Supernatural beings as templates.

[Avianmosquito]

So, here's a concept that really doesn't apply to my current setting, but something I've done a lot of so far in my game is use templates for most supernatural beings. Now, to a certain extent this makes sense because of lore reasons. EVERY living thing can be a zombie, right? So then, wouldn't it make more sense to make a zombie template than it would be to make a zombie version of everything? Well, the same logic applies with how demons and angels work in this setting, and in fact how any supernatural beings that are not their own species work. But while this does make sense, we get to the point eventually where it starts to get hazy where the lines are drawn, what templates can and cannot be mixed, and sometimes we can get some crazy combinations that should NOT have been allowed and I failed to articulate for whatever reason were not possible. I don't want to ever see a dragon with the hell knight and vampire templates ever again. I want advice on how to very precisely articulate what can and cannot be done unambiguously and in as few words as humanly possible, and I want to be able to make it easy to tell the difference between people who don't know better and those who do but are pretending they don't so they call pull in an overpowered combination that they know isn't actually allowed.

[GorinichSerpant]

The section that says in which template stacking is restricted should come early in the template writing and clearly visible. The first step after the description says what restrictions there are on the template being used.

You can categorise which templates can be combined with what categories. Say on the Vampire template it could say that no other undead templates like Zombie or Lich can be applied to this creature, or on the Angelic template can not be used on a creature with a Demonic template. The specifics depend on which template combinations you want to allow and which you don't.

[Jormengand]

I would say that you should divide templates into quantitative and qualitative ones - qualitative ones like zombie or vampire, and quantitative ones like paragon or vampire lord which are just "This creature but better" or "This vampire but better" and you just simply can't stack qualitative ones. You can have, say, two templates total, and no more than one can be qualitative. "Dragon with the hell knight and vampire templates" is an interesting problem if you decide hell knight is quantitative, but you could just apply the same restrictions on vampire as 3.5 has: you gotta be humanoid or monstrous humanoid.

Of course, you might end up with exceptions - maybe you ought to be able to have a creature with the Zombie and Angel templates on it, even though they're both qualitative - and then you write that as an exception in Zombie: you can apply it after another qualitative template, but only one that turns you from one type into outsider.

For example. I mean, or you can tell your players to tell you what they're doing before they start building, before anyone is under any illusions that a Phantasmal Vampire Ghost Angel Demon is in any way okay.

[Avianmosquito]

Well, the problem is that this is what the species block for a dragon of that kind says

"Wyvern
Medium sized as a baby, large as a child and huge as an adult, elder and ancient. Size affects health and integrity. Listed integrity is for huge size.
Animal (Supernatural)"

This is how the hell knight template reads:

Template type: Supernatural

And this is how the vampire template reads:

Template type: Undead
...
Only reasoning beings can become vampires.

And this is what the template description says about supernatural creatures and templates:

"Supernatural creatures cannot have supernatural, divine or undead templates placed on them."

"Supernatural, divine and undead templates make the creature they are applied to supernatural, divine or undead."

And notably, here's a specific thing from the description of wyrms that you may need to know:

"...Wyrms are fully sentient, but only partially sapient and incapable of reason."

What the **** am I doing wrong?

[Jormengand]

You could maybe copy the text detailing what Supernatural creatures are allowed to have into each Supernatural entry?

"Wyvern
Medium sized as a baby, large as a child and huge as an adult, elder and ancient. Size affects health and integrity. Listed integrity is for huge size.
Animal (Supernatural). As a supernatural creature, a Wyvern can have templates other than Supernatural, Divine and Undead templates placed on them."

Or something of that calibre.

[Avianmosquito]

You could maybe copy the text detailing what Supernatural creatures are allowed to have into each Supernatural entry?

"Wyvern
Medium sized as a baby, large as a child and huge as an adult, elder and ancient. Size affects health and integrity. Listed integrity is for huge size.
Animal (Supernatural). As a supernatural creature, a Wyvern can have templates other than Supernatural, Divine and Undead templates placed on them."

Or something of that calibre.

Maybe that could work. I'd probably write it as "Animal (Supernatural). Cannot have supernatural, divine or undead templates."

That should avoid ridiculous part wipes in the future. (Yes, this thing wiped the party. Not because it was so offensively powerful, it wasn't, but because we couldn't kill the damned thing.)