D&D 5E Wandering Monsters: Morons and Salads

[Klaus]

Their essential traits as I've seen them have been: chaos-loving humanoid toads in a rainbow of colors who live on a plane of roiling formless chaos and who warp others with their attacks.

Nothing there precludes mortals classifying them as "aberrations" (as in, utterly alien in mindset), which is the only real change the article is proposing. Personally, I wouldn't mind a greater variety to slaadi (it's weird that the Gray Waste's hordelings are more random than the exemplars of chaos). Not all red slaadi need to be exactly the same. This can be as simple as adding one of those Customization Options sidebars to the slaadi.

Again, essential traits: Order-loving polyhedral/alien blend of flesh and machinery with a precise hierarchy who live on a plane of mechanical, immutable law and who occasionally march around reality and have some outcasts who get tainted.

And nothing the article proposed countered that.

 

[Shemeska]

Nothing there precludes mortals classifying them as "aberrations" (as in, utterly alien in mindset), which is the only real change the article is proposing. Personally, I wouldn't mind a greater variety to slaadi (it's weird that the Gray Waste's hordelings are more random than the exemplars of chaos). Not all red slaadi need to be exactly the same. This can be as simple as adding one of those Customization Options sidebars to the slaadi.

Well we've had an in-game reason for the slaadi organization/caste paradox since 2e (it being artificially imposed on the slaadi by the Spawning Stone, created by Ygorl and Ssendaam to avoid the natural random mutation of slaadi from eventually creating one stronger than themselves). The hordelings had their own in-game reason also originating in 2e (which was that they epitomized NE selfish individuality, not chaos or randomness).

I wouldn't mind having subtle differences (though still constrained by the above) between slaadi, and it could be a random table of minor traits, or just flavor text in their entries allowing for subtle or even grandiose mutations or an ever-changing form within certain small limits (which is what I went with for Pathfinder's chaos exemplars the proteans).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well we've had an in-game reason for the slaadi organization/caste paradox since 2e (it being artificially imposed on the slaadi by the Spawning Stone, created by Ygorl and Ssendaam to avoid the natural random mutation of slaadi from eventually creating one stronger than themselves). The hordelings had their own in-game reason also originating in 2e (which was that they epitomized NE selfish individuality, not chaos or randomness).

Let's be honest: That's lipstick on a pig. It may be a shade some people really, really like, but it's ultimately a patch over a dumb design decision. The Pathfinder way is a better one, and there's no reason that 5E should be beholden to the dictates of a 2E campaign setting, beloved though it may be.

If Planescape miraculously returns in a reverent-to-the-original fashion (which I think is pretty unlikely), the old restrictions can be put back in place, or it can be noted that something happened to the Spawning Stone.

 

[Celebrim]

Let's be honest: That's lipstick on a pig.

Worse. It's pig on a lipstick. I loathe what 2e did with the Slaad. There was a problem that needed fixing, and the 2e slapdash job was so bad it made the problem infinitely worse.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I've always used the idea that each Slaadi goes through the different color phases itself, being different colors at different times in its life, and transforming mostly when it chooses to, and goes through some process to do so. Frogs and toads represent chaos and change and life and death in a lot of myths, so it's less that these guys look like frogs in my mind and more that frogs look like these guys, that the elements of raw chaos and mutability might be like this, in at least one expression, and that this expression happens to be one of the most powerful and successful expressions of the primordial plane is just another random feature of them. IE: Any order one perceives in them is a problem with the person doing the perceiving, not the creatures themselves, who see no such order or pattern in a simple power variation.

 

[Klaus]

The hordelings had their own in-game reason also originating in 2e (which was that they epitomized NE selfish individuality, not chaos or randomness).

Umm... No, that doesn't come across. When you roll on several tables for unique abilities for a horde of different creatures, it epitomizes chaos and randomness.

 

[Celebrim]

Umm... No, that doesn't come across. When you roll on several tables for unique abilities for a horde of different creatures, it epitomizes chaos and randomness.

To say nothing about the fact that I've never understood how NE came to be symbolized by 'selfish' or 'individuality'. That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.

 

[I'm A Banana]

And nothing the article proposed countered that.

Not sayin' it did, just providing a counter-point to a lot of the folks wanting to "improve" the critters. For a lot of players, the existing critters don't need to be much "improved," so I'd hate to see them go in a direction that invalidates the history these things have already gained.

It's fine to not like them as they are, but then we should be talking about potential replacements, not about overhauls that make the creatures unrecognizable for what they have been, because lots of people have used what they are already as something interesting.

 

[Shemeska]

Not sayin' it did, just providing a counter-point to a lot of the folks wanting to "improve" the critters. For a lot of players, the existing critters don't need to be much "improved," so I'd hate to see them go in a direction that invalidates the history these things have already gained.

It's fine to not like them as they are, but then we should be talking about potential replacements, not about overhauls that make the creatures unrecognizable for what they have been, because lots of people have used what they are already as something interesting.

This a hundred times.

They already went down this design path of reinvention for its own sake before and gave us gems like "archons" that were evil elementals rather than LG celestials, and well, it didn't go over all that well. I'd rather they create something new rather than make something already in place into something unrecognizable.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'd rather they create something new rather than make something already in place into something unrecognizable.

Absolutely!