Slaads are NOT chaotic enough, in my opinion.

[Sharur]

Firstly, please forgive me if I am putting this in the wrong spot.

I dislike Slaads as the "Chaotic Neutral Exemplars" that they seem to be, especially since they are native to Limbo. In particular, I dislike that:
1. They are too similar to each other. The modrons have greater internal variety.
2. They seem evil, rather than morally neutral. Not only because they kill others to reproduce, and seem like an infection vector or plague, but the highest rank of Slaad, the Death Slaad is explicitly evil (at least in 5e).
3. (In 5e lore, anyway), the Slaad Spawning Stone was created by an outside, orderly force.

So, for my upcoming game, I would like to replace the Slaads from their position (in fact I'll be shunting them from Limbo to Pandemonium). So I'd like something to replace them with as the "Chaotic Neutral Exemplars"/anti-Modrons, and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas. Here w
1. Either an existing CN creature-type, or a non-CN creature type changed to CN, or a new creature-type entirely.
2. I'd like some internal variety, either equal to or greater than the Modron's variety.
3. I'd like some range in CR, so more akin to Demons and Devils than Modrons(clustered around low levels) or Angels(clustered around high levels).

Any thoughts?

[Magikeeper]

Title should be "are not chaotic enough". :P

As for CN denizens... well, let's start with this:

> A race of floating shapeshifters that can transform into various creatures and objects and can link with others of their kind to form larger things. They play with each other all the time, forming landmasses, cities, all sorts of random creatures and locals, etc. These shapeshifters are the most common denizens of limbo, and form most of the geography. Not particularly stable land - the ground beneath your feet might suddenly decide to be a flock of birds instead - but land nonetheless. How often they change on average would determine how much flux is going on in limbo. Also, no reason for what they're mimicing to be "real" - perhaps those birds have 5 eyes and glow neon pink.

Anyway, if you then built an ecosystem that lives in this constantly changing environment you would have your chaos monsters.

---

Unlike the other alignments, the CN denizens probably don't have any kind of strict hierarchy - what would it even do?

[Xuc Xac]

Any thoughts?

Don't forget that they are also color-coded with standardized abilities.

Slaad should be generated individually from a bunch of random charts so you never meet two that are the same.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, you might want to go with more 2E Planescape lore.


Or you could go with a more ''Ooze like polymoprhing race''

[Eldan]

I was about to mention 2E Planescape Slaad lore, yes. Because it's actually mentioned several times that Slaad shape is not really set when they are on Limbo, and they swim around the chaotic elements and creation there, changing with the environment. One of the local dangers mentioned is that that nice, solid-looking rock you're sitting down on might be a blue slaad.

Also, if you lose Slaad, you're losing Xanxost, and losing Xanxost is a crime against humanity.

[Joe the Rat]

Well, you might want to go with more 2E Planescape lore.


Or you could go with a more ''Ooze like polymoprhing race''

Oh, the Chaos Beast. With the added benefit of being contagious, so if you get clawed/bit/stung/abraded/licked with puppymonkeybaby mouth, you'll become one too.

If you want something a bit less anti-borg, take the Random Hordling Generator from 1e, and make that your basic denizen. A bag of random shapes and creature parts, assembled into some sort of being. Except maybe you need to add more weird things to the list.

D&D seems to have a toads = chaos thing going. Slaad comes with a side of "The Corruption" Being not wholly of "natural" origin (as per 5th) explains some of their overly structured nature (the other part being that they are in a game, and games generally need rules).

Speaking of 5e, Boggles make good chaos denizens. Expand their slicks to 3-dimensional clouds of "sticky" or "slippery" space, abuse the hell out of "opening = portal" and change their shape to "perceived as a random creature and/or object" and go to town. The patently absurd is more cognitively disturbing than whatever John Carpenter monstrosity you come up with. And they will never forget the time a potted fern beat up your rogue.

[gkathellar]

Well, in general, slaad agree.

The Spawning Stone is a bit cleverer than I think you're giving it credit for. It's an aggressive intrusion by Primus, one that dramatically reduces the spawning of True Slaad, who can be much more powerful than the frog-looking types you're familiar with. The thing is, Primus had help on the inside: Ygorl, an extremely powerful true slaad, helped create the spawning stone so that he wouldn't be surpassed in might. Ygorl is an exemplar of chaos; what could be more chaotic than betraying chaos itself?

As to evil slaad, it's a side-effect of the above. Frog slaad are limited in their growth, so after becoming grey, they must turn to certain other powers for strength (read: the Abyss). True Slaad have no such inclinations, being untainted by law and capable of infinite banana verisimilitude political coughcoughcoughroguewavecoughcough sitting squirrel.

Incidentally, a similar thing happened to the Abyss for the opposite reason: demons are mostly uniform because the Queen of Chaos optimized the tanar'ri for MURDER SLAUGHTER WAR KILL.

[Kaerou]

2. They seem evil, rather than morally neutral. Not only because they kill others to reproduce, and seem like an infection vector or plague, but the highest rank of Slaad, the Death Slaad is explicitly evil (at least in 5e).

Honestly I agree, in fact I have ranted for many years in my gaming group about this.

There is no reason chaos should lose their outsider type to evil. All the other outsiders keep their outsiders pure to their type iirc. But for some reason they decided to write that ultimate chaos is evil, and this makes no more sense than saying ultimate law becomes evil.

[hamishspence]

Honestly I agree, in fact I have ranted for many years in my gaming group about this.

There is no reason chaos should lose their outsider type to evil. All the other outsiders keep their outsiders pure to their type iirc. But for some reason they decided to write that ultimite chaos is evil, and this makes no more sense than saying ultimate law becomes evil.

Epic Handbook did give us slaadi above the death slaad - white slaad (Always CN) and black salad (Usually CN, Sometimes CE).

[Darth Ultron]

Also, if you lose Slaad, you're losing Xanxost, and losing Xanxost is a crime against humanity.

Crime against Slaadnity. Crime rhyme time. Xanxost is lost and found, and hungry. Takes a bite out of crime!

[Braininthejar2]

The way I heard the story, ths slaadi used to be more chaotic, but the first two that randomly became demigods created the spawning stone to make sure none of their brethren can surpass them, purposefully limiting their chaotic potential.

[paddyfool]

You could base a new major CN faction around some versions of the fae, although it's worth noting that fae are often tightly bound by rules in many interpretations.

lf you wanted to make Slaad more quintessentially chaotic otoh, perhaps the following ideas might be fun:
- More shapeshifting abilities
- More illusion related abilities
- Spells / SLAs themed around causing confusion, chaotic / random effects, and/or teleportation
- Some kind of random generation of feats, skills etc, or possibly some ability to spontaneously develop new ones.

[Nifft]

I personally remove Limbo entirely -- instead, I use the Plane of Faerie as the CN archetype.

Slaad are fine as a usually-Chaotic race who reproduce in an icky way, and who have no particular planar homeland.

[Pex]

Only so far as the words on the page.

In my 5E Paladin game Slaadi have joined Team Good Guys in a war against Devils and Orcs. They have already lost brethren to the fight and are still in it.

[Milo v3]

You could use Proteans from Pathfinder; shapechanging rainbow serpents of chaos which can release waves of chaotic energy which warp everything nearby. They also are pretty diverse while still having enough common elements to be recognizable:
http://klubbsaga2015.wdfiles.com/local--files/protean/Protean%2C%20Voidworm%2001.pnghttp://static4.paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderRPG/PZO1131-Balazar.jpg
http://karzoug.info/srd//monsters/P/images/ProteanOurdivar.png
http://karzoug.info/srd/monsters/P/images/ProteanImentesh.png
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d9/ad/0c/d9ad0ccd509fc56faa3929a3c42d9445.png
https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/pathfinder/images/9/91/Keketar.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090331120540

[Nifft]

In my 5E Paladin game Slaadi have joined Team Good Guys in a war against Devils and Orcs.

"I came here to chew bubble gum and kill d'orcs, and there's no such thing as bubble gum."

[Bohandas]

2. They seem evil, rather than morally neutral. Not only because they kill others to reproduce, and seem like an infection vector or plague, but the highest rank of Slaad, the Death Slaad is explicitly evil (at least in 5e).

This can be remedied by adding an equally powerful 'life slaad' to counterbalance the death slaad. It could have resurrection and object animation powers. Very good for creating chaos. Imagine going to the kitchen for breakfast some morning only to find that the toaster's sprouted legs and wandered off and somebody's brought the ham back to life.



So, for my upcoming game, I would like to replace the Slaads from their position (in fact I'll be shunting them from Limbo to Pandemonium). So I'd like something to replace them with as the "Chaotic Neutral Exemplars"/anti-Modrons, and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas. Here w

The end of that line seems to have been cut off

[Bohandas]

I had an idea a while back for a race of cartoon-like chaos exemplars. These would be incorporeal creatures clothed in bodies made from stabilized limbo material (so they could be chopped up/exploded/whatever one minute and fine the next). Each one would be able to take the caricatured form and partial abilities of one or more species of creatures. The most powerful members of the race would be living caricatures of specific planar personages such as Orcus, Asmodeus, or Primus.

[Cosi]

Some DMs will want Law and Chaos to mean essentially "Sane" and "Insane". That's fine, but it doesn't mean that Chaos is funny. In fact, insanity is generally about the least funny thing you could possibly imagine. An insane person reacts inappropriately to their surroundings. That doesn't mean that they perform unexpected actions, that's just surrealist. And Paladins are totally permitted to enjoy non sequitur based humor and art. See, insanity is when you perform the same action over and over again and expect different results.

In this model we get a coherent explanation for why, when all the forces of Evil are composed of a multitude of strange nightmarish creatures, and the forces of Good have everything from a glowing patch of light to a winged snake tailed woman, every single soldier in the army of Chaos is a giant frog. This is because in this model Limbo is a place that is totally insane. It's a place where the answer to every question really is "Giant Frog". Creatures of Chaos then proceed to go to non Chaotically-aligned planes and are disappointed and confused when doors have to be pushed and pulled to open and entrance cannot be achieved by "Giant Frog".

It's lovecraftian take in many ways. Limbo isn't a place that is "disordered", it is a place where concepts like "order" and "disorder" fundamentally do not matter. A place where the underlying principles of reality aren't things like "time" or "space" or "entropy", but "Giant Frog".

Source (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828).

[gkathellar]

It's lovecraftian take in many ways. Limbo isn't a place that is "disordered", it is a place where concepts like "order" and "disorder" fundamentally do not matter. A place where the underlying principles of reality aren't things like "time" or "space" or "entropy", but "Giant Frog".

Source (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828).

Not really accurate to the Great Wheel in the slightest! This is just Tome of Fiends being poorly researched as usual.

[Eldan]

Yeah. Lovecraftian is, depending on edition, more the Astral Plane or Far Realm.

[Zale]

!!Personal headcannon warning!!

I personally like to imagine that Slaadi spend most of their time making fun of how Primes and Lawfuls treat things as if they were inviolate laws.

"Hello, I am HUMAN. I think that the conservation of energy exists and that bad things only happen to bad people. I think words are not meaningless meat sounds to convey a shared, subjective understanding of the world, but are instead inviolate things and true descriptions of something beyond our shared understanding. Watch me do homeostasis and maintain a static form! I am dying at a slow but perceptible rate!"

Slaadi aren't just silly and bizarre- they come from a place of chaos. The idea that rules are a thing, that hierarchies and consistency should exist, are to them strange and inexplicable things. Silly, pointless, annoying.

They aren't demons who murder people for no reason. Slaadi will talk to you! It's fun! It's not like they're Modrons or something. They can be convinced of things because getting stuck in your ways isn't a very Slaadi thing.

If they do something silly or stupid, it's probably because of whatever idiosyncratic guiding philosophy they've picked up says they ought to do. They aren't crazy. They have reasons, it's just those reasons may seem blatantly incorrect to us. (Just like ours seem to them.)

Of course, I'd like them better if they weren't palate swaps of the same creature. I prefer to imagine Slaadi has having wildly inconsistent amphibian-themed forms. Frogs, salamanders, axolotls. The way they look may have no relation to their actual abilities. The color thing is basically the best rule of thumb you can find, but otherwise the skinny tree frog with fins may well have more physical strength than all of you put together because physical appearance doesn't actually relate to capacity in anyway.

[Bohandas]

Yeah. Lovecraftian is, depending on edition, more the Astral Plane or Far Realm.

Or the Abyss

[Millstone85]

A race of floating shapeshifters that can transform into various creatures and objects and can link with others of their kind to form larger things. They play with each other all the time, forming landmasses, cities, all sorts of random creatures and locals, etc. These shapeshifters are the most common denizens of limbo, and form most of the geography. Not particularly stable land - the ground beneath your feet might suddenly decide to be a flock of birds instead - but land nonetheless. How often they change on average would determine how much flux is going on in limbo. Also, no reason for what they're mimicing to be "real" - perhaps those birds have 5 eyes and glow neon pink.One of these creatures trying to infiltrate Mechanus: "Business, business, business. Numbers. Is this working?"

Seriously though, The LEGO Movie might just be my favorite take on the theme of Law vs Chaos, because in the end it celebrated both unbound creativity and the love of structure.


You could use Proteans from Pathfinder; shapechanging rainbow serpents of chaos which can release waves of chaotic energy which warp everything nearby. They also are pretty diverse while still having enough common elements to be recognizable:
http://klubbsaga2015.wdfiles.com/local--files/protean/Protean%2C%20Voidworm%2001.pnghttp://static4.paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderRPG/PZO1131-Balazar.jpg
http://karzoug.info/srd//monsters/P/images/ProteanOurdivar.png
http://karzoug.info/srd/monsters/P/images/ProteanImentesh.png
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d9/ad/0c/d9ad0ccd509fc56faa3929a3c42d9445.png
https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/pathfinder/images/9/91/Keketar.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090331120540And now I am reminded of Discord from MLP:FiM.


But for some reason they decided to write that ultimate chaos is evil, and this makes no more sense than saying ultimate law becomes evil.Eh, I could see the Blood War being exactly about that. The most intransigent aspects of Law and Chaos locked in full conflict until one is annihilated.

But the worst offender was 4e. Here the only possible alignments were LG, NG, N, NE and CE. You couldn't be lawful unless you were good too, or chaotic unless you were evil. The only workaround was to be not of chaotic alignment but a creature of the Elemental Chaos, which replaced both the Inner Planes and Limbo in the new cosmology. Even then, the slaadi were chaotic evil elementals. Mechanus was gone too, but eventually brought back in Dragon#414... as a counterpart to the Far Realm.

[Bohandas]

Another idea: What if you rolled stats for Slaadi using 1d20 instead of 3d6?


There is no reason chaos should lose their outsider type to evil. All the other outsiders keep their outsiders pure to their type iirc. But for some reason they decided to write that ultimate chaos is evil, and this makes no more sense than saying ultimate law becomes evil.

Put the two together and you gat Warhammer


And now I am reminded of Discord from MLP:FiM.

I agree, those proteans look like Discord

[Tinkerer]

I really do think that what they should have done for the CN exemplars is to never have the same one in any two editions. It should change often enough that in the time between editions they really shouldn't even be recognizable.

[Joe the Rat]

"Hello, I am HUMAN. I think that the conservation of energy exists and that bad things only happen to bad people. I think words are not meaningless meat sounds to convey a shared, subjective understanding of the world, but are instead inviolate things and true descriptions of something beyond our shared understanding. Watch me do homeostasis and maintain a static form! I am dying at a slow but perceptible rate!"
For some reason I find this hilarious. Probably my chaotic nature.


Of course, I'd like them better if they weren't palate swaps of the same creature. I prefer to imagine Slaadi has having wildly inconsistent amphibian-themed forms. Frogs, salamanders, axolotls. The way they look may have no relation to their actual abilities. The color thing is basically the best rule of thumb you can find, but otherwise the skinny tree frog with fins may well have more physical strength than all of you put together because physical appearance doesn't actually relate to capacity in anyway.An excellent idea - it would help break up the "uniformity" but keeping with a theme. I'll try to remember this when they show up next... besides the Redcap Slaadpole due to burst out of the cleric next week (in world).

[Calthropstu]

Proteans PF seem more chaotic than slaad. I also like their fluff better too... they are just as big a threat as demons are.

[Todd Stewart]

Proteans PF seem more chaotic than slaad. I also like their fluff better too... they are just as big a threat as demons are.

I'm really glad you like them! :D

[Bohandas]

Have a slaad NPC ask a question and then be annoyed that the PCs are still talking about that after recieving a prompt concise answer

[ahyangyi]

Speaking of Pathfinder, Unfettered Eidolons (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary3/eidolon.html) are Chaotic Neutral too. They probably won't serve well as the main CN outsider race, but could fit in "each individual is different" concept. Also they provided rules for building those eidolon from level one and advance to whatever level you like.