what is a unique being for things like the gate spell?

[Ishpumalibu]

Does it just mean monsters with templates? Is there an explanation of unique beings in the rulebooks?

[_Cobalt_]

Unique means one of a kind. In this case, I would assume it means things like demon lords, gods, so one and so forth.

[cmastah]

I second Cobalt's info and want to add that if you have pdfs of the bestiaries, use the search function and find all instances of gate. You ought to be able to find some crazy unique creatures that you can pull through gates, one of them would be an iathavos (qlippoth), which according to the bestiary (2), there can only ever be one of (which you also lose control of once it's through the gate).

[Ishpumalibu]

Oh, well that's neat, thanks :)

[therealthom]

Depending on the DM, any named extraplanar creature could be considered unique.

[Ascalaphus]

You can gate in a solar, which means you get a generic one from "the pile".

Or you could ask for one specific solar called Bob, which you've heard about or met before. That's a unique creature. Maybe he's got unusual abilities, too.

(Of course, it's possible that the GM rules that solars are so rare that every one of them counts as a unique creature.)

[LazarX]

Ishpumalibu wrote:

Does it just mean monsters with templates? Is there an explanation of unique beings in the rulebooks?

Anything whose Bestiary entry is a proper name, rather than a creature type.

If all solars and balors in a given universe are unique named beings, than you can't gate in a single one of them.

[Ishpumalibu]

I was hoping it'd just be written somewhere.