Thoughts about the Monster Manual 3.5

[MerakSpielman]

I suppose, if you wanted to, you could just take the MM mummy and assume what race/class/level it must have come from (fighter? Aristocrat?). Then you figure out how the base creature was modified to get the mummy and bingo! you have a template.

Well, it's a bit harder than that, but I'm sure you can do it!

 

[coyote6]

I'd like to see a skeleton template!

Shouldn't be a problem, assuming you can get to Wizards' website.

 

[shilsen]

I suppose, if you wanted to, you could just take the MM mummy and assume what race/class/level it must have come from (fighter? Aristocrat?). Then you figure out how the base creature was modified to get the mummy and bingo! you have a template.

Well, it's a bit harder than that, but I'm sure you can do it!

Whoops! I forgot to mention in my previous post about templates in Savage Species that it has the mummified creature template too.

 

[NeghVar]

I need to chime in on the side of KDLadage. I have brought this topic up several time before...

ALL undead need to be templates, and they need to provide baseline human examples.

This is done for a few reasons; flavor, size, and previous experience.

Flavor allows some very interesting creatures to be brought into play, such as the PC's zombified brother still half intelligent trying to come home, but instead winds up eating his former family's brains.

Size allows for a fire giant skeleton with 10 foot reach and an immunity to fire based attacks.

Previous experience allows for a 5th level sorcerer ghoul, whose experiments in necromancy failed and made him the creature he is.

Let the choice be mine as a game master to decide whether to use the template or the baseline example for my game.

Later!

 

[NeghVar]

Last thing...

Savage Species does an OK job with templates, Slayer's Guide to the Undead does a much better job, as it uses the 10/11 rule to determine template ability modifiers.

End of story...

 

[mistergone]

I'd like to see less undead. Ha! There I said it. There's too many types as is.

Now, what I'd REALLY like to see in the MM 3.5 is one monster per page. That would be nice. And artwork that actually looks like the monster, to go along with each. Who can argue with that? Sure, that gets the pagecount up there, but that doesn't particularly bother me.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Templates might be nice, but I am not sure if they are really neccessary. The Ghoul Sorcerer Example above can also be a Ghoul with added Sorcerer levels - who cares?

What I would like to see is that they state somewhere explicitely how they come to some Save DCs of Monster Special Attacks.
Most the time it is something around 10 + 1/2 HD + appropriate Ability modifer (Con for Breath Weapon, Cha for Charming Abilities and so on).
The same applies for casting abilities and Spell Resistance.

If I advance creatures (even possibly increase their size), I sometimes wonder how the old ability stats work together with the new form - sometimes it seems ridicolus.

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[hong]

In my opinion, all undead should be templates, not standard creature entries. After all, there had to be a baseline creature before the creature became undead. Thus, the idea of a mummy, or a skeleton or a vampire (which is already a template) make no sense as creature types (in my opinion). The characteristics of a skeleton should be dependent upon the underlying creature that has been animated. For example, why not have skeletal dragons? Why not have a mummified Hill Giant? Undead, as a creature type, needs to be moved entirely to templates. All of them. Each template, then, should have two or three worked examples of how to apply the template to some base creatures -- some obvious, some not so obvious. For example, the skeleton might have a human, giant and dragon examples; a vampire might have a human, a bugbear and some sort of vermin example (imagine vampiric giant ants). In the same vein, Giant should also be a template (although it should remain a creature type as well) so that a giant template for Giant Wolves, or what-have you. Dire should be a template. Any of the adjective-type creatures should be moved there. Some notes on combining templates should be give as well. For example, if I want a Vampiric Giant Dire Wolf, this should be fairly painless to do.

Behold the creeping HEROization of D&D.

 

[Gez]

ALL undead need to be templates, and they need to provide baseline human examples.

Totally agree, let see the caller in darkness template:

Caller in darkness is a template that can be applied on any number of humanoid or other fonky things, hereafter refered as base creatures. Type change to undead. Hit Dice is the number of base creatures divided by 2.5. For each base creature, apply the following algorithm... [snip 3 pages] ...then calculate the final score this way ...[snip 3 other pages] ...then you have your unique caller in darkness, congratulations, see that's easy.

The nightshade template:
Nightshade is a template that is applied on nothing, since the beastie is made this way. Take any base creature. Type become the nightshade's type. Size and HD becomes the nightshade's ones too. Same thing for reach, BAB, skills, ability scores, feats, and the other funny scribbling you made on the statblock.


By the same token, outsiders should be template too: after all, they're forged from souls, and each dretch or glabrezu should be unique and keep his previous life's experience...


G "Is the sarcasm obvious enough or should I add smilies" Z

 

[Alzrius]

All I care about is that they finally give us a hard-and-fast rule for if and how undead convert class hit die to d12's or not.

Currently, looking at pretty much every WotC product (and most of the d20 ones to date), undead fall into two camps in this regard:

Template Undead - all hit dice from everything, including past and future class levels, become d12's (example: lich - Monster Manual).

Non-template Undead - Only inherent hit dice are d12's, class hit dice remain unchanged (example: emancipated spawn sorcerer - Savage Species).

If they'll finally make up their minds in 3.5E about this, then I don't care whether they go all-template or not, since both camps have good points here (sometimes you want the variety a template offers, and sometimes its unnecessary).