Slaad
| Slaad | |
|---|---|
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| Characteristics | |
| Alignment | Chaotic neutral |
| Type | Outsider |
| Image | Wizards.com image |
The slaad (pluralized as slaadi, or as slaads in the 4th edition) is a fictional monster in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. They are Outsiders that resemble giant humanoid toads of various colors.
The slaadi were created by Charles Stross for the Fiend Factory column in White Dwarf magazine. It was later compiled (along with many other monsters submitted to the magazine) into the TSR UK book, Fiend Folio Tome of Creatures Malevolent and Benign (1981). Stross said of their creation,
Well, the fact that I was running a fever when I came up with the Slaadi is probably not going to surprise anyone — think of ‘em as my independent exploration of Lovecraftiana. (I didn’t discover H. P. Lovecraft until a couple of years later.)... Think “Lovecraft mythos”, as invented by someone who hasn’t read Lovecraft (or heard of him). The Slaadi were going to be basically representatives of, and devotees of, total chaos — with an added warped sense of humour.
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 overemphasized in early artistic depictions of the monsters. With the advent of the Planescape campaign setting, TSR, Inc. made an effort to create a more appropriately fearsome image of the slaadi, with their toad qualities toned down in favor of showing their more frightening aspects 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 (and their copyrights transferred to TSR and, subsequently, Wizards of the Coast), 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.
The blue slaad, death slaad (the lesser masters), the green slaad, the grey slaad (the executioners), and the red slaad appear in the first edition Fiend Folio (1981), 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".
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