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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 now
published in a hardback, print version by Goodman Games,
but it's developed by Silverthorne
Games, who seem to be mostly famous for this product, but
have a few others in PDF.
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, not lack of talent.
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
So a solid A. 5
for content here, and a 4.5
for style, rounded up, since I liked the art so much.
