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192 pages, 2005, $34.99
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Content
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12
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Organization
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16
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Consistency
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14
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Intelligibility
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13
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Overall
13
Hit
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Review Scoring
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Templates can be a Game Master's best friend when it comes to
whipping up a unique monster based on a familiar concept, and with the Book of
Templates: Deluxe Edition the Game Master has an almost limitless supply of
(certain) templates to apply to the standard cast of monsters. A healthy assortment of
variants, a chapter devoted to helping the Game Master develop his own monsters
and templates, and an appendix of Campaign Options (skills, feats and spells) round
out the book.
The remaining twelve chapters are each devoted to a single creature type. For the
most part, the chapters are small, covering no more than ten pages and five templates.
The three larger chapters are devoted to Augmenting, Outsiders, and Undead,
respectively. Each of these chapters contains numerous useful and intriguing templates
while the others are more of a hit and miss due to the limited numbers of options.
Despite the disparging differences in the types of templates, the Book of
Templates still provies a diverse number of templates and variants to choose from
to drop into an adventure, or inspire new monsters. The skills and feats presented
in the book are relatively limited, while the number of spells is somewhat larger,
including a useful domain for clerics interested in constructs.
For those Game Masters interested in cranking out lots of new monsters, the Book
of Templates: Deluxe Edition makes an useful addition to the gaming
bookshelf, but at the suggested retail price, it probably is not worth the cost
for most Game Masters.
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