I finally got my hands on the HC of the Deluxe Book of Templates 3.5 yesterday and took a hard look at the changes made since the BOT (DE) is my most favorite monster book.
First lets get over the bad:
About 10 templates have been removed, including parts of the half-humanoid. The half-ooze may sound silly, but the example showed it has real potential. I don't mind seeing the abyssal, drider, wight, half-gnome, half-kobold, greater skeleton and greater zombie templates go as they are basic stuff that is in other books or are silly. The renaming of some made exact numbers of templates removed and added difficult. The ones I miss are the vermin based constructs and undead, oozeoid, verminoid, kith construct and the sidhe.
The example on stacking is gone. Bummer, this is excellent help in doing something difficult. It also created a better elf (the aformentioned sidhe).
Rituals are gone yet some mentions of them remain. I never used the idea so it won't be missed by me.
Most of the appendix and TOCs are gone. Not that much of a problem since there is a TOC in the front.
Now for the good:
A real TOC and a better way of breaking the templates up.
About 8 new templates have been added. Fav new one has to be legion which is based on the legion of one from CC II. Flying is basic, but the example is really cool (shambling mound). The degenerate has potential since it allows some monsters to be used eariler (and give the players an idea about the full strength version).
Creature building section has been expanded. This is very useful.
Spells have been moved to their own section. I think some of them have been removed, but none of the important ones.
The good outweights the bad, even if the half-humanoid template was gutted. The best part is that those who don't buy pdfs can now own the best template book written to date.
First lets get over the bad:
About 10 templates have been removed, including parts of the half-humanoid. The half-ooze may sound silly, but the example showed it has real potential. I don't mind seeing the abyssal, drider, wight, half-gnome, half-kobold, greater skeleton and greater zombie templates go as they are basic stuff that is in other books or are silly. The renaming of some made exact numbers of templates removed and added difficult. The ones I miss are the vermin based constructs and undead, oozeoid, verminoid, kith construct and the sidhe.
The example on stacking is gone. Bummer, this is excellent help in doing something difficult. It also created a better elf (the aformentioned sidhe).
Rituals are gone yet some mentions of them remain. I never used the idea so it won't be missed by me.
Most of the appendix and TOCs are gone. Not that much of a problem since there is a TOC in the front.
Now for the good:
A real TOC and a better way of breaking the templates up.
About 8 new templates have been added. Fav new one has to be legion which is based on the legion of one from CC II. Flying is basic, but the example is really cool (shambling mound). The degenerate has potential since it allows some monsters to be used eariler (and give the players an idea about the full strength version).
Creature building section has been expanded. This is very useful.
Spells have been moved to their own section. I think some of them have been removed, but none of the important ones.
The good outweights the bad, even if the half-humanoid template was gutted. The best part is that those who don't buy pdfs can now own the best template book written to date.
