#slaadi

Drunk shopping online part 2; One Slaad, two slaad, red slaad, blue slaad! Like I said previously, I was looking for some bandits and slaad minis online when I had been drinking and went to various places, and these two, I'd only meant to purchase one, are from Reaper Minis. They are listed as Chaos Toad, Savage. This makes me wonder if there are other varieties of Chaos Toad; civilized, moody, spiteful, witty, and what miniatures for those different Chaos Toads would look like.

Double backstab

Furthermore you can PROBABLY use these terms to label similar creatures in your original non-D&D works, as long as it also includes the proper attribution. Also I'd still suggest making an effort to make them distinct enough, so e.g. with beholders, yes to alien eye monsters, probably no to the typical arrogance and eye stalks.

You’re late, we’ve been waiting for you -- Daniel Horne’s cover painting for Dungeon 10, March/April 1988, featuring the arch-mage Azurax and his slaadi friends, who have been watching the party’s every move since they arrived at his tower, from AD&D adventure “Threshold of Evil” by Scott Bennie

woman laughing with slaad

An old drawing from 2019, when my friend group was just getting into D&D. Obviously, I immediately was drawn to the monsters, having drawn a sizeable chunk of them the year (or two) before. As a patented forever DM, I was left to explain the difference between the different monster types to them. My initial idea was to draw a series of drawings like those above, with a character from our campaign and a number of low-level examples of that creature type. Unfortunately, it didn't pan out. Firstly because we simply didn't have enough time, and there aren't actually that many low-level monsters in certain categories. Try as hard as I might, but Celestials and Giants simply weren't conducive to the theme. So I abandoned the project. But, why let some perfectly good drawings go to waste? Of the one's I've finished, only two of them are really "presentable", this being the first. Aberrations are basically anything that's too weird for a world of metal-eating turtle-dillos and corpse licking worms. All of them are alien, whether in their biology or their point of origin. Many of them also tend to lean towards the psionic powers, rather then the arcane. Showing off our three specimens is Baron von Kaiserlicht, a wizard who was almost slaad-ed, but managed to save his skin. Or, rather, his bones. Kaiserlicht is just an ambulating anatomy looking for his skin, which happened to steal his magic as well. He's trying to wretch, but without any muscles or saliva he's gotta pantomime it. The quintessential aberrations are the ixitxachitl, the flumph, and the slaad tadpole. Ixitxachitl are sting-rays that evolved psychic powers. That's their origin. Because they lack teeth and thumbs, they have to rely on their barbed tails for defense. The idea of a creature evolving psychic powers to hunt prey and by accident evolving intelligence and a god-complex was funny enough for me to include them. Flumphs are the alien equivalents of paladins, seeking out evil creatures to eat. Their goofy appearance belies a sense of justice. And poisonous tentacles, can't forget those. Finally, slaad tadpoles are the first stage of the body-snatching slaadi, invaders from another dimension. They work xenomorph-style, plugging their young into people and then bursting out. Rather than going straight frog, I wanted to make it look like something that could only be described by making a vain attempt at connecting it to a preexisting animal. Because the tadpole uses people to incubate, its skin is actually made up of its host's skin, freckles and all. It's also leaking Limbo juice, to communicate its alien origins. And because they tend to be a little... unstable.