We then have spells that while they cause cold damage, they also lean heavily into the freezing aspect of the spell as well as having interesting benefits. Learn how your comment data is processed. No modifier The hidden fourth relationship that creatures can have to a damage type. Red. The Ice Devil can also summon a wall of ice which can be 30-foot-long, 10-foot-high, and 1-foot-thick. And if youre thinking of building a character around a common damage type, like fire or radiant, its important to know what sort of enemy defenses youre up against. Any creature that starts its turn in the area takes 2d6, You open a gateway to the dark between the stars, a region infested with unknown horrors. Check the book for ideas on how to handle Frigid Water, Slippery Ice and Thin Ice or use it to get ideas on how to handle your own hazards such as an avalanche or falling into a crevasse that appears while crossing a glacier. The target also takes 10d12 force, each target, roll a d8 to determine which color ray affects it. Extreme Cold. At Higher Levels. Your email address will not be published. If they get hit with a magical hammer for 2d6+3 magical bludgeoning damage, weve entered the conundrum. When you summon the dragon, choose one of its, duration. We use them to differentiate between things like swinging a sword at someone and lighting them on fire with a spell. Well, a large part of that is due to the fighter being able to let off an insane amount of attacks in one turn, but the other has to do with choosing the right weapon for the battle. bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, A Complete List of Character Backgrounds for DnD 5e Players, Our Favorite Early Game Item: Bracers of Archery in DnD 5e, What You Didn't Know about the Lantern of Revealing in DnD 5e, Creature Types 5e Simplified List With Examples by Type, Necrotic Damage in 5e: How it Really Works & Spell List. The Yeti is one such creature. What are the cold damage spells in 5e? Its much harder to quantify damage types that are dealt by creatures. Components: V S M (A small crystal or glass cone) Duration: Instantaneous. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing. The latter are a couple of the more core or common extra sourcebooks along with the. A blast of cold air erupts from your hands. WIS Im a huge advocate for talking to your DM when building your character. Often spells or weapons that deal a specific damage type will inflict a condition as well. Well, you could receive a resistance or vulnerability from a potion or magical effect, causing the two to virtually cancel out if you already had the opposite from a racial or class feature. Look no further, this is the master list if you want to know how common a resistance is. If the creature fails, they take 3d6 cold damage and are paralyzed for 1 min. This means being able to cast wildly powerful spells like Fireball with a damage type thats not just going to get deflected by an Adult Dragon. The flames provide you with a warm shield or a chill shield, as you choose. Im pretty sure that most of us like to walk out of combat alive. The latter are a couple of the more core or common extra sourcebooks along with the PHB which is why well only look at these for now. Understanding damage types and the many ways creatures and characters can relate to them is key to making sure youre not forcing your allies to cast Revivify after every battle. As a kid, I was often told to get my head out of the clouds and to stop living in a fantasy world. They can walk through metal doors as if they werent there, make attacks against metal armor with advantage, and obviously, theyre immune to metal weapons. For example, while fire ranks as the second-most common damage resistance and immunity, its largely due to the various types of demons, devils, and dragons in D&Ds monster compendiums that all share a disregard for fire damage. This can create tactical advantages but could also lead to unwanted collateral damage. Bludgeoning: Blunt damage. This can also trap creatures that are in the water, trapped creatures must make a Str saving throw to escape the frozen water. Damage immunity is a mechanic that is extremely absolute. document.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. While radiant vulnerability is quite rare, dealing radiant damage is one of the most reliable ways to nullify undead powers like a vampires Regeneration ability or a zombies Undead Fortitude. Definitely. However, it is very important to remember that those are extenuating circumstances. On a failed save, a creature takes 10d6, explodes. On a failed save, the creature takes 3D10 Cold damage and you can teleport to an unoccuppied space within 30ft. Many bludgeoning spells in D&D involve hurling raw elemental power at your enemies, so it makes sense that druids have access to the most spells that deal bludgeoning damage. Or at least learn a few fun facts about the magical system of Dungeons & Dragons. There are six types of elemental damage: Acid, Fire, Cold, Lightning, Thunder, and Poison. While I cant prepare you for all of them, I want to eliminate as much confusion as possible while I have you here. We're not talking about the harmless Elsa type of freezing; this kind of freezing will cause body parts to fall off and shatter. Piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing damage that arent adamantined If you want to hurt gargoyles and living statues, youll want an adamantine weapon. At Higher Levels. * - (a small crystal or glass cone) CHA The same goes for nonmagical damage. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. For reference there are only 5 spells that do cold damage in the PHB. Cold Damage is one of the four primary elemental damage types. Affiliate Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. So if a creature was resistant to cold damage, and took 20 cold damage from a spell (or any other source of cold damage) the creature would actually only take 10 cold damage. Their bite can inflict up to 2d8 cold damage. Also, resistances to a specific instance of damage dont stack. As always in 5e, when you divide the damage by 2, you'll round up. Affiliate Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Lightning: Another pretty simple one, this is electric damage. This spell also has the added flavor when it kills a creature the creature becomes a frozen statue until it thaws. The short answer is that it doesnt matter. So lets have a look at the specifics. A blast of cold air erupts from your hands. This is the kind of damage you might experience when someone tells you a really bad dad joke (check out Dungeons and Daddies for more on that). Ray of Frost. Damage resistances are one of the most common relationships to damage that well come across in 5e. We roll 2d6 for the greatsword, a 5 and a 4, for 9 slashing damage. Below are some common or impressive sources to grab up resistances. Wizards have access to the most blinding spells (9), but Clerics are a close second with 8 blinding spells in their arsenal. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. Here are some of the best ways to deal lightning damage with spells in D&D 5e: Piercing damage in D&D is often associated with thorny spikes or penetrating weapons. In other words, it shouldnt be a major deterrent to picking up fire spells, unless your whole campaign takes place exclusively in the Nine Hells. 10 (+0) Fire spells, for example, can set flammable objects ablaze, while cold spells will often slow affected enemies or make them more vulnerable to attacks. Same goes for poison or necrotic damage when fighting undead. At Higher Levels. Arcane Eye may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article. Cantrips: Frostbite, Ray of Frost 1: Chromatic Orb*, Ice Knife 2. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 6th level or higher, the. Its like frostbite, but really, really fast. As might be expected, Ice Elementals cannot be hurt by cold damage. It has vulnerability to slashing damage specifically dealt by a Vorpal Sword. On a hit, it takes 1d8, A flurry of magic snowballs erupts from a point you choose within range. Although, thats not the main reason I decided to use them as an example. The treant in the example above was vulnerable to fire damage, so I doubled the 2d6 of fire damage from the magical sword. Fire does tend to be the most common, but again, it all depends on the campaign and your DM. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers. Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. Typically, if you have immunity to one, you have immunity to the other. Analytics cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously. As always I hope the post has been useful so that you can increase your knowledge of this damage type and how it can show up in your games. The attacker takes 2d8 fire, successful one. It probably doesnt make sense to choose a race-based solely on its resistances, but your DM might tell you that he has a lot of poison damage planned for this campaign, and your dwarf fighter will start looking really good. This can sometimes save you a point of damage. You got a taste of it in the introduction, but damage types determine how much damage is dealt to specific creatures. It works on sorcerer class. Which is not to be confused with our next type. White dragons are associated with cold damage. 13 (+1) Resistance to a damage type means that you take half damage when youre hit with damage of that type. In simple terms, cold damage comes from sources of extremely low temperatures. This is the most common modifier you will see. This is damage dealt by powerful sounds. Which is why it makes sense that Druids tie Wizards for the most prone-inducing spells in the game, with each having access to 8 of the 13. A blast of cold air erupts from your hands. Creature immunities and resistances can completely negate some of your favorite spells. Plus, many of D&Ds fire spells come with the added effect of igniting flammable objects. What we see is that poison, fire, and cold are the damage types you are least likely to deal full damage with, in that order. On a successful save, it takes half damage and you cannot teleport. Water Genasi Acid resistance as a racial trait. This does not mean you arent still restrained unless you also have a condition immunity to being restrained. Elemental spells refer to those that can cause more than three damage types (like chaos bolt and chromatic orb) and physical spells do either bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, depending on which weapon was used (like conjure barrage and conjure volley). Description: Frigid pain leading to potential numbness caused by temperatures approaching zero Kelvin. Shivering cold. Youre also most likely to deal your expected damage or better with force, radiant, and bludgeoning, in that order. The calculation for damage resistance happens after all other modifiers are applied. Here are the most common damage type resistances and immunities in D&D 5e: Credit to Reddit user RocksInMyDryer for their awesome spreadsheet. Luckily, not many spells deal poison damage, and their additional effects are poor enough that theyd likely be ignored either way. In the example though, were dealing with a treant, which is vulnerable to fire damage. Its very important to distinguish damage types, and not jump to assumptions, since we rarely know whats going on behind the DM screen. Youre also doing pretty good with the physical damage types, so long as theyre magical. Piercing: I call this stabbing damage. Here are some of the top ways to deal bludgeoning damage with spells in D&D 5e: Spells that deal radiant damage usually involve either the raw power of the sun with spells like dawn, or calling upon religious power with spells like holy weapon. Regardless of your musical preferences, if you enjoy magic that damages enemies by rotting their bodies and speeding up decay, youre sure to be a fan of necrotic spells. While damage types in Dungeons & Dragons have no special rules of their own, they do come into play when it comes to resistance, immunity, and vulnerability: Damage type resistances and immunities are fairly common, especially at higher levels. Its basically just raw magic, devoid of any sort of elemental connection. However, this is mostly due to the wide variety of dragons, demons, and devils in the games monster compendiums who uniformly share a disregard for fire damage. Here are some of the best ways to deal elemental damage with spells in D&D 5e: For spellcasters who enjoy zapping their enemies with the raw power of electricity, lightning damage is likely to be your favorite (along with its cousin, thunder damage). I dont know if theres any D&D campaign thats managed to completely avoid battle. In 5e there are a bunch of creatures that can inflict cold damage, again like always, I've tried to pick examples that show off the different ways it can be inflicted. However, their main source of cold damage comes from their cold breath attack. Found in snowy mountain terrain, these creatures can inflict 1d6 cold damage via its claw attacks. That would be pretty crazy right? Cookies are small text files that can be used by websites to make a user's experience more efficient. Below youll find a glorious list. This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. Fire magic is intuitive to understand and incredibly satisfying to use. Casting Time: 1 action. 15 (+2) I like to mention the air around the source of the damage condensing, and causing that fog you see when you breathe out on a cold day. Description: A divine smiting from the phagocytes can D&D 5e Damage Types: A Quick and Simple Guide - The Alpine DM conscientiously . The rules on "Extreme Cold" ( Dungeon Master's Guide, p. 110) state: Whenever the temperature is at or below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, a creature exposed to the cold must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw at the end of each hour or gain one level of exhaustion. Each creature in a 5-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a Dexterity saving throw. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. When you hit with this weapon, you deal an extra 1d8 fire and 1d8 cold damage. While the in-depth answer is a bit more nuanced, cold, fire, lightning, and poison damage are the types most likely to be resisted by your foes. Lets say my barbarian has resistance to bludgeoning damage while theyre raging but becomes afflicted with some disease that makes them vulnerable to magic damage. Elemental blasting spells that burn enemies to a crisp or freeze them in their tracks are the real appeal for many of D&Ds spell-slinging players. As always in 5e, when you divide the damage by 2, youll round up. document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. What about immunity though? All Rights Reserved. All of this tells us paints a really good picture of which damage types to avoid carrying around and which ones to stock up on. Interestingly, 13 of the 23 bludgeoning spells come from, If youre the type of spellcaster whod rather rot your opponents insides than pummel them with snowballs, spells that deal. The blade of this weapon is made of Eternal Ice and Infernal Steel and when the touched it is cold on one side but slightly warm on the other. Singeing foes with magic flames, pummeling them with elemental powers, and rotting their minds and bodies these are just some of the many ways to deal damage with magic. Every attack has a damage type, and its important that we know whats going on. At Higher Levels. Here are some of the best ways to deal psychic damage with spells in D&D 5e: Casters who enjoy testing their foes constitution by freezing them to their very core will find plenty to love with spells that deal cold damage. D&D damage types are the types of damage an attack, ability, trap, or obstacle may do. Tidal Wave (thematic, not cold) 4. This is the sort of magic thats usually associated with Clerics, Paladins, and Gandalf when he rode out of Minas Tirith to fend off the Nazgul. spell statistics. Necrotic: Well necrotic has its roots in death magic, or necromancy, and as such, is a type of damage focused in death, or rather, anti-life. The target must make a successful DC 10 CON Save or suffer an additional 1d8 cold damage. Assuming the dragon is an Ancient White Dragon. Martial combatants would do well to have a magical weapon on deck, or a spellcaster in their party ready to make their weapon magical through some sorcery. Very much in the same vein as magical or nonmagical attacks, some creatures even have extremely specific relationships with damage types. forces a creature to crawl, which costs one extra foot of movement per foot moved. Lets dig a bit deeper into each of these. The default is that creatures take the damage as written. Damage types can be one of the hardest things to understand in D&D fifth edition. In-game, this happens when you cast spells like thunderwave or thunderclap. I am working on a homebrew Ice Sorceror, and I am wondering what spells use cold damage and/or ice or can use them. In general, there's enough cold damage spells for you, but cone of cold being level 5 as the alternative to fireball is the real shame. Here is a quick reference chart for the varying types of damage: Damage Types Physical Damage Physical damage types are typically all you will run into at first tier, excepting, of course, the spell casters in your party. Here are some of the best ways to deal necrotic damage with spells in D&D 5e: From Pokemon to Stranger Things, fantasy worlds are full of creatures who are able to inflict damage on the very minds of their enemies. Whether you want to burn, freeze, slash, or crush your foes, D&Ds damage type mechanic will make sure your attacks feel impactful. The website cannot function properly without these cookies. Acid: This one used to confuse me because growing up with PokmonTM, the move acid was poison type. We and our partners share information on your use of this website to help improve your experience. This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, their respective logos, and all Wizards titles and characters are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. You now have resistance to a damage type determined by your patron's kind: bludgeoning (dao), thunder (djinni), fire (efreeti), or cold (marid). If you can get your hands on this, even temporarily, its a game changer. If a creature has no immunities, resistances, or vulnerabilities to fire damage, theyre taking the amount that shows up on your dice. Slashing: If piercing is stabbing, slashing can be simplified to cutting. Barbarians for example, have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage while in a rage. Although I would also make a case for cold damage to be inflicted if, say for instance a creature suddenly fell into a frozen lake. A gelatinous cube deals acid damage as it tries to completely dissolve its victims. More on that in the next section. Basically, if youre pelting someone with magical powers that dont strictly fit into an elemental damage group, youre usually using bludgeoning damage. Of course, we have direct damage area of effect cold damage in the form of a dragons breath attack. Note that all numbers in this article are taken from spells in the, . Let us know in the comments below! If you going to be outputting a lot of bludgeoning damage, consider picking up the Crusher feat. Rapiers deal 1d8 piercing damage, so its a bit easier to keep those rolls separated. One thing that needs to be made very clear is that the doubling effect applies after all other modifiers. Shivering cold. CHA In addition to a few powerful resistances, a ghost is also resistant to nonmagical attacks that deal bludgeoning, piercing, or poison damage. Dungeons & Dragons and D&D are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. Cold spells often come with powerful bonus effects to slow or otherwise disable and debuff enemies that are hit with them. However, that bit I mentioned about vulnerabilities being calculated after resistances is enough reason for me. Attacks against a blinded creature have advantage, and the creatures attacks have disadvantage. Hitting a creature with fire damage does not automatically mean they catch on fire, hitting a creature with poison damage does not automatically mean they are poisoned, so on and so forth. Then we roll a 4 and a 6, for a total of 10 fire damage. He uses his action surge to make another attack action and deals 29, and then gets a critical hit dealing a massive 52 points of damage, and fells the awakened tree in a single turn of combat. Everything it can do will also inflict cold damage. Lets dive right into what cold damage is. Of course, there are also plenty of ways to pick up resistances as a player character. If there is ever a situation where you have resistance and vulnerability to a damage type, then you calculate the resistance before the vulnerability. The target must make a successful DC 10 CON Save or suffer an additional 1d8 cold damage. You have to take all spells into consideration, along with the fact that most creatures dont deal only one type of damage. 4 (3) Resistance and vulnerability are applied after any modifiers. The status effect of Cold damage is Freeze. Hopefully, you have everything you came here for. Otilukes Freezing Sphere, this spell is really interesting, it causes a 60-foot-radius spherical explosion within 300ft of the caster, which causes 10d6 cold damage if the targets fail their Con saving throw. If the spell hits a body of water, like a lake, or a river, it can freeze up to 6 inches in depth and a 30 foot squared area for up to 1 min. With that in mind, here are the most common damage types for spells in D&D 5e: Fire is the clear winner of the most common damage type among D&D 5e spells. Admittedly, this is a rather rare type of damage. (I know that its adamantium in marvel, cut me some slack). One such creature is the Jabberwock from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Some races such as dwarves and tieflings have resistances thanks to their racial features. My goal here today is that when youve read through this article you can not only go back and understand that introduction but apply it to your games to become the best player you can be. 16 (+3). 17 (+3) Hopefully, you have everything you need to not take extra psychic damage at the table the next time someone starts talking about resistances. Now, cold damage is actually the most resisted damage type in 5e. But first, here are the most common conditions caused by spells in D&D 5e: Lets take a closer look at the top three most common conditions Restrained, Blinded, and Prone and the spells that cause them. That is, any additional damage bonuses beyond just the roll of the dice. Hammers, clubs, anything thats just a solid object hitting a creature will deal this type of damage. Since you now understand the basics of damage types, let me throw a few curveballs your way, since theyre bound to happen. Again, there is no standardized definition floating around in our sourcebooks, so its really up to DMs discretion. The solution to this for a martial character is to pick up a magical weapon, or to have your spellcaster enchant one of your weapons with Magic Weapon. So that was our look at cold damage in DnD 5e. Next, we factor in the vulnerability to magical damage, ending up at 10 damage total coming at us. As your sword cuts through the visibly cold air around the wizard, and make contact with them, you feel the handle of your blade grow cold as faint blue energy climbs the sword. On a failed save, a creature takes 2d6 thunder, . But, you still have plenty of opportunities to considering 5e's catalog of baddies to freeze. Divine Strike. Cone of Cold 6. I always flavor cold damage to either looks white or blue, depending on the source. is on the total opposite end of the light/dark spectrum as necrotic, but its equally common in D&Ds magical compendium. STR To identify which vulnerabilities increase damage from that attack form. Ice Storm 5. While magical damage is not a type of damage per say, it is a quality that damage can have. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. Remember, though, it's good to have some spells that are of a different damage type. Keep in mind that this is nowhere near an all-inclusive list, but we may have one of those in store, so check back soon, or keep your eyes peeled for a link at the bottom. Leave a comment below with your thoughts! Spells marked with * let you pick Cold damage. Any creature caught in the damage must make a Con saving throw. Even if a spell doesn't do cold damage you can ask your DM to reflavor spells so they would be ice/cold themed. D&D Damage Types Explained. 2023 Wizards. Honestly, the concept is as simple as that. Immunity is rather interesting since it doesnt have a 5e official definition. Heres a list of the 24 spells which can deal cold damage in 5e: Warhammers arent the only ways to smack bad guys around there are also magical Wind Walls, Whirlwinds, Tsunamis, and Earth Tremors to contend with. Each creature in that area must make a Dexterity saving throw, taking 3d6. At 6th level, when you cause cold damage to a creature that damage lingers. Still, the questions remain, and there are less pessimistic answers that I have for you. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. I highly suggest getting different colored dice if you become attached to a weapon that is going to put you in these situations frequently. A prone creature also has disadvantage on attack rolls. A creature killed by this spell becomes a frozen statue until it thaws. Since hes using an enchanted flame tongue sword though, it deals an additional 2d6 fire damage. Below is a table listing the number of resistances, immunities, and vulnerabilities that creatures in the Monster Manual have. So its almost akin to throwing liquid nitrogen at people. Which elemental damage type do you favor in your spell-slinging combat? So lets say a caster has cast Armor of Agathys on themselves and a player hits them, this is how Id describe it. That never really jived with me, so I decided to make a living out of games, stories, and all sorts of fantastical works. At your level you could probably get a 50 gp component and learn Chromatic Orb. An enchanted sword, or a sword affected by the magical weapon spell, would be a magical weapon, and therefore would deal magical slashing damage. Melee Weapon Attack: your spell attack modifier to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. The damage dealt by a greatsword is slashing damage, since you slash at people with it. Psychic: Damage of this type deals with matters of the mind. White Dragons like every other dragon has the ability to breathe out their associated damage. / Hasbro, Inc. If you come across a feature that grants immunity to poison without specifying the condition or damage, it grants immunity to both. Condition immunities function in much the same way, hypothetically. Did we forget about any of your favorite elemental spells? Attack rolls against restrained creatures have advantage, and attack rolls from a restrained creature are made with disadvantage. In its minor forms, frostbite will cause limbs and members to die and require amputation. Here are some ways to deal poison damage with spells in D&D 5e: Slashing damage will slice up enemies with blades or thorns, whether mundane or conjured by magic. Although it tends to be when something causes a sudden drop, more like being flash-frozen as opposed to it just being extremely cold. Inmn this Lava Damage 5e guide, we'll help you understand environmental damage in D&D 5e and more specifically focus on the Lava damage. Please enable JavaScript to get the best experience from this site. Vampires in 5e more or less work from the same playbook as classic Hammer Horror monsters, from Nosferatu to Dracula.They drink blood, wear SPF Factor 2,000,000, and have an unhealthy obsession with velvet. Home Player Resources Damage Types in DnD 5e What Are They and How do They Apply. Every spellcasting class can access at least one spell that can deal cold damage. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. The primary purpose of damage types is to add flavor to your game, but some types offer secondary effects. The information presented on this site about Dungeons and Dragons, both literal and graphical, is copyrighted by Wizards of the Coast. What are the most common resistances in 5e? Here are some of the best ways to deal cold damage with spells in D&D 5e: Often hailed by players as the least-resisted damage type in the game, force damage comes from spells that smack enemies about with magical powers. Shared Resistances. Because of this, there will be times that say, immunity to poison condition will save you from a coupled damage, even if its not a damage type you have immunity to. We also would have had a much different result, since treants are resistant to piercing damage. If you take damage from a melee attack, you can use a reaction to releases a swirl of freezing snow. This cookie is set by Google and is used to distinguish users. The 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons has plenty of spells that afflict enemies with negative conditions or damage them outright with elemental powers. With names like Blight and Circle of Death, necrotic spells are akin to the heavy metal genre of D&Ds spell catalog. Fantasy worlds have no shortage of fire-blasting wizards, so its no surprise that fire spells rank as the most common damage type in the genres ultimate source material, Dungeons & Dragons.