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View Full Version : Slaad tadpole, what removes it?



MarkVIIIMarc
2019-04-25, 12:43 AM
So one of the players in a game I DM has been infected by a Slaad. I'm pretty sure the player had no idea what happened. I'll probably telegraph it once more with a commoner dying from a bursting Slaad tadpole in front of them.

What all can "accidentally" cure this condition?

Dying and being resurrected I assume.

I guess Greater Restoration does not if it targets a different curse?

20 points of Lay on Hands just might accidentally do it

There is a Cleric in the party and we play on a pretty day to day schedule so I'm sure over the course of 3 months the PC will go down at least once. ....hmmm....what can make this interesting.

"... If the target is a humanoid, it must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or be infected with a disease - a minuscule slaad egg."

A humanoid host can carry only one slaad egg to term at a time. Over three months, the egg moves to the chest cavity, gestates, and forms a slaad tadpole. In the 24-hour period before giving birth, the host starts to feel unwell, its speed is halved, and it has disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. At birth, the tadpole chews its way through vital organs and out of the host’s chest in 1 round, killing the host in the process."

Edit: oops, this probably belongs in the 5e forum.

Malphegor
2019-04-25, 05:51 AM
Could have a chirugeon cut it out in the same manner as one removes a Necrotic Cyst in 3.5.
Slap a Heal check or whatever the 5e equivalent is that's pretty hefty but just about within the healer's capabilities on that, failure does... eh, 1d4, why not, damage to the person from cutting and gutting the patient in a bid to remove it.

Malphegor
2019-04-25, 07:21 AM
There is no risk of side effects if you decide to turn it off. Our recommendation is that if your system is running well, leave it on. If you have issues with high HDD usage, high RAM usage, or degraded performance during RAM-heavy activities, then try turning it off and see if it helps.

While wholly irrelevant to the thread and presumably annysmithy is hacked and controlled by a bot to share stuff like this, I do love the idea of a person with a Slaad inside it deciding to keep it inside because 'eh I'm feeling fine', and only when it explodes out of them they decide to do something about it.

Brookshw
2019-04-25, 07:29 AM
There is no risk of side effects if you decide to turn it off. Our recommendation is that if your system is running well, leave it on. If you have issues with high HDD usage, high RAM usage, or degraded performance during RAM-heavy activities, then try turning it off and see if it helps.

A wonderful Slaad response! Pretty sure this bot won the thread.

MarkVIIIMarc
2019-04-25, 08:25 AM
Lol. HHD, High Hit Die usage from the bot.

We run a pretty hack heavy, details light campaign so now that I'm awake with a couple hours of sleep in me I might owe it to the player to give him sme side effects also.

First if the PC doesn't die, I'll have them see a commoner with his guts going all Allien.

The I'll give the PC nausea and a maybe make him roll to see if he long rested to drop the hint smethi g is wrong.

Curious, if the Cleric is removing a curse or disease, does he need to know what disease?

Max_Killjoy
2019-04-25, 08:34 AM
Just give in and start calling it a slaadpole.

Lord Torath
2019-04-25, 08:54 AM
"... If the target is a humanoid, it must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or be infected with a disease - a minuscule slaad egg."Sounds like a Remove Disease will take care of it as well.

Seclora
2019-04-25, 09:41 AM
Sounds like a Remove Disease will take care of it as well.

Any Spell or effect(5 points of Lay on Hands for instance) that removes disease will remove and destroy the Slaad Egg, as would the death of the host. The Tadpole is a creature and must be slain conventionally.

Particle_Man
2019-04-25, 09:52 AM
Is this a chest burster or a “turn you into a slaad” case? Also does the pc know arcane magic? Also how does the party feel about letting the player play a slaad later on?

Kyutaru
2019-04-25, 09:53 AM
Nah, just leave it in there. Next time the player gets hit by a lightning bolt, tell him he feels better.

Segev
2019-04-25, 09:56 AM
Assuming you can choose to not count the slaadpole as an attended object, any effect which transforms the patient into incorporeal form should do it. Even if it is an attended object, polymorphing or shapeshifting into something too small to contain it should force it outside like an item of gear your new form can't wear. If you can choose NOT to take a carried person with you, you can teleport and not have it come along. If the patient is Lawful, a dictum may hit the slaad, though line of effect is hard to prove. (It might form a nice mutually-exclusive venn diagram with "attended object" rules, though: if it IS an attended object - making things which would force you to take it along not work - then you can voluntarily fail your save vs the effect of dictum to have all attended objects affected, as well.)

If it isn't an attended object and line of effect is required, flesh to stone will turn the patient to a statue with the slaadpole trapped inside. Wait for it to die of suffocation, then restore the victim via stone to flesh.

A particularly cheesy interpretation of Ghost Touch takes the property's statement that the weapon counts as incorporeal or corporeal, whichever is more beneficial to the wielder, to mean it can ignore armor bonuses to AC by being incoropreal to armor but not to the target wearing the armor. This same interpretation would allow you to make it incorporeal to the patient and corporeal to the slaadpole, so you could hack away at the slaadpole within the patient without harming the patient more than a little (due to hard displacements of the slaadpole within him).

If the patient is a paladin, get him to perform a chaotic act. This results in temporary loss of all class features, including any (slaad)poles shoved inside his various orifices.

Themrys
2019-04-25, 05:23 PM
Sounds like a Remove Disease will take care of it as well.

Would Remove Disease also end a normal pregnancy? And if not, why would it kill a Slaad? If I interpret that portrayal in OOTS somewhat correctly, those creatures are ... somewhat intelligent, thus not on the same level as bacteria, which I suppose need to be killed by Remove Disease. :smallconfused:

Poison the character? I don't know the rules for Slaad tadpoles, but it makes logical sense to me that this would work - it does for normal pregnancies ... with a high risk of death, of course, but that's what healing spells are for, right?

Having it be accidentally cured sounds a bit unfun, though. I would assume if you give them side effects like having difficulties breathing and the feeling that something moves in their chest, they would try to find out what is happening in time to intentionally do something about it.

Seclora
2019-04-25, 06:34 PM
Would Remove Disease also end a normal pregnancy? And if not, why would it kill a Slaad? If I interpret that portrayal in OOTS somewhat correctly, those creatures are ... somewhat intelligent, thus not on the same level as bacteria, which I suppose need to be killed by Remove Disease. :smallconfused:

Poison the character? I don't know the rules for Slaad tadpoles, but it makes logical sense to me that this would work - it does for normal pregnancies ... with a high risk of death, of course, but that's what healing spells are for, right?

Having it be accidentally cured sounds a bit unfun, though. I would assume if you give them side effects like having difficulties breathing and the feeling that something moves in their chest, they would try to find out what is happening in time to intentionally do something about it.

By some interpretations, Remove disease does end Pregnancies. I personally disagree, but the argument is that it removes 'parasites'. The same logic says that it removes the Slaad Egg.

That being said, in 5e at least, the text specifically calls out the condition as a disease.

If the target is a humanoid,
it must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or be
infected with a disease- a minuscule slaad egg.
A humanoid host can carry only one slaad egg to term at a
time. Over three months, the egg moves to the chest cavity,
gestates, and forms a slaad tadpole. In the 24-hour period
before giving birth, the host starts to feel unwell, its speed is
halved, and it has disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks,
and saving throws. At birth, the tadpole chews its way through
vital organs and out of the host's chest in 1 round, killing the
host in the process.
If the disease is cured before the tadpole's emergence, the
unborn slaad is disintegrated.

So any condition that cures disease also destroys the Slaad Egg. The text on the Blue Slaad's 'Chaos Phage' similarly refers to it as a disease.

AMFV
2019-04-25, 08:31 PM
Would Remove Disease also end a normal pregnancy? And if not, why would it kill a Slaad? If I interpret that portrayal in OOTS somewhat correctly, those creatures are ... somewhat intelligent, thus not on the same level as bacteria, which I suppose need to be killed by Remove Disease. :smallconfused:

Poison the character? I don't know the rules for Slaad tadpoles, but it makes logical sense to me that this would work - it does for normal pregnancies ... with a high risk of death, of course, but that's what healing spells are for, right?

Well I mean you have a bunch of bacteria in your gut that probably aren't eliminated by Remove Disease, or everybody who had Remove Disease would die shortly thereafter. The thing is that the pregnancy (like your gut biome) isn't something unnatural, whereas a Slaadi parasite is (however intelligent).