Slaad


The slaad is a fictional monster in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. They are extraplanar creatures that resemble giant humanoid toads of various colors, and other types, such as mud, and death slaadi.

Publication history

Development and licensing

The slaadi were created by Charles Stross and published in the TSR UK book Fiend Folio: Tome of Creatures Malevolent and Benign. Stross said of their creation:
For much of their existence, the slaadi were the subject of jokes by D&D players due to their distinctly frog-like appearance, which was emphasized in early artistic depictions of the monsters. With the advent of the Planescape campaign setting, TSR, Inc. made an effort to create a more fearsome image of the slaadi, with their toad qualities toned down in favor of showing more frightening aspects depicting them as beings of pure chaos. This Planescape envisioning of the slaadi carried forth into the 3rd Edition of the D&D game and has persisted ever since.
Because they were created by a D&D player, slaadi are one of only a handful of D&D monsters considered "Product Identity" by Wizards of the Coast and, as such, are not released under its Open Gaming License.

''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'' 1st edition (1977–1988)

The blue slaad, death slaad , the green slaad, the grey slaad , and the red slaad appear in the first edition Fiend Folio, along with Ssendam, Lord of the Insane, and Ygorl, Lord of Entropy. Ed Greenwood, in his review of the Fiend Folio for Dragon magazine, considered the slaad "worthy additions to any campaign".
The slaadi and their role in the planes are detailed in this edition's Manual of the Planes.
Another slaad lord, Wartle, appeared in the adventure anthology, Tales of the Outer Planes.

''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'' 2nd edition (1989–1999)

The blue slaad, death slaad, the gray slaad, the green slaad, and the red slaad appear first in the Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix, and are reprinted in the Monstrous Manual. The same set of slaadi appear for the Planescape campaign setting in the first Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix.
Ygorl and Ssendam appear in Dragon #221 in the "Dragon's Bestiary" column; the same article also introduced two new slaad lords: Chourst, Lord of Randomness, and Rennbuu, Lord of Colors.
The baby red slaad and the young red slaad appear in Dungeon #77.

''Dungeons & Dragons'' 3.0 edition (2000–2002)

The blue slaad, death slaad, the gray slaad, the green slaad, and the red slaad appear in the Monster Manual for this edition.
The slaadi and their role in the planes are detailed in this edition's Manual of the Planes. The black slaad and the white slaad appeared in the Epic Level Handbook.
The appeared in Dragon #306.
The mud slaad appears in the Fiend Folio for this edition.

''Dungeons & Dragons'' 3.5 edition (2003–2007)

The blue slaad, death slaad, the gray slaad, the green slaad, and the red slaad appear in the revised Monster Manual for this edition.
Another new slaad lord, Bazim-Gorag the Firebringer, first appeared in Dungeon #101. Bazim-Gorag later appeared in the Forgotten Realms book, Champions of Ruin.

''Dungeons & Dragons'' 4th edition (2008–2014)

The slaadi, pluralised as slaads, appear in the Monster Manual for this edition. In 4th edition, the slaads are elemental creatures, native to the Elemental Chaos.

''Dungeons & Dragons'' 5th edition (2014–present)

The slaadi appear in this edition of the Monster Manual, with additional lore about the reproduction of slaadi. It also includes information concerning The Spawning Stone that was created by Primus, which ultimately led to the creation of the slaadi.

Cultural impact

Charles Stross, creator of the slaadi, used the creatures in his 2007 novel Halting State, where they appeared as an enemy in the fictional MMORPG Avalon Four.
The word "slaad" has been used to describe frog-like monsters in the comic Yamara and the webcomic Shadowgirls, which uses the word "slaad" to describe a race of monsters.
In Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick, a chaotic evil character expresses surprise at two shoulder devils appearing instead of one devil and one angel; as he has no good or lawful sides whatsoever, the devils explain that the character has only them and the slaad.
Slaadi have appeared in 3rd-party game sourcebooks such as the Tome of Horrors from Necromancer Games. It was parodied in the HackMaster Hacklopedia of Beasts, published by Kenzer & Company. The plot of the Downer series of graphic novels by Kyle Stanley Hunter, published by Paizo Publishing, revolves around a slaad-created artifact.

Depiction

In the D&D game slaadi are native to the Outer Plane of Limbo. As such they are of the outsider type, being composed of the essence of their home plane. Encountered on most other planes they also receive the extraplanar subtype. Slaadi are almost always chaotic neutral except for the death slaadi, which are usually chaotic evil, and the gormeel slaadi, which are usually lawful neutral.
In the various D&D products in which they are presented, slaadi are described as frog or toad-like humanoids. Within that rough characterization they have a wide range of forms depending on subtype, and often corresponding to their rank in society. Size also varies between the different subtypes, from human sized to several feet taller than human sized.
GameSpy author Allan Rausch described the slaadi as "remorseless reptilian killing machines". They might have become "popular creatures among players", but "For many years, slaad were a joke -- because of their artwork", which showed them as "six-foot tall carnivorous frogs". With the Planescape setting they "were reinterpreted artistically to be less frog-like and much more fearsome", a development continued into the 3rd edition of the game.

Society

In various editions of D&D the slaadi have been depicted as having a complex social system bound up in the relationship and reproductive cycles of the various subtypes. Some subtypes dominate others, though as slaadi are creatures of chaos, such domination occurs not through a regimented hierarchy, but by brute force. In earlier D&D editions a symbol of power was embedded in each slaad's forehead, and non-magical tattoos on the forehead represented achievements and status. The latter physical characteristics do not appear in 3rd and later editions of D&D. In earlier editions of D&D the slaad were divided only into red, blue, green, gray and death subtypes. 3rd Edition D&D added the mud, and epic level white and black subtypes. In all editions the slaad have been dominated by the Slaad Lords, Ssendam and Ygorl.
Red and blue slaadi reproduce by infecting living hosts. The red do so by implanting eggs beneath their victim's skin which grow into a baby blue slaad that eats the host from within. The blue infect the host with a lycanthropy-like disease that slowly transforms them into a red slaad. Despite being the means of producing the other slaad type, reds and blues despise one another. If either a red slaad or blue slaad infects an arcane spellcaster, the host will spawn a green slaad, superior to its parent in that it may cast spells. A green slaad, upon reaching its hundredth year of life, will retreat into isolation for the duration of about a year. Upon its return it has transformed into a smaller, but more powerful grey slaad, which focus more on spell-casting than most other slaadi. Some grey slaadi undergo an unnamed, mysterious ritual, which transforms them into death slaadi. Death slaadi possess amazing magical and physical might, but eschew focusing on the former, as the greys do, being bent more on perpetuating slaughter and death. As such, death slaad tend more towards an evil alignment than do most other slaadi. If the death slaad survives a century, it turns into the white slaad. If the white slaad survives a century, it turns into a black slaad in the manner of its preceding transformations. The black slaad is the most powerful slaad, excluding the slaad lords. The reproductive cycle of mud slaadi is not detailed.
The Spawning Stone is the primordial home of the slaadi, located in "a realm of their greatest dominion", and drifting about Limbo. The passage of the stone generates currents in the raw chaos-stuff of the plane, and slaadi are able to follow these currents "upstream" to the Stone's location. In the mating season, each race of slaad converges on the Spawning Stone, wresting the Stone away from the previous group, so that they may fertilize each other's internal egg sacs, and carry away the seed-like fertilized eggs for later implantation into host bodies. Sometimes, however, young slaadi are produced right there at the stone because the slaadi implant each other in their mating frenzy. Thus, dead adult slaadi routinely float about the stone until destroyed by the chaos of Limbo. True slaadi are described as beings of ultimate chaos who have no set form. Only the Slaad Lords Ssendam and Ygorl are representative of this type. Somehow they affected the 'Spawning Stone' to prevent the emergence of slaadi more powerful than them, which keeps the slaadi within the aforementioned groups. Although anomalies do slip through in the chaos, they have less variety, and less chance of being more powerful than the Slaad Lords. One such anomaly is the Gormeel Slaad, which is a subtype introduced in an article in Dragon as a large, mutant variety "born from the Spawning Stone", and escaping the notice of Ygorl and Ssendam. They are lawful in alignment, serving as allies and sometimes mounts of the githzerai against other slaadi.
In 5e, the Spawning Stone was revealed to be created by the modron leader Primus in an attempt to tame Limbo, but the plane corrupted its original purpose and produced the slaadi as an immune response. Their reproductive process is an expression of how Limbo turned the Stone, an artifact of pure Law, into a tool of Chaos.