Banshee...

[KingOfChaos]

Colonel Hardisson is correct though. To create a Banshee all one needs to do is create a ghost and give it the ability to use the Wail of the Banshee spell every 1d4 rounds or something like that and you'd have a perfect Banshee.

 

[Sir Edgar]

Colonel Hardisson is correct though. To create a Banshee all one needs to do is create a ghost and give it the ability to use the Wail of the Banshee spell every 1d4 rounds or something like that and you'd have a perfect Banshee.

Yes, but theoretically you could create any creature out of a these templates, too. Some people don't want to do that.

Personally, I'd rather have a book full of creatures detailed with their particular stats and background information, not a bunch of templates to "work off of". I'm not saying anyone's suggesting that but it's a slippery slope when you start going that route.

Anyhow, the Banshee deserves its own specific stats just like any other creature. Obviously, the people who make D&D agree because it's been in every Monster Manual including Monster Manual 2, right?

 

[KingOfChaos]

Hey, i'm all for unique undead I was just saying that people who need a quick Banshee who don't have MM2 or Tome of Horrors could make their own with the ghost template.

You liked the habitat/society and ecology from 2E? So do I...which is why I am probably going to incorporate something similar in Blasphemous Bestiary.

 

[the Jester]

Hey, i'm all for unique undead I was just saying that people who need a quick Banshee who don't have MM2 or Tome of Horrors could make their own with the ghost template.

You liked the habitat/society and ecology from 2E? So do I...which is why I am probably going to incorporate something similar in Blasphemous Bestiary.

Er, what's that? (Blasphemous Bestiary, I mean... not the ghost template. Duh.) And when?

 

[KingOfChaos]

*Hook, line, and sinker!* LOL..just j/k.

I don't have an exact date on the Blashphemous Bestiary (monster book, 1,000 monsters, full color art) because my imprint doesn't want me to release any of the books as a PDF before they get a chance to print it. Release date really depends on whether or not they want to print the book.

Right now I am trying to get Careers in Villainy (prestige class book, 50 PrCs by the time I am finished, full color art) edited and to the printers. It's not been easy with only one mechanics editor and one grammar editor working on the book. If I have it sent in by December, it should be on the shelves around July of next year. That's a long way away, but the imprinter wants to do marketing first.

 

[the Jester]

I might be able to help with the editing if you want.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Personally, I'd rather have a book full of creatures detailed with their particular stats and background information, not a bunch of templates to "work off of". I'm not saying anyone's suggesting that but it's a slippery slope when you start going that route.

Anyhow, the Banshee deserves its own specific stats just like any other creature. Obviously, the people who make D&D agree because it's been in every Monster Manual including Monster Manual 2, right?

No, no one was suggesting that everything be templated. It's just that in the case of undead, many of them work well as templates, simply because you should have a base creature upon which to work. That is, a ghost of a 15th level Blackguard is going to be very different from the ghost of grandma, and trying to have stats for every single permutation would fill countless books. So a template works in this case. A Banshee could well be a ghost templated female elf sorcerer. Or whatever. I don't see why this would be a slippery slope. You seem to have misinterpreted what I was saying; I was not saying that everything should be "one size fits all," but that a template helps make every ghost unique. If a Banshee is not a ghost in your view, then the ghost template would still be worth looking at, just to see if it can be layered over whatever the Banshee was in life, or whatever the Banshee is if it never had an existence outside of being a Banshee.