D&D 5E Help Me Grok Slaad

[abirdcall]

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.

I think it might also be good to think of what a being of LN essence might do in this situation.

If such a being finds themselves in a town in the Prime Material they might go about creating absolute order. Using the market example they might impose their will to make it an ordered place. No crowds, only lines, everyone walking a designated pace, prices set, etc. Attempting to remove individuality from the town, to turn it into a clockwork machine under threat of force.

That reads just as evil to us, but the intent is different and punishment only comes as a result of acting 'chaotically' which in this case means having your own thoughts.

Slaad are the opposite of this.

 

[Grok Slaad]

So I've never really understood the slaad.

Slaad no understand Kinneus.

Grok Slaad no help Kinneus.

 

[DeanP]

Charles Stross doesn't get enough love for all the cool things he brought to D&D. I feel inclined to run something with Slaad now!

 

[aco175]

I had an adventure where the bullywugs of the swamp were acting up and causing more trouble for the elves of the woods. The PCs needed the elves help in scouting the woods and fighting the hobgoblins, but needed to find out what was up with the bullywugs. Turns out a slaad killed the shaman and was impersonating him, causing the bullywugs loyal to him act up. He was causing chaos through others. When he dies, things went back to normal and the elves ended up helping in the big fight later on.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Slaad no understand Kinneus.

Grok Slaad no help Kinneus.

Grok Slaad win Interwebz.

 

[AmerginLiath]

Cold dish typically consisting of raw vegetables mixed with eggs, cheese, or other various accoutrements, usually finished with a sauce or dressing. Pretty straight forward.

I'm a fan of mesclun, feta, dried cranberries, walnuts, and homemade honey balsamic vinaigrette. Use with care though. This should be reserved for epic tier adventurers only and even then don't expect them to pass their save if they aren't Wisdom proficient.

To be fair, one friend misread slaad as salad the first time he saw the listing in the monster manual and thought that a green salad made sense (even if it was odd to fight, animated or otherwise), but a red salad or a grey salad was sort of gross. The logic of discussing battling your lunch somehow fits with making sense of the slaadi.

 

[AmerginLiath]

I’ve always thought of the slaadi as the ultimate anarchs, simply because they live in an environment where nothing — even the selves — has constancy. You can think of an archetypal CG or CE character being effectively “selfish” in terms of rejecting outside authority’s hold over them (either in terms of a CG character seeking freedom from tyranny or a CE character refusing to bow to any other being’s social control); as a true CN being, a slaad does even understand limits and boundaries. Not only does it ignore laws and borders (the concepts are beyond nonsensical for creatures whose entire plane shifts space, composition, and nature on a whim), but it can’t even quite understand the “boundary” between individuals. Because the race implants itself in others to reproduce, changes type by various condition, and if often driven to do either by external forces such as the Spawning Stone, notions such as “self” and “body” aren’t the same as among other creatures (even aberrations like Illithids see a continuity of Self among implanted generations, slaadi are almost the opposite in lacking a sense of Subject Permance about themselves). While other creatures see them as “mad,” it’s perhaps more a case that the slaadi are adapted to stay super-sane by living so completely in the moment of a world where the sort of mind that inhabits a Prime Material Plane couldn’t exist without shattering (see how the Githzerai have to basically bend space and time in their monestaries, as well as practice total mental conditioning, to not snap in Limbo).