One of the bigger innovations of 3rd edition D&D over its predecessors, was the concept of "templates". Templates are something that can be applied to an existing monster (or NPC, really) to "tweak" them. Variations of monsters had existed, but there was never any real standard procedure.
As you can probably guess from the name, "The Book of Templates, Deluxe" is an entire book of templates. The Deluxe indicates that this is the latest version of a product that has evolved over the course of the last few years. It's published by Goodman Games, but it's from Silverthorne Games, who seem to be mostly famous for this product, but have a few others.
The book starts off with a nice, if chart filled, chapter on modifying (and creating) monsters in terms of d20 stats. Apparently there are actually proper rules for doing so, rather than just making them up willy-nilly. (Guess which one I do...)
The later chapters are all devoted to templates, with each chapter being devoted to a "theme" that the template turns a critter into, or variants of those sorts of critters. Aberrations, Animals & Vermin, Augmentations, Construct, Diminishings, Dragons, Elementals, Metatemplates, Oozes, Outsiders, Plants, and Undead. It sort of jumps around in theme.
These chapters pretty much follow a pattern of presenting a template, then giving an example of that template applied to a critter. (This style follows the templates in the Monster Manual, actually). Some of the chapters have 6-7, while others only have a couple, and one, Plant, only has a single template.
Books like this, which are basically just a big collection of small things, are tricky to review. I'm not going to list each template, obviously, I'm just going to cover what I thought were the highlights and mention what each chapter is like.
Aberrations are great for creating monsters for a horror-tinged game. These are basically normal critters with some sort of horrible mutation or alteration done to them. This chapter is a bit shorter than I would have liked - basically two templates. One is sort of a super-template, as it gives you lots of options to create an "Aberrant" tailored to either your whim or the roll of the dice. With 20 different options for both special attacks and special qualities. Also the "wretched", which is actually sort of a squished sort of version of the creature. All runny and oozing.
The Animals and Vermin chapter is even smaller, though also 2 templates. For animals, there is the "Elder" template, which turns them into a wiser, smarter, slightly tougher version of the animal. Smokey the Bear is apparently one of these, along with Woodsy the Owl (and the Owl from the old Tootsie roll pop commercial...). The example here is deer, and even includes the option to use the "Elder Deer" as a character. Also something that reminds me of a room mate from my college days, the "Nettlecloud". Basically, their hair falls out. In his case, it was all over the bathroom. In this case, it creates sort of a stinging cloud of hair, almost like that musical.
As you might guess, the Augmenting chapter deals with making monsters tougher. This can range from "Flying" and "Giant" which simply make a monster able to fly or bigger, to giving them some spell power, like the "Arcane Servitor" template.
Also of note is the "Dreadnaught", which makes a creature resistent to damage - perfect for movie villains. Then there is the "Relentless", which turns a critter into something Tarrasque-esque, a legendary monster almost impossible to kill.
This is one of the biggest chapters in the book. Lots of ways to augment critters.
The Construct template I liked the most was the "Skinrug". Basically it's something like an animated bear skin rug, but can be anything, not just a bear. There's also a template to make a mechanical version of any monster. Like that mechanical owl from Clash of the Titans. (Sadly, no template to duplicate Harry Hamlin's mechanical acting from that). And a few others.
The Diminishing chapter deals with templates that make a monster weaker. This is rather small, with only three options. The most interesting is "miniature", which makes a smaller version. While that's pretty mundane, the example is applied to a Cloud Giant, which makes a rather tough dwarf.
I guess since they are half the name of the game, "Dragons" gets an entire chapter devoted to them (albeit a small one). It's mostly giving some draconic powers to other critters. For instance, the dragon's breath weapon. Also ways to tailor the half-dragon template to a specific flavor of dragon. (Sadly, no "Puff" draggy or "Magic" dragon template...)
The Elemental chapter is also pretty thin. Just some variants of normal elementals as well as adding an element to a normal monster. Like a Fire Penquin. (Er "Fire Pegasus" is actually the example, though I like my idea better.)
Metatemplates deal mostly with creating "half" creatures. First some rules on how to create them in general, then some some specific examples of some.
One of the examples is the half-vampire, or "Dhampire". While not bad, it doesn't really fit either the traditional "Dhampir" (the name of the offspring of a vampire) or the most famous one, "Blade" (who really isn't the kid of one, but close).
Also the half-troll and the half-nymph. I would have liked to have seen an example of combining those two, which would basically give you Paris Hilton. (Or possibly Richard Simmons)
Which is actually an almost perfect segueway into the "Ooze" chapter. The most notable one in this small chapter is the "Amorphous", which is basically a normal critter, but they can go all squishy if they want, able to squeeze through tight holes, and stretch a little.
Outsiders are not so outside of this; they get the biggest section of the book, with 14 templates. Some are quite useful, like the "Immortal", which is like a chosen one of a Deity. Some seem a bit silly, like the "Apocalyptic", which lets you create one of the pets of the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, in case you needed to know the stats for Famine's pet pot bellied pig. (The example is actually "Kurnus, Hound of the End Time". ). Still, I think it could be tweaked a bit to make a pasable Kaiju. But at any rate, the power level is beyond most campaigns.
The two I find really useful myself in this chapter are the templates "Fallen" and "Redeemed". As you might guess from their names, "Fallen" is a template that can be applied to a good outsider who has fallen from grace. Not necessarily bad, but no longer good. Similarly, "Redeemed" is a template that an evil outsider can earn by redeeming themselves.
The plants chapter is rather small, basically one template. As I really started digging into this book about a week ago, I came down with some sort of nasty flu virus, and I was slightly delirious. I kept thinking "Why on earth is there only one plant template and no variants? Think of all the ways you can make plants into monsters. Maneating plants, ninja eggplants, and the dreaded show tune singing plant. But then when I got well, I realized, duh, there aren't really any stats for normal versions of trees or plants. (At least until WOTC gets really desperate and puts out the Plantinomicon. )
Anyway, the plant related template in this is "Plant form". Basically you apply it to any monster, and instead of a monster, it's a plant shaped like that monster.
The Undead section is probably the most interesting for me, as I like vampires, and they present some interesting takes on them, the "Fleshbound Vampire". Not as powerful as the D&D vampire, and is possibly more suited for the player, too.
Beyond that is a neat template for creating animated Dinosaurs (or other fossils). While perhaps not common, they do appear in one of my favorite fantasy novels, "Stalking the Unicorn" by Mike Resnick.
Lastly is an appendix on "Campaign Options". Which is actually new feats, skills and spells. While it's only 11 pages, they used small type so there is actually quite a lot of them.
The new skills are exactly just examples of the craft skill. Embalming and Taxidermy. These are tied into some of the templates, but also useful on their own. If you are into that sort of thing. But for this, they help make improved undead.
Some of the spells are tied into the templates, some are not. For instance, there are spells to fix or hurt constructs, some to create specific types of undead. In an interesting move, some spells are "Shaman" spells, suitable for use with the Shaman class from Green Ronin's Master Class series, and which also have some minor tie-ins throughout the book.
Some of the new spells don't seem to have much to do with the book, and are simply variations of existing ones , like Charm and Hold Person, only improved versions. Those two spells are actually fairly powerful, since one lets you basically control a person while the other basically lets you kill them (since once held, you can just do a coup de grace on them with no problem). But these are sort of crippled by only working on low level characters. While it's true they still give a saving throw, sometimes higher level characters do fail one of those. So I think it's a bit unbalancing.
Physically it's an attractive book. Not something you'd put on a coffee table, but nice. Also very functional. While the chapter subject changes somewhat haphazzardly (for instance, why not put the chapters on improving or reducing monsters next to each other, since they are complementary subjects), the layout of the book is quite nice. Very easy to read, and since the side margin has the chapter name in nice big letters (which I think all RPG books over 64 pages should do), it's very easy to find what you are looking for. Quite sturdy, too, with thick paper. I've actually put it through a fair amont of abuse so far (inadvertently) and it's held up quite well.
Somewhat curiously for a book this size, the art is done by only two artists, Cara Mitten (website seems to be down) and Jeremy (The credits say "Jeremey", but the website says different) Mohler. While I don't think I've heard of either one of them, the art is excellent. It's always obvious just what the monster is, and in a nice move, the art is often large, taking up half the page. One of the tricky things about doing monster art is it has to be believable, yet convey what sort of feelings a monster radiates. Be it creepy, or noble, or whatever. Both artists do a really good job of that. Usually when you get a book from a smaller press book, you get somewhat amateur looking art (and even from some bigger companies, as a cost cutting move), but this art is as good as any I've seen, save the big, expensive, color, artsy sort of books, and that's probably simply because the medium the artists used here was apparently pencil.
It's a really great book, but I do have a few minor nitpicks. The book suggests that rather than simply name a creature you modify by it's original name plus the name of the the template, you create a whole new name, and itself uses that naming convention. Which caused me some confusion while flipping through the book at random. For instance, the miniature template's example is "Thunderhead dwarf". At first glance I thought this was a mistake, that "Thunderhead" was a template applied to "Dwarf", but there was no "Thunderhead" in the book. But upon close inspection, I saw that it was the miniature template applied to the Cloud Giant. Not a problem if you read the book sequentially, but for monster books that is not often the case, so it would have been nice for them to have put the template name and the original monster name after the "new" name in parentheses (or some note of the origins of the monster).
Well, also one thing - this book uses level adjustments for most of the templates. While that's okay, I personally prefer having racial levels. While it would have been asking a lot for that to be in this book for every template, some discussion of it would have been nice, and how to design racial classes like that. Though for all I know, racial levels was just a 3.0 thing.
(If you are unfamiliar with d20, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but if I were to explain, it would take too long.)
I am also amazed they made it through an entire book and didn't use one humorous or strange template.
Really, all those things are just personal opinion. I suppose it would also have been nice to see some of the smaller chapters have a few more templates, rather than sometimes just 2, and perhaps lose some of the extra spells that didn't tie into the book.
This book is definitely worth buying if you are a d20 fan. I own around 150 d20 books, and I am hard pressed to think of a more useful book for the DM besides the core books. Bastion Press's Arms & Armor is more all around useful, since it's for players & DMs. Though unlike that, this is also fairly useful for non-D&D d20 games as well, particularly d20 Modern. There are even a handful of templates that could be useful for d20 Cthulhu, most notably the "degenerate" template (also useful for
), the "Wretched", and the "Deep One", the latter of which is not quite Lovecraft-ish, but close.
So a solid A. 5 for content here, and a 4.5 for style, rounded up, since I liked the art so much.
