A player ate a slaad tadpole. What now?

[Nerdguy88]

I don't want anything overly negative to happen but my players found a slaad tadpole. The dragonborn player picked it up and ate it when it tried to eat them first. What are some weird/fun/interesting things that might come from this?

Edit: This is a campaign for children. The oldest is 13. This is part of why I'm not going full on dark gritty "It eats you from the inside and bursts out" on them.

[Florian]

Stay quiet about it, then casually drop that the Dragonborn hasn't pooped for the last three weeks or so at a random point during your adventure.

[Nerdguy88]

Stay quiet about it, then casually drop that the Dragonborn hasn't pooped for the last three weeks or so at a random point during your adventure.

I had an idea for something similar. Their appetite is going to go through the roof.

[Unoriginal]

I don't want anything overly negative to happen but my players found a slaad tadpole. The dragonborn player picked it up and ate it when it tried to eat them first. What are some weird/fun/interesting things that might come from this?

If the tadpool was still alive, the Dragonborn now has to get an operation unless they want to re-do the chestbuster scene from Alien .

[Nerdguy88]

If the tadpool was still alive, the Dragonborn now has to get an operation unless they want to re-do the chestbuster scene from Alien .

This was the first thing I thought of but as I said I dont want anything overly negative happening. I'm not trying to kill the character. I was thinking more of a symbiote kinda situation.

[Florian]

I would do nothing beyond drop some uncomfortable hint and have fun watching them get paranoid.

[Nerdguy88]

I would do nothing beyond drop some uncomfortable hint and have fun watching them get paranoid.

This is diabolical and I love it!

[Burley]

I like the idea of having a chaotic tapeworm. If you do track food/rations, the Dragonborn probably needs twice or, eventually, thrice the amount of food, or they don't gain full benefits of resting. The type of food may be important, as well, requiring food be raw or burnt to a crisp to satisfy the slaad, with necrotic damage for food it doesn't like.
Because of its chaotic nature, maybe the Dragonborn's breath weapon randomly changes to a different element. Or, maybe the Slaad's innate spellcasting comes into play, like the tadpole using Detect Magic and the Dragonborn sensing magic via GI distress.

Also, different Slaad reproduce differently. Red creates Blue, Blue creates Red, and they both create Green, which don't reproduce. If it's a green tadpole, I think you have a lot more interesting symbiotic possibilities (since Green seem to be smarter and have abilities above rending flesh from bone).


Whether the tadpole was implanted as normal or ingested, though, its going to have all the flesh it wants to eat. Treating it as a tapeworm and keeping it well-fed may keep it from its natural metamorphosis for a while, but there should be something to worry about later. Later enough that they can plan for it or have an adventure to deal with it.

Moral of the story: if there's no consequence for putting an extradimensional parasite into your body, there must be no consequence to anything so what's the point?

[No brains]

Slaad tadpoles are tiny, but did they manage to eat it in one bite? How did they do that?

If they can swallow it whole, then it can come back out the way it came easily enough. Consider having it come back as a full-grown friendly slaad that never realized they could come out with the host alive. If the character could cast spells, then it could come back as a green slaad that perfectly empathizes with the character to the point that it's unsettling. An empathetic green slaad could try to stand up for its old host by impersonating them and facing their fears... without consulting the host first.

"I know you had disagreements with the guards, so I went right up to them and told them everything on your mind while wearing your face. Now you don't have to worry about keeping it all repressed. You might have to worry about resisting arrest though."

[Aalbatr0ss]

I don't want anything overly negative to happen but my players found a slaad tadpole. The dragonborn player picked it up and ate it when it tried to eat them first. What are some weird/fun/interesting things that might come from this?

I love this! What a beautiful and unique opportunity. You could take it soooo many directions. Please come back and provide an update once this is resolved.

Oh! You definitely should have them meet someone who has been implanted with a slaad egg hang out with them for a while before they "give birth".

[Bavarian itP]

I'm not trying to kill the character.

If the player knew that it was a slaad tadpole and what a slaad is (and how it reproduces), than that was a monumentally stupid decision and you don't need to have any scruples to kill the character, imo.

[Keltest]

This was the first thing I thought of but as I said I dont want anything overly negative happening. I'm not trying to kill the character. I was thinking more of a symbiote kinda situation.

No offense, but this is sort of like saying "my player ate a live bomb, what can i do with it thats interesting but not terribly negative?"

I'm generally of the opinion that player foolishness should have consequences, but even beside that, its a thing thats specifically designed to kill you once it gets inside you, and they just put it inside them. The best thing they could realistically hope for here, IMO, is for nothing to happen because it got killed from being eaten.

[Nerdguy88]

No offense, but this is sort of like saying "my player ate a live bomb, what can i do with it thats interesting but not terribly negative?"

I'm generally of the opinion that player foolishness should have consequences, but even beside that, its a thing thats specifically designed to kill you once it gets inside you, and they just put it inside them. The best thing they could realistically hope for here, IMO, is for nothing to happen because it got killed from being eaten.


If the player knew that it was a slaad tadpole and what a slaad is (and how it reproduces), than that was a monumentally stupid decision and you don't need to have any scruples to kill the character, imo.

First the players did NOT know it was a slaad. There was an overly large tadpole that attacked them that looked weird.
Second this is a game being run for kids. The oldest is 13.

Even when I am running for adults I'm not big on killing players outside of the odd dice roll. Its more fun to have weird stuff happen. Maybe going forward she needs to eat WAY more or get exhaustion levels. Maybe she gets minor slaad powers while fully fed. Maybe she gets disadvantage every now and again because of the psionic noise in her head.

I agree that by the book its "Slaad grows up and you die" but boo to that. I was more fun and interesting things to happen and not just people dying.

[Keltest]

First the players did NOT know it was a slaad. There was an overly large tadpole that attacked them that looked weird.
Second this is a game being run for kids. The oldest is 13.

Even when I am running for adults I'm not big on killing players outside of the odd dice roll. Its more fun to have weird stuff happen. Maybe going forward she needs to eat WAY more or get exhaustion levels. Maybe she gets minor slaad powers while fully fed. Maybe she gets disadvantage every now and again because of the psionic noise in her head.

I agree that by the book its "Slaad grows up and you die" but boo to that. I was more fun and interesting things to happen and not just people dying.

Like i said, its sort of like eating a live bomb. You've got a pretty small range of outcomes while staying true to what the thing fundamentally is. Kill the tadpole from being eaten, then later let them know about slaads in some way and how much of a bullet they dodged. Yeah, its kind of boring, but cheating death has a thrill of its own.

[Mastikator]

Maybe after a couple of days he should start making con (dc20) saves every day. If he fails he takes damage, if he succeeds hurls the tadpole up which then attacks them.
Medicine, nature or arcana checks can find out what caused it (dc15). Medicine or herbalism kit (dc15) can give advantage on con save, very high roll may even result in resistance against the poison.

Have the damage start small and increase every day.

Lesser restoration should cure it (and kill the tadpole, parasite infection is a disease after all) if they specify the tadpole infection.

It should give a sense of emergency while still giving them time to figure it out and deal with it. But if they just ignore it then yes kill the character.

[Nerdguy88]

Like i said, its sort of like eating a live bomb. You've got a pretty small range of outcomes while staying true to what the thing fundamentally is. Kill the tadpole from being eaten, then later let them know about slaads in some way and how much of a bullet they dodged. Yeah, its kind of boring, but cheating death has a thrill of its own.

I've seen enough looney toons to know eating a bomb isn't always lethal.

[Keravath]

Indigestion? If the Dragonborn ate it and chewed it up then all there is, is a dead Slaad tadpole being digested. Most of the time when someone says "they eat it" ... chewing is involved.

On the other hand, if they literally swallowed the tadpole alive and whole ... I think I'd stage a scene at the tavern where an NPC is asking about their latest exploits - leading the conversation perhaps by mentioning unusual foods - when the NPC learns that the PC swallowed a live Slaad tadpole, the NPC can warn the PC about dire consequences. Alternatively, Slaads could come up in a conversation with the PCs and the NPC could describe the usual life cycle of Slaads.

In either case, when the PCs realize the problem, there can be a quest to get the Dragonborn "cured". The DM can put as much or as little emphasis as they like on it by manipulating the time element. How long does it take a tadpole to become dangerous to its host?

The PCs might learn that eating monsters might not be the best diet :)

[Willowhelm]

I agree that by the book its "Slaad grows up and you die" but boo to that. I was more fun and interesting things to happen and not just people dying.

It doesn’t have to be an insta death. You can drop hints and things get worse and worse (con saves each day with levels of exhaustion on failure) and the team have to work to get the thing out. Maybe making a deal with a unscrupulous character.

On the flip side they could start gaining benefits of an aberrant mind sorcerer.

Perhaps each day it’s one or the other depending on the con check.

And the consequences can be held off until after the end of the campaign if desired. It depends how much downtime they get?

[herrhauptmann]

Just because it's for kids doesn't mean nothing bad happens. Just that gore might be off the table.

In no way should the player get a benefit, not without an equal negative. You're just going to teach them to eat more bombs otherwise.

How big was this thing that it tried to eat them, but was easily edible by a player? Have they encountered slaadi before? Maybe the dragonborn lays an egg. "Dude isn't your character male?" "Yeah..." "How did you lay an egg?" Cue the hatching of a hostile slaad with dragonborn abilities layered on top of a regular slaad. It's been born twice, there's no chance of it managing that unchanged.

[ftafp]

I don't want anything overly negative to happen but my players found a slaad tadpole. The dragonborn player picked it up and ate it when it tried to eat them first. What are some weird/fun/interesting things that might come from this?

Edit: This is a campaign for children. The oldest is 13. This is part of why I'm not going full on dark gritty "It eats you from the inside and bursts out" on them.

instead of bursting out have it occasionally form around them and go berserk, but also let them bargain with it, like a Venom sort of situation

[ProsecutorGodot]

Rime of the Frostmaiden actually covers this exact situation. In a few months a fully grown Slaad bursts out of their stomach unless they are targeted by an effect that would cure a disease.

Since you want to avoid that first bit, just lay it on thick that they've eaten something bad. If the party has a Paladin then using 5 charges of Lay on Hands is all it would take, if they don't a quick visit to a local Cleric or Apothecary could provide a sidequest for the party to cure the Dragonborn while they get progressively more sick if they take too long. No need to penalize too harshly, you would probably know better than we would what kind of thing would push the party to act.

[Lord Torath]

I'm going with those asking about chewing. As Roy pointed out in one of the calendars, "Chews Food Thoroughly Before Swallowing is a much more powerful ability than Swallows Whole."
If the dragonborn character chews his food thoroughly, he's got nothing to worry about.

If not, or if you just want to have something funny/interesting happen there's always the Diner scene from Spaceballs. Just have it burst out of the PC's stomach (note - stomach, not heart/lungs.chest area) when there's a cleric nearby who can cast Cure Something Wounds to patch him back up.

[Burley]

I'm going with those asking about chewing. As Roy pointed out in one of the calendars, "Chews Food Thoroughly Before Swallowing is a much more powerful ability than Swallows Whole."
If the dragonborn character chews his food thoroughly, he's got nothing to worry about.


When I look at pictures of dragonborn, it doesn't look like their mouths are suited to chewing. They're much more like that of reptiles, which rip chunks and swallow whole.

[Nerdguy88]

Me: I'm playing with kids.
Me: I dont want anything super negative to happen.
Most of GITP: MURDER THE CHILDREN AND TEACH THEM THE ERROR OF THEIR WAYS

Seriously if your only suggestion after reading my original post is to kill, maim, or damage them just move on. Its not what I'm looking for.

[Keltest]

Me: I'm playing with kids.
Me: I dont want anything super negative to happen.
Most of GITP: MURDER THE CHILDREN AND TEACH THEM THE ERROR OF THEIR WAYS

Seriously if your only suggestion after reading my original post is to kill, maim, or damage them just move on. Its not what I'm looking for.

He ate a bomb. The number of directions we can go with that is extremely limited. We understand it's not what you want, but the fact is, you're working in the same territory as "he stabbed himself."

[Willowhelm]

Seriously if your only suggestion after reading my original post is to kill, maim, or damage them just move on. Its not what I'm looking for.

Unfortunately you’ve got an assumption there that doesn’t hold in my experience.

[Willowhelm]

He ate a bomb. The number of directions we can go with that is extremely limited.

It really isn’t. It’s unlimited. That’s the beauty of playing DnD.

[Nerdguy88]

He ate a bomb. The number of directions we can go with that is extremely limited. We understand it's not what you want, but the fact is, you're working in the same territory as "he stabbed himself."

I guess if you want some gritty realistic 'everyone dies' campaign. I never run that kind of game and don't find them that fun. The suggestions I have liked so far involve something other than "They die" which I said from the start wasn't something I wanted.

I appreciate all the other suggestions though and am thinking of combining a few of them. Something like a slaad symbiote. Not 100% positive because I don't want this kind of thing to happen all the time but with tradeoffs. I let my group make super powerful characters so they feel like heroes and not like barbarian #3894893 in the world. After all Slaad are all about chaos so why not 99.9% of the time it leads to death but this one weird hero has something different happen?

[Keltest]

It is entirely possible for dumb decisions to have negative consequences without the consequences being death. And heroism without risk isn't worth much. Give them a sense for how dangerous it is, then let them survive it. They'll feel powerful and successful.

[Sigreid]

Get out a copy of the wand of wonder random table and whenever the character is under stress, roll once on the table. The chaos is part of what he is now. Should be mostly just kind of funny and a little inconvenient.

[Nerdguy88]

It is entirely possible for dumb decisions to have negative consequences without the consequences being death. And heroism without risk isn't worth much. Give them a sense for how dangerous it is, then let them survive it. They'll feel powerful and successful.

I disagree. "I almost died and barley made it out" does not make me feel powerful. It makes me feel like I'm going to die constantly. I sent this to my friends and they are about 75/25 on my side. I want legend of zelda not dark souls. If I want to play a game where you could die from everything thats even slightly more powerful then I would swap over to world of darkness or call of cthulhu.


Get out a copy of the wand of wonder random table and whenever the character is under stress, roll once on the table. The chaos is part of what he is now. Should be mostly just kind of funny and a little inconvenient.

I actually love this suggestion thanks!

[Kane0]

The PC develops Synesthesia, followed by a notable increase in metabolism and a growth spurt. If left untreated their hair starts to fall out, their skin thickens into a tough scaley hide and changes to a reddish brown color.

[Keltest]

If the players can't get hurt even when they actively try to hurt themselves, they're going to decide that you're just coddling them rather than that they're actually powerful. Give them a baseline to compare themselves to, and their relative power will become apparent.

Beyond that, as someone else mentioned, if you reward them, you're going to teach them to keep swallowing bombs.

[Nerdguy88]

If the players can't get hurt even when they actively try to hurt themselves, they're going to decide that you're just coddling them rather than that they're actually powerful. Give them a baseline to compare themselves to, and their relative power will become apparent.

They aren't trying to hurt themselves. They ate a weird looking tadpole that was attacking them. It bit her so she ate it. That is all they know at this point.

[Keltest]

They aren't trying to hurt themselves. They ate a weird looking tadpole that was attacking them. It bit her so she ate it. That is all they know at this point.

How young are these kids that "eating something strange, violent and alive" is not an obviously bad decision, and are you sure you should be even implicitly telling them its OK to put strange animals in their mouths?

[Kane0]

Not everything needs deep psychoanalysis. It could just be kids having fun.

[Nerdguy88]

Not everything needs deep psychoanalysis. It could just be kids having fun.

Not every campaign has to be super serious. Not everything has to be "Every time you mess up you DIE!!!". Sometimes fun stupid games are just as good. Honestly if she wants to turn into some weird blue mage that eats things to gain their powers I would run with it. I've told everyone in the group if they aren't having fun let me know what the problem is and we will work it out to make sure its fun. If the entire table laughs as the barbarian is getting eaten again and she eats the thing back then we are running with it.

[Keltest]

Not everything needs deep psychoanalysis. It could just be kids having fun.

Then have the character get really sick and puke up a bunch of rainbow vomit or something. Slapstick can be hilarious while still being firmly in the territory of "that was a mistake."

Frankly, my real advice here would be don't put bombs in your campaign if you aren't comfortable with the possibility of them going off. You haven't told them what it is yet, you could retcon it to be something less hideously lethal.

[Grim Portent]

This is a campaign for children. The oldest is 13. This is part of why I'm not going full on dark gritty "It eats you from the inside and bursts out" on them.

Are they generally at an age where eventually pooping out a very confused frog monster that thinks the dragonborn is it's mother is still going to be funny to them? If so then pooping out a confused monster baby is a possible option.



Sensibly speaking I would say a slaadi tadpole would probably die if eaten, much like any other living thing that isn't designed to live in the digestive tract, it's not supposed to go in the stomach after all. Even with resistance to acid it's going to be digested, suffocated and bludgeoned to death by the stomach before it can cause any real damage.

[JLandan]

I don't want anything overly negative to happen but my players found a slaad tadpole. The dragonborn player picked it up and ate it when it tried to eat them first. What are some weird/fun/interesting things that might come from this?

Edit: This is a campaign for children. The oldest is 13. This is part of why I'm not going full on dark gritty "It eats you from the inside and bursts out" on them.

All the twelve year olds I know would love that.:smallbiggrin:

An alternate, non-lethal suggestion...

He poops it out whole and it starts calling him "Mama".

[Dualight]

Another non-lethal suggestion: The character experiences a bout of chaotic indigestion. At appropriate times(depending on the sense of humour of the DM/group), CON save, on a failure, roll on the Wild Magic Surge table (re-rolling inappropriate results). Eating a creature of pure chaos is not that good of a strategy if you do not have a biology adapted to such a diet.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Nothing the Tadpole is supposed to be implanted not eaten. It gets digested like anything else.

[TaiLiu]

How young are these kids that "eating something strange, violent and alive" is not an obviously bad decision, and are you sure you should be even implicitly telling them its OK to put strange animals in their mouths?

Frankly, my real advice here would be don't put bombs in your campaign if you aren't comfortable with the possibility of them going off. You haven't told them what it is yet, you could retcon it to be something less hideously lethal.
Presumably the kids have some kind of cognitive capability to differentiate between actions they'd be willing to take in a game ("what happens if I try to jump off the cliff?") and actions they'd be willing to take outside of one. It's unclear how it's any more morally irresponsible than letting them play a video game with guns.

I also think that the tadpole was just a monster and not intended to be a bomb—I don't think Nerdguy88 expected her character to swallow it.

[Witty Username]

Did he chew it?

[Aalbatr0ss]

I don't want anything overly negative to happen but my players found a slaad tadpole. The dragonborn player picked it up and ate it when it tried to eat them first. What are some weird/fun/interesting things that might come from this?

Edit: This is a campaign for children. The oldest is 13. This is part of why I'm not going full on dark gritty "It eats you from the inside and bursts out" on them.

Ugh... You asked for weird/fun/interesting and you're getting There must be dire consequences for their actions. I'm sorry.

There's a lot of fun / silly ways you can take it like a slaadpole familiar. Good for you running a game for kids. It has its own unique challenges.

[werescythe]

This was the first thing I thought of but as I said I dont want anything overly negative happening. I'm not trying to kill the character. I was thinking more of a symbiote kinda situation.

Well, if you're going along the Symbiote route, one thing you could do is give them the Symbiotic Being dark gift from Vanrichten's Guide to Ravenloft. Could lead to some interesting story mechanics. You could even be sneaky about it and just tell the character that at times they have the benefits of the Symbiotic Being and then later you could have the Slaad Tadpole attempt to charm the character for various actions/misdeeds (have them learn it was the tadpole giving them the ability after the first charm attempt).

[Unoriginal]

This was the first thing I thought of but as I said I dont want anything overly negative happening. I'm not trying to kill the character. I was thinking more of a symbiote kinda situation.

They don't have to die, they can just do the operation. Timers are fun, too.

For lore reason I would go 'either the tadpole dies or they try to dig out', personally. But if you want something sillier you could say the Dragonborn is infused with Slaad Chaos and can now transform into a Slaad.

[Rhane]

À group of NPC follow and attack them because they're slaad hunter and "smelled" slaad in the dragonborn.

[Keravath]

Me: I'm playing with kids.
Me: I dont want anything super negative to happen.
Most of GITP: MURDER THE CHILDREN AND TEACH THEM THE ERROR OF THEIR WAYS

Seriously if your only suggestion after reading my original post is to kill, maim, or damage them just move on. Its not what I'm looking for.

I'm not sure you are reading the same thread I am or at least reading it selectively. From what I read, maybe 10-20% of the posts suggested nasty consequences (maybe less). Most of them pointed out that the DM gets to decide what happens - varying anywhere from - "the tadpole gets chewed up so the worst that happens is indigestion" to "a great opportunity for a time delineated side quest to get the Dragonborn cured" - since the DM is in charge of the time frame and consequences there is no suggestion to 'MURDER THE CHILDREN' in any of those ideas.

I think there was maybe one forumite who was adamant about consequences and that does not amount to "Most of GITP".

----

If you want to go with what could logically happen from swallowing a Slaad tadpole - that varies from nothing serious to lets have a quest to cure the Dragonborn.

If you want something funny and chaotic - the suggestion of burping random wand of wonder effects sounded hilarious and the suggestion of getting a pet Slaad tadpole calling the character 'Mama' after it emerges at the other end would also likely be funny especially for kids.

So, you have lots of suggestions and very few, if any, suggested 'MURDER THE CHILDREN'.

Also, are the characters actually children or is it just the players? If the players are children playing adult or at least teenage characters then it can be fun to treat the children players as adults as part of the role playing .. kids generally love it when listened to and treated as more grown up.

[Pildion]

I don't want anything overly negative to happen but my players found a slaad tadpole. The dragonborn player picked it up and ate it when it tried to eat them first. What are some weird/fun/interesting things that might come from this?

Edit: This is a campaign for children. The oldest is 13. This is part of why I'm not going full on dark gritty "It eats you from the inside and bursts out" on them.

Well, for a group of kids, I totally get it, I've got my own group of nephews and nieces I DM for.

I would A) ignore the people here with to much edge and then B) go with something funny. I think the double or triple the food intake is a good one. I wouldn't give the character a power boost of any kind but yea, just fluff stuff. Like the eating, changing scale color, at most maybe the dragonborns breath weapon changes its element.

[Xervous]

Either I missed it or the dragonborn’s specific element hasn’t been mentioned. Depending on that and Slaadpole resistances you might have just discovered a cultural delicacy.

[Unoriginal]

Either I missed it or the dragonborn’s specific element hasn’t been mentioned. Depending on that and Slaadpole resistances you might have just discovered a cultural delicacy.

Or maybe eating the tadpole could change the Dragonborn's breath to Chaos Breath for a few uses.

[Xervous]

Or maybe eating the tadpole could change the Dragonborn's breath to Chaos Breath for a few uses.

Forbidden onion breath, hmm.

[rel]

Given all the sharp teeth a dragonborn has, the tadpole is killed during the eating process.
It's extra protein. But it is chaotic, extradimensional, extra protein.

The dragonborn gets gas. Really REALLY bad gas.

For the next few days they get an extra use of their breath weapon (although it isn't actually breath they're deploying) NPC's complain constantly about the odor and descriptions of any failed checks the dragon born makes make reference to their unfortunate new condition.

[Aalbatr0ss]

Or maybe eating the tadpole could change the Dragonborn's breath to Chaos Breath for a few uses.

THIS is a cool, simple idea and from my experience the kind of thing a young player could really enjoy.

[Angelalex242]

Chaos Breath...

Hmmm.

Chaos is confusion.

His breath weapon causes the 'confuse' spell. Instead of elemental damage, the enemy, if they fail their save, suddenly have to roll a d8 to see what they do.

[Imbalance]

Frankly, my real advice here would be don't put bombs in your campaign if you aren't comfortable with the possibility of them going off. You haven't told them what it is yet, you could retcon it to be something less hideously lethal.

I was going to lead with this, but you already said it.

Conversely, rather than chastise the DM, I think it bears discussing how Slaad are supposedly emblematic of chaos, yet, as written, they're color-coded and downright...predictable. Would it not be more chaotic to find disorder among them? There isn't much to be confused about if they always do exactly what the stat block says, now, is there? In fact, this contention applies to nearly every chaotic creature in the book (a few come with random effects tables). Does D&D even know the meaning of the word 'chaos'?

[DeadMech]

Why should anything happen? Is it immune to acid damage and asphyxiation? Cause if not it'll die in a person's stomach before terribly long.

[Composer99]

1) It's your game, change the lore on Slaad if you want.

2) The PC ate the tadpole rather than the tadpole implanting the normal way, so it's not necessarily the case that the tadpole would develop so as to result in a chest buster type scene. This seems like something you decide for your game.

3) I concur with ideas that the PC has strange effects while digesting the slaad tadpole (slaadpole?). Depending on the party's level you could have wild magic surges go off centred on the PC at random (or when the PC's body surges with adrenaline such as at the start of a fight so the surge is only happening when it could be really impactful). Wild surges seem like they would get across the point that eating slaadpoles is a bad idea without going full body horror.

[Glorthindel]

I get the "DM wants a non-lethal solution, so look for a non-lethal solution", since the DM is asking for help, its right to give him the help he's asking for, but I am slightly askance at the "how dare you suggest horrible consequences, think of the children!" comments ... the "children" are 13. I was writing the horrible consequences for other players at 13. I was running WFRP from about 12, moved on to Ravenloft at 14, trust me, my players weren't getting Kirby's dreamworld, and no one was traumatised (though one did move on to work in Marketting, so maybe I did do some damage to his psyche...).

[MadBear]

Easy solution. They didn't eat a slaad tadpole. They ate something else.

Slaad tadpoles kill their host and are very dark and nasty. If that's not the vibe your going for, just make it not that thing. They ate a dire frog tadpole instead. Maybe it gives them nausea, maybe it makes them randomly hiccup and use their dragon breath at inappropriate moments.

But if the vibe your going for is fun and light hearted, don't have it be the equivalent of a xenomorph.

[Unoriginal]

I was going to lead with this, but you already said it.

Conversely, rather than chastise the DM, I think it bears discussing how Slaad are supposedly emblematic of chaos, yet, as written, they're color-coded and downright...predictable. Would it not be more chaotic to find disorder among them? There isn't much to be confused about if they always do exactly what the stat block says, now, is there? In fact, this contention applies to nearly every chaotic creature in the book (a few come with random effects tables). Does D&D even know the meaning of the word 'chaos'?

Well for the Slaadi in particular, they were created by Primus, planar ruler of the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanius, as consequences of an attempt to make Limbo more lawful. So it makes sense they are stuck following a set template for their bodies even if their minds are chaotic.

What bother me more is that they are overwhelmingly portrayed as one-note cruel villains rather than as the chaotic neutral beings they are supposed to be. I can recal only 1 Slaad in a published adventure who is shown as a neutral figure with a personality.

For other beings like the Demons, the lore makes clear the Demons aren't uniform like the Devils, it's just that most of the variations have no mechanical impact.

[Composer99]

I get the "DM wants a non-lethal solution, so look for a non-lethal solution", since the DM is asking for help, its right to give him the help he's asking for, but I am slightly askance at the "how dare you suggest horrible consequences, think of the children!" comments ... the "children" are 13. I was writing the horrible consequences for other players at 13. I was running WFRP from about 12, moved on to Ravenloft at 14, trust me, my players weren't getting Kirby's dreamworld, and no one was traumatised (though one did move on to work in Marketting, so maybe I did do some damage to his psyche...).

Pretty sure my 10-year-old could stomach the description of a slaad chest burst in a D&D game based on his love of horror video games.

[Kane0]

Mysterious colored lump forms on the body, and if you touch it it changes color and moves to another part of the body. Otherwise harmless.

[subtledoctor]

This can be fun for kids, it doesn't have to be deadly or scary. I would maybe:

- Inform the player that they have loud, uncontrollable burps for some time. Like weeks, in-game. The player can really ham it up if they find it fun. Just burping through every conversation with NPCs, giving the groups position away when sneaking, whatever. Hilarious hijinks.

- Have the slaad grow inside the player and start talking from within. Like that parasite that eats a fish's tongue and then latches on and becomes the tongue... but a non-gross version of that. Like when the group is having a conversation, have the slaad butt in all of a sudden and give it's opinion, speaking from within the player's mouth. Same deal - giving away their presence, saying the wrong thing (insulting patrons or royalty, whatever). Make it an annoying familiar that they can't get rid of.

- Finally, what goes in must come out right? Play up having to take a massive dump at some point, the biggest longest dump ever imagined. Kids should love bringing some potty humor to the table, no? Maybe make them run away to a bathroom in the middle of a battle, to foist a surprise disadvantage upon the party. And at the end of it do the Austin Powers thing, some NPC looking at a juvenile-but-grown slaad and going "what did you eat???"

[Throne12]

Well this is what I would do the first few day I'll tell him his Stomach is making grueling noises and he has a upset stomach. Then I would move into making con save when he go's to talk a long rest to see if he if he gets a long rest. I'll also tell him he's more hungry. Then if he checks off 2 rations the DC for the con save is lower a bit. Then after a few weeks if they still haven't done anything about it I would roll a D4 each day and that how many points they lose from the max hp. Then each following week the die go's up d4 to d6 to d8 to d10 to d12 to d20 until there max hp hits 0 Then the creature burst from there chest. If it get here they need this lesson so do you as a DM.