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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 2928643" data-attributes="member: 11760">Absolutely. (Well, not the Half-Fey template, that's just too silly to use.)As has been said, if the players aren't told "oh, that's a half-X Y," it's just a monster. They're useful tools for building monsters. It's no coincidence that the best-regarded D20 books include the Book of Templates and the Advanced Bestiary: A good template (or a book of them) is an invaluable tool.I scared the crap out of my players with something as simple as a giant owl with the shadow creature template from the Manual of the Planes on it. That's it. It wasn't even a long fight. But BOY, did they want to know what the heck that thing was. (They never even ran into the shadow phase spider that jumps to and from the Plane of Shadow instead of the Ethereal Plane.)A good template can jump-start your creativity (we all run dry once in a while) and if it's a good template, give you good mechanical support for those ideas.They become mundane when they're a standard player option. When the day comes when a player angrily demands to know why they CAN'T be a spellcarved half-vampire half-dragon, yeah, it's gone too far.But keep them on your side of the screen and resist the temptation to show them how the magic trick worked, and they're a great addition to the game.</blockquote>