Applying templates to monsters

[Vuron]

Recently I've been looking at alot of the Ultimate monster threads and I've noticed that alot of people seem to apply a template to a fully advanced version of a creature instead of applying templates to the "base" creature as listed in the books and then advancing the creature. Static templates don't make much difference but scaling templates seem to be a bit trickier as templates such as psuedonatural would be much less munchy if applied to the the core monster.

The example creatures that generally come with the templates seem to bear out the thought that templates get applied first but I was just checking to see if other's had opinions.

Personally my opinion is that non-undead templates are probably applied at birth rather than later on in life thus they should be applied to a non-advanced monster.

 

[Drawmack]

So you can only be bitten by a werewolf at birth?

 

[Vuron]

Smartass but one could revise the werewolves to be naturally occuring like thye are in another setting

 

[Drawmack]

Personally my opinion is that non-undead templates are probably applied at birth rather than later on in life thus they should be applied to a non-advanced monster.

...

one could revise the werewolves to be naturally occuring like thye are in another setting

That doesn't say anything for the original template. I was simply pointing out the flaw in your logic. To point it out in a bit less enflamatory way allow this diversion.

The stats presented in the monster manual are for the average adult monster. Therefor if you are applying the template to the stats in the MM you are not applying it at birth, you are applying it at adulthood. The leveling rules presented in the MM represent creatures that are not average, kind of like arnold swartzenhager vs. the average man. So applying the temple to the maximized creature is not applying it to an older creature it is simply applying it to a larger version of the adult creature. If you are going to apply the template at birth then you need to calculate the stats for infante versions of all the monsters.

 

[kender]

Personally my opinion is that non-undead templates are probably applied at birth rather than later on in life thus they should be applied to a non-advanced monster.

With the exception of werebeasts (as Drawmack pointed out ) I agree with you but that's not the official line.. infact if you do some backward math in the official templates in MM (the ones I analyzed once) you'll discover that the template is applied to the fully grown creature (if my memory is still working it's the celestial template).
If you apply the template as from the birth you'll have to do from scratch all the math for skill, feats, BAB, saves for the new type, according to the HD, and that's not so easy and fast as applying the template to the base creature....