Elemental Monster of Legend

[Squank]

The party I'm DMing for has run into a few thoqquas, and as sort of a joke I want to throw at them the thoqqua-to-end-all-thoqquas (who I've affectionately named General Sherman). Ideally what I had in mind was to advance the standard thoqqua a little and add the monster of legend template.

So, I was dismayed to find that the monster of legend template is not "supposed" to be used on elemental creatures. I plan on ignoring that and adding the template anyway; I don't see any good reason why it wouldn't "work" as is. However, I'm sort of new to DMing, and I'm worry that there is a good reason why I shouldn't use the template that I'm just not seeing. I would appreciate any thoughts/suggestions that an experienced DM might have on the matter.

[erikun]

A lot of the time, the reasoning is in-universe logical rather than mechanically unbalancing. I believe that Monsters of Legend are supposed to be animals that simply get CR-appropriate abilities (given that animals typically have very weak ones). I don't think that giving those abilities to a Thoqqua would be a problem, although I'm not familiar with what exactly the template offers.

[OldFart]

You're the DM. As you've already surmised, "reason not to" = "part of this template you just choose to ignore."

There's only two things I would spend a moment worrying about:
1. If you're running 3.5 rather than 3.0, you may want to modify some of the template's abilities to their 3.5 equivalents.
2. MMII is notorious for misjudging CRs. This might be more than a +2 CR template, especially for a CR 2-3 critter.

[Arbitrarious]

As has been said template adjustments are more guide lines from you having to rebalance things yourself. I've applied enough templates to one thing before it should have been cr 26 but it had 12 hd and would've died if a level 26 pc looked at it with more then a passing glance.

Honestly if it's your end boss apply the template, make any adjustments you feel are inline and then compare it to the class that most closely is inline with the creature. Depending one what you pick for monster of legend I would suggest binder as good balancing class. d8s medium attack and a few supernatural abilities. If you choose spell casting you may pop it over to cleric. Consider the advantages of it's earth glide ability in the environment it will be in.

Will it be a solo monster or have minions? For solo mobs I tend to over all level them and bring down the HD related abilities (saves, attacks, DC based on HD) back into line with about party level +2. With other mobs about you may not need to do that because the PCs wont dominant the action economy.

tl;dr templates are just a guide for cr adjustments, it's all about what you want to end up with.

[OracleofSilence]

most templates are for flavor. if you are shooting for BBEG though, just run it up against a wizard of equal level. if it can kick the crap out if the wizard and losses on penalties, then it is well built, and can face the party, discounting insanity builds on their part.