D&D 5E (2014) Help Me Grok Slaad

[Ridley's Cohort]

Turquoise bicycle shoe fins actualize radishes greenly!

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

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.

Jacob's Well, issue 43. Good way to start a campaign, since it thrusts a bunch of strangers together in the middle of a blizzard against a common foe.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

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.

How would this be distinguished as CN behavior rather than CE behavior?

 

[pemerton]

If a DM doesn't want the Far Realm in their cosmology, Limbo and the Slaad Lords make a good substitute for it.

I've never really used Limbo as such (the closest I've got is the 4e Elemental Chaos) but I have used Slaad's as "Far Realm"-type beings - in that particular campaign we called it "the Void".

 

[I'm A Banana]

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

Hahaha, thanks! The most compelling examples of slaadi behavior I've seen in D&D stuff have this tension between glee and destruction that I thought was always interesting.

How would this be distinguished as CN behavior rather than CE behavior?

Mostly because it's not about delight in the others' suffering, it's just an amoral lack of concern for others. It's not the death that make slaadi happy, it's the change of state (from "person" to "pinkish pulp"), about the dynamic event itself ("constant dodging, constant change!"), about their own independence ("I do this because I WANT TO"). Slaadi easily are bored and amoral and alien, but they aren't cruel.

Compare to the demon who wanders through that same portal. That demon destroys the buildlings, sure, but before it does, it walks in there, grabs the mother and the father, pulls them outside, and then locks their children in, and hisses with pleasure as they cry for their burning children. The demon sees a market as a place full of *victims* -- leap into the middle and watch them scurry over each other, crushing each other in a race to escape them.

And of course both of these are different from, say, the CN bard who visits town, or the CE rogue. Slaadi and demons are alien -- from another reality. They drive to more extreme examples of these alignments than most mortals express. Part of the thing you're dealing with when you deal with anything extraplanar is that they are not overly concerned with mortal problems. Perhaps the celestials take mortal concerns into account and try to do little damage, but even an angel is a dangerous creature whose logic is foreign to the concerns of an LG person just trying to live their life.

 

[Kinneus]

Thanks for all the responses. I'm digesting a lot of this.

Something is extra-appealing to me about the idea of an frigid, mountaintop mining colony beset by slaadi. It's basically "The Thing, but with wizards." Might have to check out Jacob's Well!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

You know, one of the interesting things about slaadi for me is that I don't envision them on the Material Plane at all. They are out there to be run into if you visit their home plane or somewhere close, but not creatures that are going to show up in the natural world.

Whether one sees planar creatures as frequent visitors to the Material Plane, or as something you probably are never going to see unless you go to other planes, might have effect on how you envision planar creatures in general.

 

[Celebrim]

So I've never really understood the slaad.

What's to understand?

MM descriptions of them seem dominated by their weird, overly complex body-horrorish reproduction. Which is cool and all, but I'm wondering how to use them in an adventure, and what they act like in character. What motivates them?

Motive? What's the motive you speak of?

What do they act like (insane and bizarre, or more like a force of nature/raw chaos?).

Reply hazy. Try again.

I think it's interesting that "standard" slaad are chaotic neutral, while the more powerful gray slaad and death slaad are chaotic evil.

It's all a myth. It's a conspiracy by the masters to hide the truth. The Revolutionary United Anarchists of the Church of Disassociation will not let the tyrants proceed with their evil plans unhindered!

I also vaguely remember a section from a 4e splatbook describing a "social" encounter with a slaad, and that the slaad would basically be insane and hard to follow in its logic, saying things like "the tongue behind your tongue lies" and generally being not responsive to persuasion, but pretty responsive to intimidation. I'm wondering if there's more examples of this, and basically how to roleplay a slaad generally.

There is no wrong way to roleplay a salad, because they are all individuals. However, in general they exhibit difficulty understanding that everything isn't an extension of themselves. They think essentially, that it's all 'me', and that they are in some sense responsible for everything. They live lives of continual wonder and amazement. They also are relatively free with other people's persons, because well, they don't really believe you are are a person - just something they made up and are animating somehow. On the other hand, they can be a bit protective of well - everything - because as far as they are concerned, they own it all. The smarter ones aren't particularly dangerous, per se, because they've been around a while and taking people a part to look at the shiny bits is boring now, and besides its hard to get the pieces back together. The less smart ones however have serious problems with cause and effect, and tend to act before they think. The main thing to keep in mind is that they aren't really demons. They like to smash things, particularly old things, unmoving things, things that are tending toward static, but they don't do it because they enjoy destruction for its own sake. They see themselves as a grand universal 'urban renewal' project. Out with the old, in with the new. They are also capable of building things and doing all sorts of abstract art if it suits them.

For example, the last Slaad the PC's encountered (without knowing it, because he was shapechanged) was organizing a group of Republican revolutionaries and encouraging them to start a revolt against a Kingdom whose crime was being too stable for too long. The next one I may introduce is a gardener of sorts, that is happily breeding new forms of plant life.

Also, see my link. If you have questions, feel free to ask.

 

[PnPgamer]

Once you go slaad, you always go "blaad" (vampire vords)

 

[Alex Crenshaw]

My take on slaad

I’m working on a very slaad heavy campaign and how I’ve been thinking of the slaad is this: their home is limbo which is a place of immense chaos and spontaneity which the slaad reflect. As for motive I think of them as wanting to bring the chaos of limbo to the material plane also reproduction is a driving motive. If the slaad in question are under the control of another creature I role play them as almost robotic only doing what their master tells them. If a character becomes a slaad and still wishes to play as that character they should play it as chaotic as possible it’s much like role playing an insane character but their driving force should be causing chaos however possible and reproducing cause at the end of the day they are just another slaad and should role play as such.