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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2513384" data-attributes="member: 1129">Customization of creatures is a step away.Book of Templates Deluxe Edition 3.5Written by Ian S. Johnson & Chris S. SimsPublished by Silverthrone Games<a href="http://www.silverthrone.com" target="_blank">www.silverthrone.com</a>192 black and white pagesPDF formatThe Book of Templates Deluxe Edition was one of the first collections of templates for the D&D 3.0 engine. It was a treasure trove of ideas and methods of adding templates to monsters and using more than one template on a creature. It had a few stat errors here and there, but the fact that it collected templates from various sources and provided more than just game stats, really stood out in my mind.Well, 3.5 has hit the stands, and monsters were one of the biggest areas affected in terms of game play. Damage reduction changed, as well as other bits, like certain types of monsters being eliminated (I’m looking at the beast type), or becoming subtypes. A good opportunity for the Book of Templates to get a nice revamp.But a revamp in and of itself is often not enough. I’ll point to the Creature Collection Revised as an example. Making bad art larger and still having numerous errors with little expanded material beyond the original book, is not a good thing.In this case though, there have been some good changes. First off, I applaud Silverthrone for taking the initiative and using John Cooper as an editor. For those who don’t know John, he’s a fellow reviewer who has a keen eye for monster stat blocks and from what I’ve seen, an excellent grasp on the rules of grammar usage. Hiring him, while not a guarantee or 100% error free stat blocks, is certainly a nod in the direction of quality control.In terms of PDF use, there are two files. Both are standard landscape format, but one is meant for on screen viewing, with color borders and color use throughout for sidebars, and the other using no borders or gray areas for sidebars. This is a good thing as it’s something many PDF companies do, but not often as use in companies where there’s a print product and PDF. Usually the PDF is just the print product in electronic format. Both files make excellent use of bookmarks and are easy to navigate, at least when using Reader 7.0. In terms of content, material has been selected from a wide range of sources. A quick look at the section fifteen, shows things like Plot & Poison, Rokugan, Undead, Dragons, Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed, Swords of Our Fathers, Heroes of High Favor, Librum Equitis, and other resources down at an individual level like Cleave Asunder and Cross-Class Learning. About the only weakness here, is that there is no index of creatures by CR, and no breakdown of the templates by CR. Such a table would be helpful for those GMs looking to give a monster either a little boost or a big one and cut down on page flipping. What’s worse, after speaking with Silverthorne, I realize that this book is much smaller than the 3.0 version. Turns out that a lot of the same templates were cut and where we once had two or three examples, it’s now down to one. Makes sense as for a print product the page count cut off has to come somewhere but hopefully those extra creatures will wind up as a bonus download.Layout is standard two-column format with chapter being indicated on the outsider border. While there is no index, there is a generous table of contents that breaks down the contents of the book nicely, with a header for each chapter, and then a breakdown of what’s in each chapter. Art is handled by Cara Mitten and Jeremy Mohler, and since it’s only two artists, the book has a near unified feel in terms of appearance. Thankfully, it’s my type of art. The only bad thing, is that this is indeed a text heavy book, even with the use of tables and sidebars, there are still pages of pure text that go by with nothing to break it up. My only complaint about the format is that not every creature gets an illustration. Not really necessary as a template is meant for multiple creatures, but I’m a big art fan and more good art is never a bad thing in my opinion.As far as new content in this book versus the old book, well, it’s hard to say without having both books right in front of me and doing a line-by-line comparison. I know right off the bat that the cover is different. The PDF cover is even different from the print cover. Still in the dark red style of the older book, but with an ancient statue as opposed to a single symbol. Good. I’m so tired of seeing those efforts to copy the Player’s Handbook style. In 2000 it was new and innovative. Now it’s cheap and poor looking. In terms of monster layout for the sample monsters, it’s fairly standard. I would have liked to see a breakdown of the initiative bonus, for example, the lesser shield guardian has a –1 initiative, but what’s the coming from? Reading on, it’s apparently from its low dexterity score of nine. Other things, like squares and speed, breakdown of armor class by size, dexterity, and type, including flat-footed and touch armor class, as well as bab/grapple, attack and full attack, are all included.I didn’t see any errors in terms of game stats, like old damage reduction values requiring certain magical pluses to beat and as it’s John Cooper as editor, I’m not surprised at that. Another nice thing is that in terms of template use, there is both a challenge rating adjustment and a level adjustment. Great for those players looking to add a little something unusual to their character.Another useful entry is that some of the new monsters created through the templates have racial traits that allow you to use them as a playable race. It’s a nice step in making the templated monsters more than just a single encounter. Monsters are statted out with name, type, and stat block, description to be read aloud, and combat information.Organization is different. It starts with a chapter on modifying monsters.  This includes little things already in the Monster Manual, but handy to have at your side when applying a template. For example, we have tables to show changes by size, or damage by size, along with other utilities like how to read and apply a template, as well as creature statistics by type. You know, the old undead get bab at half their hit dice while outsiders get the full deal as a fighter. The material is useful for those looking at building their own templates, with advise on things like generating level adjustment, both positive and negative, as well as adjusting the CR of a creature. Another useful thing to have would be a table showing base CR and what the addition is depending on the % the DM has to add. For example, the Deep One template is CR +1 plus 10%. It’s not that the math is too hard, it’s that I’m lazy and a tool like that would see a lot of use.The book then starts in on the templates. We have the following chapters:Aberrations: This chapter presents a single template, but in addition, it has all sorts of sub-systems to it. For example, a table for appearance changes, one for special attacks, one for special qualities, and samples. The first is a petrifier fowl, a cockatrice and the actual template, the wretched, with a chocker as the base creature. The nice thing about the cockatrice example is that it goes into a little detail explaining how the special abilities effected the overall challenge rating, a useful discussion as CR is always something of a hit or miss game.Animals, Magical Beasts & Vermin starts with Elder Beast, magical beasts with great wisdom and at least average intelligence and charisma. It’s a short chapter though, and ends with another template the nettlecloud. A vermin that uses a cloud of stinging hairs, based on a real tarantula and it’s abilities. Augmenting is a chapter designed to make monsters more powerful. It’s one of the larger chapters, so I’m not going to do a creature by creature break down. I’ll just point out a few of my favorite ones.I tend to like material that has multiple uses or classic uses. A vampire using it’s blood to power it’s servants is a classic bit and the Blood Pawn here is a good way to showcase that. The creature gains some abilities like minor fast healing and damage reduction among others, but has a dependency on the blood and is under the effects of a lesser charm spell if the donor vampire is still alive. As a longtime fan of H. P. Lovecraft, I was glad to see a Deep One template. “Horrific, aquatic versions of the creatures they once were.” Leads to great stuff in a fantasy game. Why limit it to just humans when you can make huge monstrosities like Dagon or the sample here, a deep one ettin?How about the Savage? Perfect for those GMs who want to create a lost world where everything is more primitive and more dangerous but also less sophisticated and elegant. Constructs are perfect for templates in that they all have to be crafted and unless you’re playing in a highly industrialized world, they’re all crafted by hand. This gives the GM perfect reasons for making even common types of constructs unique. There’s a great section about automatons and customizing a creature based on it’s initial type and then the material its made out of. Good stuff for those who want to go crazy with mechanical mitrhal dragons and wooden soldiers. Diminishing is the opposite of augmenting. Sometimes a monster just isn’t as powerful as its peers. It might be a case of blight, or perhaps suffering from inbreeding and corruptions, becoming a degenerate. It may be a miniature version or use the same template for a child version of a much larger monster, like the example of a miniature tyrannosaurus as an infant. Dragons start off with the breath weapon. What happens if you change the breath weapon? How does the breath weapon work? How do those various energy types, like acid and fire, work? What about creatures with some dragon blood that aren’t quite half-dragons? Covered along with some variant half-dragons that provide a different breath weapon and some other notes like bonus to its DC saves and damage to its breath weapon at middle and old age. Makes sense as dragons get more powerful as they age.Elementals include an elemental template that covers the different core elements and ice and thermic elements.Metatemplates include things like half-templates. Here are rules for making a half just about anything. It goes over the various parts of the monster including skills, feats, organization, spell immunity, regeneration, and other common special abilities to allow you to make the best of the half breed. Included is a demigorgon template, half-troll template, and padrafyte (half medusa),Oozes have never been my thing. I understand their role and can see how an ooze template can add some variety to the game, but things like an amorphous creature that can squeeze through small openings, is still a bit silly. Outsiders on the other hand, are much like dragons in that their core type is one of the most powerful in the game. Here we see variants like apocalyptic. Ever want to end your campaign? Well, the apocalyptic template is for you with a huge CR boost and powers to make a creature with this template worthy for an appearance in a Mutants & Masterminds campaign. Take the sample creature, Kurnus, Hound of the End Time, it weighs in at a CR of 26, based off the Nessian warhound advanced as high as possible with maximum hit dice that increased it to Huge size and since it’s apocalyptic, it’s hit dice are doubled so it has 48d12+912 hit dice or 1,488 hit points.On the other hand, perhaps you’re trying to emulate the old Elric tales where the albino summoner calls upon the various lords of different animal realms. In that case, the beast lord template would be useful as it gives a +10 boost to CR +20% and the sample beast lord, a 40=HD gargantuan dire tiger, is written up as Kaavaak, Lord of Noble Tigers. Yeah, another bad boy weighing in at a CR of 34. One of the things I’ve been using from the old 3.0 book, is the Ebon Servitor. In my old game, the Ebon Maw, an abyssal lord that’s imprisoned, has many personal servants and this template was the perfect way to simulate that. Well, adding the taint rules from Unearthed Arcana was a good deal too, but you get the picture.  The sample race of black orcs is another nice touch that allows you to have a long term foe for the campaign that’s on a higher level than the standard orc.There are some other goodies here like the half-genie, immortal, shadowborne and the voidspawn among others. It’s one of the most solid chapters in the book, and for those who want to showcase the strength of the planes or the unusual nature of the planes, it’s a chapter that can serve as groundwork in making unique encounters for your campaign. Plants are another area where I’m like, “Man, I didn’t know that Marvel’s Man Thing and DC’s Swamp Thing were so popular.” I can see the whole Treebeard thing but don’t need to have a ton of variety. Having said that, plantform is a nice template that has a nice listing of special attacks and special qualities so that no two need ever be alike .Undead are another old favorite with many templates already out there. Here we get some varieties like corpse vampire, corpses animated by evil that aren’t sentient, merely corrupted bodies. Others like the skinhusk are hollow shell’s of the creature’’s skin that have been animated into undeath while others include variants on the favorite vampire or the mummy.After all that, there is an appendix with other goods. Some of these are new skills, like saying Control Shape for those lycanthropes who’d like to avoid becoming a monster in front of the wrong people. Others are feats to help augment your monsters. An old favorite, Cleave Asunder, lets you smash a foe’s weapon and if successful, get a free attack against another target. Others like Cross Training, are great as they allow you to choose two skills that become permanent class skills for you regardless of what class you take. It’s something I think that D&D could really borrow from the other systems that’s in as opposed to having to spend a precious feat on it.There are even new spells for those looking to augment their magical knowledge. The spells are broken down into simplified lists, like those found in the Player’s Handbook, by class and level, with arcane spells also getting a breakdown by school. For example, at 8th level, the Enchantment spells are separated from the Evocation spells and the Transmutation spells, but all are found under the 8th level umbrella.The spells are a mixed bag of offense and utility. Some exist to add the creatures in this book to your campaign, like Animate Paleoskeleton, others to protect the user from constructs, like Anticonstruct Ward. It’s a good mix of spells that can add a touch of something unique to a spellcaster’s bag of tricks. While some samples have been lost in the transition, it appears that all of the original templates have made the transition to the 3.5 edition. It’s utility, like that of the Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin, is not in the samples provided. It’s in the ideas provided. It’s in the themes provided. It’s in the fact that you can take these numerous templates and augment your existing monster collection by a factor of thousands.Reviewer's Note: Goodman Games has a print edition of the book for $34.95 for those interested in a dead tree version.<a href="http://www.goodman-games.com/4340preview.php" target="_blank">Goodmangames</a></blockquote>

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