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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Spectrum Rider" data-source="post: 1258372" data-attributes="member: 10777">I have to admit, I recently gave some brown bears wings (Winged Creature template from SS) so that they were more well matched to the party. Also because I liked the visual image (they were in the Shadow Bear Lake region - and then, look up, there's the shadows of bears!).But I also think the mass of templates is making a mess out of some scenarios. DM's should think long and hard before they add them to a setting, because it's easy to lose the sense of wonder inspired by some legendary (in the literary/cultural, not template, sense) creatures when you act like they're no big deal, and need to have something else added to them, and added to them, and added to them....Just for example, a recent article in Dragon - and I mean no insult to the writer, who did a fine job - built an organization around his character and his mount/companion, an air element pegasus with two ranks of fighter.At first I just started processing through, in my mind, the mechanics implications of such a creature.  But then it hit me - when, exactly, did a pegasus become boring? Aren't they magnificent, beautiful, fantastic creatures, famed in myth and story and art? Haven't we lost something, if a pegasus is just no big deal anymore?This had a direct impact on me when I was designing a city on an elemental plane a few weeks later. My impulse was to have the city's ruler be an element-creature lillend, and her children half-elementals. Then I thought: why don't I just make her a lillend, and describe her in such a way as to indicate why I think lillends are really cool? Because they are - but that can get lost in the noise if you pile a lot of templates on top of them.This doesn't apply in all cases, and I'll still use templates when they seem particularly appropriate to me. But these days I err on the side of caution.The Spectrum Rider</blockquote>

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