D&D 5E Templates in 5E?

[Mouseferatu]

With the caveat that things may have changed...

I didn't follow most of the playtest. Are monsters like vampires, liches, werewolves, etc. handled via templates, as they were in 3E/are in PF? Or is it more just "Here's the base CR 10 lich, if you want different or more powerful, use the monster creation rules with this as a model"?

 

[bording]

The playtest bestiary files just presented those creatures as a monster statblock, same as the rest of the monsters. The werewolf statblock mentions that someone bitten can be cursed with lycanthropy, and the vampire statblock mentions that the vampire's bite turns slain characters into vampires.

Of course, the playtest didn't include anything about how to handle PCs being turned into werewolves or vampires, so we don't know how they are planning on handling that.


I'm assuming we'll see more details on that in MM writeups!

 

[vecna00]

I'm hoping they will end up being templates of sorts, just to make things easier. Maybe not to the degree of 3.x/PF, but something in the same neighborhood would be excellent.

 

[Evenglare]

Yeah, I really like templates, as long as they are easy to use. 4e did fantastic templates, 3e had templates but they were a bit much for me.

 

[doctorhook]

Templates were a genius development in 3E. 4E had them too, but (for all of its virtues) the particular monster-building strategy behind 4E didn't really do templates any justice.

I have no idea if templates (real, meaty, 3E-style templates) are back in 5E, but I sure hope they are.

 

[Li Shenron]

Not in the playtest, but IIRC [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] have mentioned before that at least some monsters templates will definitely be in the MM. I hope I wasn't dreaming