D&D 5E Help Me Grok Slaad

[Connorsrpg]

I remember a cool Dungeon mag adventure featuring reproducing slaad. It emphasised their reproductive and horrific side. In fact it was very 'Aliens'-like. Isolated fort in the snow, murder mystery. We had a great time with that. I am sure someone here would know the name of it.

 

[pemerton]

When I use slaad I tend to focus on the slaad lords -Ssendam, Lord of the Insane and Ygorl, Lord of Entropy.

I think of both as denying the truth/meaningfulness of ordinary, perceptual reality.

Ssendam affirms the "insights" of the mad/delusional as true. If Ssendam is correct in this, then everyone who is ordering his/her life around the real world as ordinarily perceived is making a fool of him-/herself - like someone who mistakes a shadow for reality.

Ygorl affirms the dissolution of all things. Hence attachment, or any sort of conviction based on the endurance or permanence of things, is an error.

Whether Ssendam and/or Ygorl is correct, or whether they are the delusional fools, is something that I like to leave as something to work out through play.

 

[fuindordm]

Good point, Pemerton.
If a DM doesn't want the Far Realm in their cosmology, Limbo and the Slaad Lords make a good substitute for it. Warlocks and mind flayers might be drawing on that power in different ways.
Ben

 

[Shemeska]

Slaadi have unfortunately far too often been handled in D&D in two extremes, either for comic effect or as rampaging monsters with effectively little to differentiate them in presentation from demons. On top of that the death slaadi have been outright CE in some editions and then without a IMO good in-game reason as to why these more powerful, non-unique slaadi would be deviating from the alignment they're supposed to personify.

My favorite takes on the slaadi are the in-character writing by Xanxost the blue slaad in 2e Planescape's 'Faces of Evil: The Fiends' (and the illustration therein of 'Xanxost conducts research on vrocks'), a quartet of (initially green) slaadi in one of Paul Kemp's 'Erevis Cale' FR novels, and Ed Bonny's 'Lords of Chaos' article in Dragon 221.

As much as I love the slaadi being a Planescape purist however, I find them somewhat problematic as the progenitors of true Chaos, though Planescape did its damndest to try to explain away the inconsistencies inherited from 1e setting them as the dominant race of Limbo. Personally I prefer Pathfinder's use of the proteans as the dominant CN outsider race (though obviously here I'm biased).

 

[Quartz]

Somewhere on ENWorld there's a thread about the Slaad Lords. One of the things it posits is that slaadi have interests and will pursue those interests.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I think that Death Slaadi were Slaadi corrupted by negative energy is a perfectly good explanation.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Think: Loki. Coyote. Raven. Set. Anansi. Eris. They aren't stupid, they aren't suicidal. They seek to increase the chaos in all situations, and to exemplify it in their own actions. They will tear apart the powerful, they will prop up the weak, they will rip apart strategies and defy expectations. They do not want things to be easy or seamless, they want messy, gritty unpredictable.

A slaad appears in town -- maybe it tripped through the wrong gate. What does it do? Well, seeing all those nice ordered buildings and nice, orderly streets...it wrecks them. These structures, these constructs, these icons of artificial order, it turns them into jumbles of debris and non-functional shells. The people inside? Well, it invites them to help! And if they don't help...maybe it eats them. Or ignores them. Or starts out doing one and ends up doing the other.

Or maybe it sees a crowd of people in a boisterous marketplace. Soothed, it walks into the marketplace, eats the fruit vendor, and starts selling fruit in his place. Sometimes it charges 1 copper piece for half of it. Later, it charges three souls and a cookie for half of one melon. At the end of the day, it jams the leftover fruit down the throats of anyone who is left in the market and writes the words "FREE FROOT" in their entrails.

The slaad is a menace to society. It cannot abide the cooperation and organization and construction. It is a creature of alien chaos, a source of horror for those worlds that have the misfortune to be touched by them.

What do they want? To sow discord, to wreck order. What motivates them? A need for chaos, a comfort with change, and a visceral loathing of pattern and authority. What do they act like? Like malevolent whimsy, like gleefully violent sidhe, like a sociopath in a clown suit. They have their own desires, and they seek to fulfill them, and to encourage others to fulfill their own.

 

[SkidAce]

My group had an interesting campaign where slaadi would regularly show up and randomly help the players or ask the players to do something, which was invariably a lot easier than expected and heavily rewarded.

When it came to helping, they would sometimes join in defeating a tough foe, handing over a potion that turns out to be needed, or helping the party bypass some obstacle.

When it came to things asked, sometimes it was as simple as stopping a particular thief, buying a bunch of bananas, giving a sack full of gold to a random beggar... basically, things that made no sense and which anyone could do.

Eventually, a bunch of modrons showed up, informed the PCs they had set up the entire plot the PCs were foiling specifically to create heroes who could help fight against the Slaad, and were ending it because the Slaad were helping them not only accomplish it, but do a better job than expected. And the Modrons couldn't figure out why. See, it turned out that everything the slaad had asked the PCs to do was in some way foiling one of the BBEG's plots.

The PCs, when they confronted their slaad contact about it, merely got three times the pay they were promised for the latest mission they were sent on, congratulated for doing a good job, and left. The PCs spent the rest of the campaign trying to figure out if the slaad had honestly wanted them to succeed, or if the slaad were trying to make it appear so in order to mind screw the modrons.

Can I steal this plot?

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

Can I steal this plot?

Go for it!

 

[Joe Liker]

Or maybe it sees a crowd of people in a boisterous marketplace. Soothed, it walks into the marketplace, eats the fruit vendor, and starts selling fruit in his place. Sometimes it charges 1 copper piece for half of it. Later, it charges three souls and a cookie for half of one melon. At the end of the day, it jams the leftover fruit down the throats of anyone who is left in the market and writes the words "FREE FROOT" in their entrails.

Your ability to envision and express the essence of madness is somewhat chilling. Bravo!