D&D Monster Spotlight: Cold Creatures For Your Winter Time Adventures
The weather outside is getting frightful. So wouldn’t it be appropriate if the weather and monsters in your next D&D session followed suit?
For many of us, it’s getting really cold outside really fast. Last week was a perfectly reasonable sweater temperature and this today it’s snowing and I found myself regretting leaving my house without the full scarf-hat-gloves treatment. While the weather outside is getting frightful, the weather and monsters can also do so in your next D&D adventure with these frozen foes.
Coldlight Walker
Sometimes when a humanoid dies from the extreme cold, their spirits languish on in the mortal realms. It’s your average horror movie stuff. But let’s be honest, that’s sort of perfect for a D&D monster. Their frozen corpses emit a spectral light so intense and horrible that mortal eyes can’t stand to look directly at them, and their inability to pass on to the afterlife makes them angry and wrathful. If you have a party member unlucky enough to be killed by a Coldlight Walker, you’ll be carting them around for a few days. For nine days any creature killed by the Walker can’t be thawed, harmed by fire, animated, or raised from the dead.
Ice Troll
Trolls have been a part of D&D since the beginning. But Rime of the Frostmaiden added a new variety to 5E with the Ice Troll. Normal Trolls have regenerative abilities, making them a little challenging to defeat. But the Ice Troll takes it to a whole other level. If you consume the heart of an Ice Troll you gain their regenerative powers for twenty-four hours, and if it’s buried in the ground it will summon blizzard conditions. It can even be turned into resistance to cold potion. Frankly, the Ice Trolls should be avoiding adventurers and not the other way around.
Yeti
If you’re looking for something a little more classic and a little less made-for-D&D, the Yeti has roots in real-world mythology and folklore. The big foot of snowy lands is known for being elusive but terrifying to the unexpecting adventurer. But in D&D they’re a little more likely to make themselves known. Yetis will attach humanoid settlements if hungry enough, but they’re fearful of fire. Unfortunately, their gaze can freeze an enemy in chill and fear, making members of your party easy targets. And if everyone in the party is lucky enough to avoid being paralyzed, Yetis still have high running and climbing speeds, sharp claws, and a keen sense of smell for hunting.
Frost Giant
Frost Giants are more interested in power than wealth. So while raiding snowy mountain-tucked villages, taverns and smithies will be destroyed with the ale and weapons gone, while banks will stay surprisingly upright. Within Frost Giant society dominance is determined through wrestling and community tasks and jobs are handed out based on the hardiness and strength of various Giants. And if your party decides to go pick a fight with a Frost Giant over that destroyed tavern, you’re going to find their giant-sized greataxe and rock-throwing to be quite a big problem to contend with.
Frost Salamander
Frost Salamanders have a bad mix of a frozen bite and breath with a hunger for warm-blooded prey. Like most frozen monsters, they aren’t fans of fire. But if your party tries to take shelter in a cave that they’re already inhabiting, they’ll almost definitely pop in for a warm meal.
What’s your favorite cold weather monster or frozen foe in D&D? Do you have any plans for a seasonably cold D&D adventure? Are you getting snow in your neck of the woods? Let us know in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
