Expected read time: about 8 minutes

Today we’re revisiting the most popular subclass we’ve put out up to this point. Of the three free options you get for signing up for the Unraveled Archives newsletter, this one’s the most radical in its design.

You see, sorcerers normally get subclass features at 1st, 6th, 14th, and 18th level. Almost always one feature at each of those levels. This one, though, gets *two* features at every one of those levels!

Now, before you go throwing your laptop or phone or whatever you’re reading this on and calling “power creep!” you need to understand that you only get access to *one* of those two features at a time. It’s like you get access to two different sets of abilities, and you get a certain switch to flip back and forth between them.

So what’s the switch?

Just the egg of an alien parasite waiting to hatch and burst out of your poor, dying body. No biggie.

You may have questions, which is why before we jump into the mechanics, we’re going to dwell a moment on the lore of the Slaadi in Dungeons & Dragons.

Otherworldly Battle-Toads

So the Slaadi (or Slaads) are giant frog-like aberrations from the chaotic plane of Limbo (you know, where the Githzerai live). They’re pretty much chaos incarnate, and frequently swarm together in raiding parties to spread their chaos across the multiverse—almost exclusively by way of extreme violence.

The next thing to know about them is that for being as chaotic as they are, they’re also kind of neatly organized by color. Which is fascinating. Their abilities and power level are determined by their color (red, blue, green, the list goes on!) and under certain circumstances they can sometimes become strong enough to change to a different color.

Today, we’re mostly going to talk about the red and blue slaads. Because how they reproduce is kind of where the subclass comes from.

See, red slaads create blue slaads, and blue slaads create red slaads. A blue slaad can rake someone with its claws and infect them with a disease that eventually turns the victim into a red slaad. It’s not a pretty sight.

Similarly, when a red slaad attacks someone, it injects them with an egg. This egg grows inside the host body, eventually hatches as a giant tadpole, and chews its way out of the host’s chest. Also not pretty. But it is kinda cool! If you’re into that sort of thing.

Parasite Unhatched

So I got to thinking, what happens if a slaad egg never ends up hatching? Does it eventually just kind of die? Or can it feed off of the host indefinitely? And what would happen to the host, to have this magic-alien-chaos-seed inside forever?

And more, why would a slaad egg not end up hatching?

These questions paved the way for the Slaad Symbiote subclass. See, something happens with the slaad egg inside you. Maybe it’s just kind of a dud, unable to hatch on its own. Maybe its chaos magic latches onto you and somehow binds the two of you together. Or maybe the slimy little parasite just likes staying where it’s nice and warm and gets free food. Whatever the actual cause, the experience changes you.

Where other sorcerers get their magical power from their bloodline or a fey blessing or what-have-you, you get it from the chaos magic that’s literally in your body, filling you with all sorts of yucky craziness. By accident, or with some practice, you learn to tap into that power source and use it to cast spells.

If that were the end of it, we could have just represented this story with the Wild Magic Sorcerous Origin. But I decided to dig a little deeper and see what else might turn up to make this potential subclass more narratively and mechanically distinct.

Precarious Symbiosis

First off, I wanted some features to represent the egg parasite inside you. So I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if the slaad egg wanted to keep you alive? You are the host, after all! If you die, it dies. So what can an egg do to keep you safe and healthy?

Healthy! How cool would it be if this sickness in you helped to fight off other illnesses? What if it kept you from ever getting sick? In fact, remember the blue slaad and how it infects people with a terribly transmutational disease? Well, it kind of makes sense that if you’ve got the egg of one kind of slaad inside you, that you wouldn’t be able to contract the disease of another kind of slaad. So I decided that you become immune to all diseases. Kind of like a paladin’s Divine Health feature! But also so very… not.

Well, so that was a fun benefit, but diseases actually don’t come up often in most people’s 5e games, so I decided something more was needed to make the subclass pertinent. You know what *does* come up fairly often in people’s 5e games? Dying. Like, take a frost giant’s axe to the face, and now you’re bleeding out in the snow while your friends fight on without you. What if your egg could help keep you alive in such circumstances?

Enter the next part of the feature: “While your slaad egg is inside you, you have advantage on death saving throws.” That’s right, when you make those nasty death saves you get to roll twice and keep the higher one. Not only does that probably keep you alive, it pretty much doubles the chances that you’ll roll a 20, gain a hit point, and get back into the fight.

I could have left it there. I could have. But I didn’t.

I decided to lean into the gross.

Well, it kind of makes sense that if the egg doesn’t think its host will survive, that it will immediately try to hatch and get the heck out. You know, the usual way, becoming a tadpole and chewing its way out of whatever part of your body was acting as the incubator.

Mechanically, this means that if you roll one of those death saving throws and still fail, even with the advantage, that the egg no longer wastes its energy trying to keep you alive. You lose the advantage benefit “as your slaad panics and tries to escape your dying body. If you die, your slaad hatches and grows into a tadpole after 1 minute, chews its way out of your chest, and dies.”

I mean, how can you have the threat of this terrible death looming over you, and then *not* let it happen as you expire? Sometimes, just the threat of the gross = fun.

Tadpole Buddy

Okay, we’re only halfway through the 1st level of this subclass, so I gotta pick up the pace or we’ll be here forever!

Observant readers may have noticed that the previous feature said, “While the slaad egg is inside you…” Well what the heck does that mean? When would the egg not be inside you? I thought we wanted the egg to stay inside! When it’s outside, that means you died and it ate its way out! Right?

Well… nope!

The *other* feature (remember you get two at every subclass level!) lets you magically teleport the egg outside of your body, while at the same time giving it the ability to hatch. Boom, giant tadpole buddy. You’ve still got this weird magical bond, so it functions as your familiar. And when it “dies”, or if you dismiss it, it teleports back inside its cozy warm hidey-hole and reverts to an egg.

And that’s the crux of this whole subclass, the way that it’s split into two separate feature trees. You get access to one set of features while the slaad is inside you as an egg. And the other set of features becomes available when that sucker is out flopping around as your familiar.

Jumping Ahead

So now that the narrative’s all taken care of, we can move quickly through the mechanics.

At 6th level you figure out how to use the egg’s magic to gain advantage on saving throws against magic for a short time. Very powerful ability! But tampering with your parasite is risky business, and it makes you gain a level of exhaustion.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Exhaustion sucks! It’s way too crippling way too fast. The only other player option that can exhaust itself to death is the Berserker barbarian, and that’s one of the reasons it isn’t as popular as other options. People hate it, they’ll hate this feature, they’ll hate the subclass, they’ll hate ME.

Now hold on a second! Because I have reasons. The first being that it fits so well!

See, the levels of exhaustion for D&D 5e are like this:
1 level: You have disadvantage on ability checks.

2 levels: Your speed is halved.

3 levels: You have disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws.

4 levels: Your hit point maximum is halved.

5 levels: Your speed becomes 0.

6 levels: You die.

These are largely the same mechanical symptoms a person infected with a slaad egg shows before the egg hatches. How could we not work that in there somehow?

If that’s not a good enough reason to include exhaustion, I’ve got another one: advantage on saving throws against magic is strong. It’s *really* strong. And as a sorcerer who probably doesn’t have proficiency in Wisdom saves, advantage is one of the best buffs you can have against being paralyzed, otherwise incapacitated, or even dominated! Having a minute or two of this a day for a level or two of exhaustion is usually worth it.

The other half of 6th level is that while your tadpole’s touching somebody, you can communicate telepathically with that person! Weird? Yes. Useful? Also yes!

More Health and Utility

14th level brings the usual pattern of one egg feature and one tadpole feature.

We thought it would be dumb if at some point you were to travel to the slaad’s home plane of Limbo and not be able to survive there, so the egg feature here gives you a couple benefits:

You can hold your breath indefinitely. Nice for when there’s no air to breathe!
You don’t require sleep. Sleep is for babies. You’re a full-grown adventurer with a self-replenishing power source within you!

The other feature you get at 14th level is fascinating: your tadpole can polymorph itself into a humanoid shape. It keeps the same statistics (sorry, no Common!) and will most likely need some spare clothes. I love the trope of the alien-in-human-form who doesn’t speak any human language and wears odd clothing. Remember that it can still let you communicate telepathically with people by maintaining physical contact with them!

Have Some Power!

18th level is suitably strong. For your egg feature, you get some handy regeneration! So long as you have some sorcery points to spare, you can spend one at the beginning of your turn to get a decent dose of healing. It doesn’t require any sort of action, so you can proceed with your turn normally!

The tadpole feature makes your little buddy no longer a tadpole. Or little. At the hefty cost of 5 sorcery points, you can turn your tadpole into a teal slaad! It still functions as your familiar, but with a new, combat-ready stat block. It can bite, it can claw, it can throw fire (!) but most importantly, it can spread a nasty little disease capable of either turning other creatures into red slaads, *or* (with the DM’s permission) give them a level of sorcerer, complete with the Slaad Symbiote subclass. The cycle begins anew!

Wrapping it Up

Well, it’s been a long, rambling journey that I started months ago, chatting about the Slaad Symbiote. If you’ve stuck it out to the end, thank you! If you’d like to strike up a conversation about anything in the article, or anything at all, feel free to leave a comment or reach out on social media! And if the subclass sounds intriguing, please sign up for our newsletter and pick up the Slaad Symbiote for absolutely free!

Of course, if you prefer to pay for it, you can find the subclass here.

Oh, and it’s also one of the few Unraveled Archives options that’s had the honor of being translated and released in Spanish, so if that interests you or if you have Spanish-speaking friends, you can check it out here.

Until next time!

Options Unraveled: Slaad Symbiote