort of a super-template, as it gives you lots of options to create an "Aberrant" tailored to either your whim or the roll of the dice. With 20 different options for both special attacks and special qualities. Also the "wretched", which is actually sort of a squished sort of version of the creature. All runny and oozing.
The Animals and Vermin chapter is even smaller, though also 2 templates. For animals, there is the "Elder" template, which turns them into a wiser, smarter, slightly tougher version of the animal. Smokey the Bear is apparently one of these, along with Woodsy the Owl (and the Owl from the old Tootsie roll pop commercial...). The example here is deer, and even includes the option to use the "Elder Deer" as a character. Also something that reminds me of a room mate from my college days, the "Nettlecloud". Basically, their hair falls out. In his case, it was all over the bathroom. In this case, it creates sort of a stinging cloud of hair, almost like that musical.
As you might guess, the Augmenting chapter deals with making monsters tougher. This can range from "Flying" and "Giant" which simply make a monster able to fly or bigger, to giving them some spell power, like the "Arcane Servitor" template.
Also of note is the "Dreadnaught", which makes a creature resistent to damage - perfect for movie villains. Then there is the "Relentless", which turns a critter into something Tarrasque-esque, a legendary monster almost impossible to kill.
This is one of the biggest chapters in the book. Lots of ways to augment critters.
The Construct template I liked the most was the "Skinrug". Basically it's something like an animated bear skin rug, but can be anything, not just a bear. There's also a template to make a mechanical version of any monster. Like that mechanical owl from Clash of the Titans. (Sadly, no template to duplicate Harry Hamlin's mechanical acting from that). And a few others.
The Diminishing chapter deals with templates that make a monster weaker. This is rather small, with only three options. The most interesting is "miniature", which makes a smaller version. While that's pretty mundane, the example is applied to a Cloud Giant, which makes a rather tough dwarf.
I guess since they are half the name of the game, "Dragons" gets an entire chapter devoted to them (albeit a small one). It's mostly giving some draconic powers to other critters. For instance, the dragon's breath weapon. Also ways to tailor the half-dragon template to a specific flavor of dragon. (Sadly, no "Puff" draggy or "Magic" dragon template...)
The Elemental chapter is also pretty thin. Just some variants of normal elementals as well as adding an element to a normal monster. Like a Fire Penquin. (Er "Fire Pegasus" is actually the example, though I like my idea better.)
Metatemplates deal mostly with creating "half" creatures. First some rules on how to create them in general, then some some specific examples of some.
One of the examples is the half-vampire, or "Dhampire". While not bad, it doesn't really fit either the traditional "Dhampir" (the name of the offspring of a vampire) or the most famous one, "Blade" (who really isn't the kid of one, but close).
Also the half-troll and the half-nymph. I would have liked to have seen an example of combining those two, which would basically give you Paris Hilton. (Or possibly Richard Simmons)
Which is actually an almost perfect segueway into the "Ooze" chapter. The most notable one in this small chapter is the "Amorphous", which is basically a normal critter, but they can go all squishy if they want, able to squeeze through tight holes, and stretch a little.
Outsiders are not so outside of this; they get the biggest section of the book, with 14 templates. Some are quite useful, like the "Immortal", which is like a chosen one of a Deity. Some seem a bit silly, like the "Apocalyptic", which lets you create one of the pets of the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, in case you needed to know the stats for Famine's pet pot bellied pig. (The example is actually "Kurnus, Hound of the End Time". ). Still, I think it could be tweaked a bit to make a pasable Kaiju. But at any rate, the power level is beyond most campaigns.
The two I find really useful myself in this chapter are the templates "Fallen" and "Redeemed". As you might guess from their names, "Fallen" is a template that can be applied to a good outsider who has fallen from grace. Not necessarily bad, but no longer good. Similarly, "Redeemed" is a template that an evil outsider can earn by redeeming themselves.
The plants chapter is rather small, basically one template. As I really started digging into this book about a week ago, I came down with some sort of nasty flu virus, and I was slightly delirious. I kept thinking "Why on earth is there only one plant template and no variants? Think of all the ways you can make plants into monsters. Maneating plants, ninja eggplants, and the dreaded show tune singing plant. But then when I got well, I realized, duh, there aren't really any stats for normal versions of trees or plants. (At least until WOTC gets really desperate and puts out the Plantinomicon. )
Anyway, the plant related template in this is "Plant form". Basically you apply it to any monster, and instead of a monster, it's a plant shaped like that monster.
The Undead section is probably the most interesting for me, as I like vampires, and they present some interesting takes on them, the "Fleshbound Vampire". Not as powerful as the D&D vampire, and is possibly more suited for the player, too.
Beyond that is a neat template for creating animated Dinosaurs (or other fossils). While perhaps not common, they do appear in one of my favorite fantasy novels, "Stalking the Unicorn" by Mike Resnick.
The Rest...
Lastly is an appendix on "Campaign Options". Which is actually new feats, skills and spells. While it's only 11 pages, they used small type so there is actually quite a lot of them.
The new skills are exactly just examples of the craft skill. Embalming and Taxidermy. These are tied into some of the templates, but also useful on their own. If you are into that sort of thing. But for this, they help make improved undead.
Some of the spells are tied into the templates, some are not. For instance, there are spells to fix or hurt constructs, some to create specific types of undead. In an interesting move, some spells are "Shaman" spells, suitable for use with the Shaman class from Green Ronin's Master Class series, and which also have some minor tie-ins throughout the book.
Some of the new spells don't seem to have much to do with the book, and are simply variations of existing ones , like Charm and Hold Person, only improved versions. Those two spells are actually fairly powerful, since one lets you basically control a person while the other basically lets you kill them (since once held, you can just do a coup de grace on them with no problem). But these are sort of crippled by only working on low level characters. While it's true they still give a saving throw, sometimes higher level characters do fail one of those. So I think it's a bit unbalancing.
The Looks...
Physically it's an attractive book. Not something you'd put on a coffee table, but nice. Also very functional. While the chapter subject changes somewhat haphazzardly (for instance, why not put the chapters on improving or reducing monsters next to each other, since they are complementary subjects), the layout of the book is quite nice. Very easy to read, and since the side margin has the chapter name in nice big letters (which I think all RPG books over 64 pages should do), it's very easy to find what you are looking for. Quite sturdy, too, with thick paper. I've actually put it through a fair amont of abuse so far (inadvertently) and it's held up quite well.
Somewhat curiously for a book this size, the art is done by only two artists, Cara Mitten (website seems to be down) and Jeremy (The credits say "Jeremey", but the website says different) Mohler. While I don't think I've heard of either one of them, the art is excellent. It's always obvious just what the monster is, and in a nice move, the art is often large, taking up half the page. One of the tricky things about doing monster art is it has to be believable, yet convey what sort of feelings a monster radiates. Be it creepy, or noble, or whatever. Both artists do a really good job of that. Usually when you get a book from a smaller press book, you get somewhat amateur looking art (and even from some bigger companies, as a cost cutting move), but this art is as good as any I've seen, save the big, expensive, color, artsy sort of books, and that's probably simply because the medium the artists used here was apparently pencil.
Last Thoughts...
It's a really great book, but I do have a few minor nitpicks. The book suggests that rather than simply name a creature you modify by it's original name plus the name of the the template, you create a whole new name, and itself uses that naming convention. Which caused me some confusion while flipping through the book at random. For instance, the miniature template's example is "Thunderhead dwarf". At first glance I thought this was a mistake, that "Thunderhead" was a template applied to "Dwarf", but there was no "Thunderhead" in the book. But upon close inspection, I saw that it was the miniature template applied to the Cloud Giant. Not a problem if you read the book sequentially, but for monster books that is not often the case, so it would have been nice for them to have put the template name and the original monster name after the "new" name in parentheses (or some note of the origins of the monster).
Well, also one thing - this book uses level adjustments for most of the templates. While that's okay, I personally prefer having racial levels. While it would have been asking a lot for that to be in this book for every template, some discussion of it would have been nice, and how to design racial classes like that. Though for all I know, racial levels was just a 3.0 thing.
(If you are unfamiliar with d20, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but if I were to explain, it would take too long.)
I am also amazed they made it through an entire book and didn't use one humorous or strange template.
Really, all those things are just personal opinion. I suppose it would also have been nice to see some of the smaller chapters have a few more templates, rather than sometimes just 2, and perhaps lose some of the extra spells that didn't tie into the book.
This book is definitely worth buying if you are a d20 fan. I own around 150 d20 books, and I am hard pressed to think of a more useful book for the DM besides the core books. Bastion Press's Arms & Armor is more all around useful, since it's for players & DMs. Though unlike that, this is also fairly useful for non-D&D d20 games as well, particularly d20 Modern. There are even a handful of templates that could be useful for d20 Cthulhu, most notably the "degenerate" template (also useful for <insert your own joke>), the "Wretched", and the "Deep One", the latter of which is not quite Lovecraft-ish, but close.
So a solid A.
One last note, there have been some complaints of the book cover coming unattached from the spine of the book, but I believe that's simply the way it was designed. It's a "hollow back" type of binding.
See
http://www.thebookbinder.com/html/structure.htm (down on the bottom)
Frilf
Explorer
Thanks for the great review, Joe. Glad you liked our product. Our website is listed wrong at the top of your comments, however. It should be www.silverthornegames.com 
Thanks again!
Thanks again!Similar Threads
