Sage's Sanctum

Rethinking 3.5 D&D Templates as GLOG Classes

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Something I always struggled with in D&D was when characters do stuff like becoming vampires, or liches, or drinking a dragon’s blood, or whatever.

These should be cool moments. Becoming a vampire is narratively awesome (Dracula is a favorite novel of mine), and a lot of the powers could be fun things to have in your game, but it's often awkward. You get bitten by a vampire, and the GM tries to figure out what the heck to do about it.

I think I’m drawn to stuff like this because of the first character I played in a long-term D&D campaign. It was a 3.5 game, and I played as a Dragonborn. Dragonborn worked differently in that edition. Instead of being a race, it was a template you applied to an existing character. In my case, my character was a Dwarf, but by performing a ritual involving sleeping in a magic egg, he was reborn as a Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut. I always thought this was cooler than just having Dragonborn as a core race.

Since Dragonborn was a template, it gave you some stat adjustments and features on top of your race, so a Dragonborn Elf and a Dragonborn Dwarf were different. Neat!

The implementation was a little weird. The Dragonborn template replaces some but not all racial features, so some races lose a lot by becoming Dragonborn, and some lose very little. Overall, it’s a great idea, and mostly works well.

Templates were cool because they let you take narrative beats and add mechanics that tied into them. My character was a Dragonborn from character creation, but you can easily imagine a character becoming devoted to Bahamut during play and undergoing this ritual to become more dragonlike. A template is a really easy way to represent that. We can just layer a template over any character to help their mechanics align with what’s going on narratively.

Of course, this was 3.5, so templates went a little bit crazy. There were a bajillion different templates, and some were stronger than others. This was a feature, not a bug. It made sense for some templates to give you more powerful traits than others. A dragonborn just gets a few dragon-esque features and a stat adjustment, but being a saint gives you spell-like abilities and a bunch of other features. To account for this, templates had level adjustments.

Dragonborn had a level adjustment of 0. This meant that a level 5 dragonborn was roughly on par with a level 5 character with no template. This wasn’t really true. A lot of 0 adjust templates made you a little bit better, but they were meant to be either power-neutral or slight power boosts. Saint has a level adjustment of 2, so if you make a level 5 saint, they would be roughly on par with a level 7 character with no template, in theory.

The idea here makes sense. It lets you create templates and races that feel as powerful as they should in fiction. A hobgoblin in 3.5’s fiction is stronger than a human on average. Level adjustment allows the designers to give the hobgoblin stronger racial features compared to a human while still allowing for a “balanced” party by giving the hobgoblin a level adjustment of 1. In 5e, we still have monster races, but their abilities have to be toned down to be in the ballpark of the power other races offer. Good for balance, but the races lose some sauce here.

There are a few problems with 3.5 templates.

It works well for races and templates with a level adjustment at the lower end. Being able to give a character the Necropolitan template after they become undead is awesome, and the hobgoblin player getting to enjoy powerful hobgoblin features is great. It breaks down a bit once level adjustments get higher.

If you take a high level adjustment template during character creation, it makes things pretty awkward. Say we are starting a 3.5 game at level 4. You decide to make a half-dragon wizard. That’s got a level adjustment of 3, so you’ll be making a level 1 character. The template gives you some survivability in the form of a con boost, a hit die boost, and some natural armor, but you’re still going to have around 6-7 hp, while your party members will have hps in the 20s or 30s, multiple feats, higher level spells, etc. Some may find this disparity fun, but I find it makes things awkward, and almost no one at my games ever took a level adjustment higher than +1.

The second issue is that high level adjustment templates are awkward for the GM to hand out. Necropolitan is a 0 level adjustment template, so if your character becomes an undead mid-game, it's easy to slap that template on a player. Even for templates that give a +1 Level adjustment, it's not too hard to rationalize giving that to a player as being somewhat similar to them getting a strong magic item.

But what if a player becomes a lich mid-game?

Well, that’s a four level adjustment template! Most gm’s are going to balk a bit at giving a character four levels worth of stuff at once, particularly in systems like the more modern versions of D&D that put some focus on balance.

You can get away with this more in OSR games, where balance is less of a concern. Still, even though I don’t particularly care about balance in my games, I think there’s a cleaner way to handle these situations.

Rebuilding 3.5 templates as GLOG classes

GLOG classes are great because they are already built on templates. A level of a class is just a feature or two. Templates can easily be decoupled from the mechanics of leveling up. One could easily make a game with no leveling up, where players just get templates by accomplishing goals or paying trainers.

In a more traditional game with class templates gained on leveling up, we could still have certain templates available without leveling up, to be handed out like magic items when the game calls for it.

Typically, a GLOG class has four levels, but it doesn’t need to; a class can be as long as it needs to be. Let’s try rewriting two 3.5 templates as GLOG classes.

Necropolitan

The Necropolitan in 3.5 does the following:

The best thing about this template is that it lets you become undead, I took this template a lot as a kid. Looking at it now, there’s actually a lot of stuff I want to cut out.

I don’t think the hit die needs to change; there are simpler ways to make the character bulkier. I don’t like the resistance to turning undead or resisting undead. If a character wants to become an undead, and they end up fighting a cleric that turns them, that’s a cool “are we the baddies” moment. Plus, who said becoming undead should be consequence-free? I also find the level loss to be a weird way to functionally add a level adjustment, so I’m not doing that.

Here’s my version. I’m adding “level 0” templates. These are templates you don’t get by leveling up, and don’t count against the maximum number of templates you can have.

Necropolitan GLOG class

There is no meaning to life. Meaning is a lie to comfort those who fear death. In death, there is opportunity. You traded the warmth in your chest for eternity.

Becoming Necropolitan: Procure a casket, black, with the symbol of the Grave Lord etched in your blood on its surface. Nail your hands and feet to the casket, and a petition to the grave Lord to your chest. Bury yourself alive.

If your petition is accepted, the searing pain from the nails will be replaced by a shiver coursing through your body as you breathe your last. Your skin withers as blood seeps from your mouth. Life has abandoned you. Yet you move. If you can tear yourself from the nails and crawl to the surface, you are a Necropolitan.

Templates:
0. Undead Features

Undead Features
You are undead.
You do not need to breathe or sleep.
You do not need to eat.
You are always hungry.
You cannot die from aging.
You cannot get sick.
You easily carry disease.
Your HP increases by 1d4.
Your bite deals 1d8 damage.
You are hurt by healing magic.

Design Notes

The goal here is simply to provide a way for characters to become undead. So the template needs to be something I could just hand out to someone, no leveling up required. I included the ritual to become a Necropolitan here for people who want to be undead, but you could just as easily apply this to someone made undead against their will.

One of the problems with 3.5 templates is that the downsides are pretty negligible. I guess they didn’t want players to feel bad for taking them, but the 3.5 Necropolitan has built-in defense against turning, negative energy healing them is hardly a downside in that game (can be an upside), and in exchange, you get more health. This is balanced by losing a level when you become a Necropolitan, but I think it makes becoming undead too mechanically rosy.

I want players to become undead because they want to or because they had to. It should have some unique upsides (really old wizards become undead for a reason), but it should be unpleasant. Most people don’t want to become undead, and there should be a good reason for that!

So, no resistance to turning, healing magic hurts you instead of just not working, and negative energy doesn’t heal you (mainly because my game doesn’t have a concept of negative energy). You get your health back the old-fashioned way, resting and getting stitched up. In exchange, you’re a little bulkier, you won’t get sick, and you’ve always got a d8 weapon (which is pretty good in my games).

Dragonborn

The concept of a Dragonborn has shifted since 3.5, but I like the flavor of becoming a Dragonborn better than the 4e version of the race. In the Necropolitan’s case, I got rid of the level adjustment, but in this case, I’m sort of going to add one. Dragonborn is a pretty powerful concept. I want to add a little more oomph.

Here’s what the 3.5 dragonborn does

I mostly like this, but I have a few changes in mind. The oomph I’m going to add is giving you both the breath weapon and the flight; dragons should do both. I’m killing the darkvision bit because I don’t like dark vision, you’ll hold a torch, and you’ll like it! I’m also not stripping away racial features. My game doesn’t have many racial features to strip out, and I like the idea of different types of dragonborn being different.

Dragonborn GLOG class

The blood of a dragon runs in your veins. When your adrenaline pumps, you can feel the fire in your belly, the sparks tickling your throat, the ice in your glare.

Becoming Dragonborn: A cup of blood is enough. Whether you steal it away, serve a dragon in hope of a reward, or manage to fight one and survive, you must drink the blood.

The next week will be the worst of your life. You will ache as the scales expand from your pores. You will wheeze as the dragon’s breath fills your lungs. You’ll hunger like you never have before, but in the end, you’ll be a Dragonborn.

Templates 0. Scales, Claws, Expensive tastes

  1. Breath Weapon
  2. Flight

Scales
You have scales that match your patron dragon, you gain +1 defense.

Claws
You grow claws that deal 1d6 damage.

Expensive Tastes
In addition to your normal needs, you must consume 1 ounce of gold (the weight of a gold coin) each day. Failing to eat gold is treated the same way as failing to eat food.

Breath Weapon
You can manipulate the elements with your breath.

When you do, choose line or cone.

Your breath weapon deals damage of the same type as the dragon whose blood you drank. If you drank the blood of multiple dragons, choose the damage type each time you use your breath weapon.

After using your breath weapon, there is a 5 in 6 chance you can’t use it again until after a full night’s sleep.

Whenever you drink a cup of blood from a different dragon, reduce this chance by 1, to a minimum of 2 in 6.

Flight
You have wings. You can fly as long as you are holding no more than 2 light items and wear only light clothing. If you are damaged while flying, you must make an Agility check to avoid falling.

Design Notes

People always want to play dragons, and I want to let them, so here’s a way to do that. The level 0 template is a small buff, but one I think is warranted if you get your mitts on dragon blood. Not too unlike giving out a magic item.

The other two levels are for people who want the full dragon experience, wings and all. Narratively, this is a pretty easy sell for me too, it's not hard to imagine that dragon blood might affect some people differently. If you wanted to, you could require more blood for each level, but I don’t think that’s necessary.