Plane Below Excerpt: "Talking with mortals make Xanxost's head explode."

[catsclaw227]

This book has just become more interesting and I may end up preordering it for my B-Day.

I haven't bought all the splats, but I DO have all the "other" books like Manual of the Planes, Open Grave, Dragonomicon, etc...

 

[Celebrim]

I endorse this flavor. It does less to persist various myths about the Slaad than most of what has been written about them. Exploding heads I find easy to believe.

I notice Udal the Sword erroneously attributes Simian Cult beliefs to the slaad, and that therefore the Slaad's response (and anger) is (from the perspective of my mythology, which is naturally the only one that counts) perfectly understable.

Translated into roughly mortal language, this is the conversation:

Udal the Sword: Listen, creature, we are not here to harm you—we merely seek the Cosmic Door, through which we may see all the many planes briefly align! Surely you must know of it?

Slaad: How can you have surety of anything?

Udal: Er, yes . . . But listen! I know something of you slaads. You seek to find a path into a greater reality and escape the prison of the known, do you not? If you help us find the Cosmic Door, you serve your own ends, too!

Slaad: What you have heard I choose to believe is false. What I hear from you sounds like heresy and foolishness. I choose not to believe this.

And this is what the slaad heard:

Udal the Sword: Obey me and we won't harm you. I want something from you blah blah blah blah blah and this must be true.

Slaad: When everything changes, how can you have surety of anything much less the contents of my mind?

Udal: Obey me. What I say is true. Blah blah blah blah something about there being more to reality blah blah blah help us get out to the more reality.

Slaad: You shouldn't listen to those deluded imaginations tainted by those that desire order where there is none. There is no reality on a higher existence. What a bunch of drivel. There is no reality except what you see. There is no outside creator, no flying pasta god, no higher order that makes all of this make sense. It just doesn't make sense period.

I think I'd add the following to the skill challenge:

Knowledge: On a successful knowledge skill check the player entertains the slaad with a discussion of ideas that are new to the slaad, while being careful not to assert the superiority or certainty his beliefs compared to any others. This leaves the slaad in a better disposition toward the players, and charisma based checks for the remainder of the encounter have a +2 circumstance bonus. Failure means the Slaad finds the players ideas dull, unimaginative, replusive, or else presented in a way that is too pushy or too confident. Only one Knowledge check can be attempted during the skill challenge.

Of course, I find it rather ridiculous to include the Slaad in your cosmology but not Chaotic Neutral, but that's 4e for you. If there as a more reasonable alignment system, Chaotic beings ought to get a +4 bonus on their skill checks to persuade a slaad while lawful ones would suffer a -4 penalty.

 

[Andor]

That is indeed awesome. On another note, that image at the bottom is the first scary picture of a Slaad I have ever seen.

 

[Adso]

I am glad you all like it. I had fun designing it. (Yes, the let developers design sometimes.)

 

[keterys]

... Knowledge: On a successful knowledge skill check ...

For ref, Arcana is the knowledge skill in question, and is part of the skill challenge.

I think it's fine to include Slaad without Chaotic Neutral. I just wish they'd tossed all of the alignments instead of just half of them.

 

[Marius Delphus]

Xanxost always reminded me of Zathras.

Frogs or no, a largish group of 2E slaad ended up terrifying an old gaming group of mine. Couple of failed saving throws and defeat suddenly looked imminent...

 

[Celebrim]

For ref, Arcana is the knowledge skill in question, and is part of the skill challenge.

I saw that. However, that's not what I had in mind. Arcana in the skill challenge represents having a great deal of specific knowledge of the slaad. I think that there is some advantage ought to be gained to having a great deal of knowledge about philosophy, religion, rhetoric, etc. generally. You might not know anything about slaad, but you might recognize something about how this creature thinks from its responses and be able to respond with things you learned about Absurdism, Discordianism, Existentialism, a Zen koan (or its equivalent in your world), or a Sufi mystical saying (or its equivalent in your world) and thereby demonstrate first that you are perhaps as enlightened as the creature (or as it believes itself to be) and second that your are capable of responding to its quite perceptive comments (as the slaad believes them to be) like something intelligent (as far as the creature is concerned).

Moreover, I think that its just better design to allow a variaty of different skills to be in play.

I think it's fine to include Slaad without Chaotic Neutral. I just wish they'd tossed all of the alignments instead of just half of them.

I think the slaad cease to exist in every meaningful without their animating principle. If the animating principle is abandoned, they are just silly monsters. And if the animating principle remains, then you've still got alignments you are just refusing to acknowledge it or adopting a new terminology for labeling it. It's as meaningless as saying that modrons must be good simply because they are lawful. If you say that, then the modrons cease to be modrons in any meaningful way.

The only 4e alignment that remotely makes since for the slaad is Unaligned, if only because the Slaad don't really declare allegiance to anything and none of the 5 options are descriptive. But Unaligned is silly on the grounds that the slaad don't have to declare allegiance to chaos the way a mortal might; they simply are chaos. They are the thing itself. They are chaos without evil, and if they aren't then you are saying that they can't be themselves. If you want to deny that they are what they are, the question remains, what are they? And if they are something, why can't mortals declare their allegiance to it?

 

[Andor]

They are the thing itself. They are chaos without evil, and if they aren't then you are saying that they can't be themselves. If you want to deny that they are what they are, the question remains, what are they? And if they are something, why can't mortals declare their allegiance to it?

*head explodes*

 

[keterys]

For clarity... there is no Knowledge skill. It actually sounds like Religion would be appropriate for you're looking for...

And I get that you don't like the 4e alignment system, though I'd also suggest that your dislike may be making you misunderstand it.

Slaad can be chaos incarnate without a tag 'Chaotic Neutral' that never really nailed down 'Chaos' in any useful meaningful way anyways. Just like things can be evil without a tag that says Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral Evil. Or Diet, Low-Fat, or No Sugar, for that matter.

 

[Shemeska]

Slaad can be chaos incarnate without a tag 'Chaotic Neutral' that never really nailed down 'Chaos' in any useful meaningful way anyways.

Might I likewise suggest that your dislike of Chaotic Neutral may be making you misunderstand it?

Slaad can be chaos incarnate without a tag 'Chaotic Neutral' that never really nailed down 'Chaos' in any useful meaningful way anyways. Just like things can be evil without a tag that says Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral Evil.

Except as far as I know they're openly tagged as Chaotic -Evil- in 4e. Your analogy doesn't really work here because an Evil description by itself doesn't negate the possibility of being LE or CE, while being tagged as CE does very much remove the option of being something mutually exclusive to CE (like NE or LE, or in this case CN).