Cold Damage 5e
by Prince Phantom
The ice mage is a strong theme represented in many forms of media, and 5e has a few options to help that character come to life. On the other side of the battlefield, cold damage is pretty easy to see coming as monsters who deal it normally inhabit a fitting climate. The question is how effective you would be by focusing on cold damage, and how much you need to worry about it being dealt to you.
Resistance, Immunity, and Vulnerability in Monsters
(out of 2624 printed monsters)
Resistance: 316
Immune: 123
Vulnerable: 9
This is pretty comparable to fire damage, and that’s not a great place to be. We are resisted by even more than Fire is, though immunity will come up slightly less often, and vulnerability basically never. It’s worth noting that nearly all fiends resist cold, so avoid this damage type entirely if your campaign will center around those. We should not be using cold damage on about 17% of enemies, meaning that on average, about 1/5 of your encounters will be effected. Obviously this can swing massively depending on your campaign. Rime of the Frostmaiden features many cold resistant and immune enemies, as does Descent into Avernus.
Spells that Deal Cold Damage
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrip | Frostbite, Ray of Frost |
| 1st | Absorb Elements*, Armor of Agathys, Chaos Bolt*, Chromatic Orb, Frost Fingers, Ice Knife |
| 2nd | Dragon’s Breath, Rime’s Binding Ice, Snilloc’s Snowball Swarm |
| 3rd | Elemental Weapon, Glyph of Warding, Hunger of Hadar, Spirit Shroud, Summon Shadowspawn |
| 4th | Conjure Minor Elementals, Elemental Bane, Fire Shield, Ice Storm |
| 5th | Cone of Cold, Summon Draconic Spirit |
| 6th | Freezing Sphere, Investiture of Ice, Wall of Ice |
| 7th | Prismatic Spray* |
| 8th | Illusory Dragon |
| 9th | Prismatic Wall |
| (Spells with a * can deal cold damage, but only randomly.) | |
While there aren’t a ton of options here, we do have some good picks. Rime’s Binding Ice is a powerhouse spell for low level play that stacks wonderfully with other battlefield control effects, Hunger of Hadar is one of those strong control effects, Fire Shield has niche utility, and Cone of Cold is a solid blast spell. We lack high level options, but high level damaging spells are rarely any good anyway.
How worried should we be about Cold Damage?
Of the 711 monsters printed in the core monster books (Monster Manual and Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse), 34 can deal cold damage. That’s less than 5%. The majority of them sit between CR 0-10, meaning it will be less common to see at high level play. Outside of White and Silver Dragons (how did you make a Silver Dragon your enemy?!) I wouldn’t expect to deal with cold damage in the upper tiers. It should also be pretty easy to tell if you are going into a campaign where cold damage will be thrown at you frequently. If you’re planning on playing a game in the frozen north, you may want to pay attention to this next section.
How do we get resistance to Cold Damage?
Spells: Absorb Elements, Protection from Energy, Fire Shield, Summon Draconic Spirit, Fizban’s Platinum Shield, Investiture of Ice (immunity), Investiture of Flame, Invulnerability (immunity)
I could have stopped that list with Absorb Elements, because that’s really the only one you need. Cast it when you take cold damage and be happy. The resistance being racked onto Summon Draconic Spirit could be a nice added bonus to the spell, but you’re casting that spell to have a huge dragon rampage the battlefield, not to have resistance to one damage type.
Class Features:
Artificer: Resistant Armor
Barbarian: Bear Totem, Storm Soul Tundra
Monk: Ascendant Dragon Aspect of the Wyrm
Ranger: Drakewarden Bond of Fang and Scale
Warlock: Fathomless Oceanic Soul, Marid Genie Elemental Gift
Wizard: Transmuter’s Stone
Races:
White/Silver Dragonborn
Sea Elf
There are myriad ways of getting cold resistance if you feel like you’ll need it often in your campaign, though the existence of Absorb Elements makes the cold resistance granted through race or class feature less impactful.
Synergies with Cold Damage
Draconic Sorcerer Elemental Affinity
Uh…. That’s it. A mediocre subclass ability from an even more mediocre subclass. If you’re building a cold based character, you’re doing it for flavor and theme, not power.
In Summary:
Yeah I’m left feeling pretty lukewarm on this one. There’s basically no reason to base a build around cold damage, and you’ll definitely be able to tell if you’ll need cold resistance in most circumstances, oftentimes even before your campaign has even begun. I went into this thinking there would be a lot more to talk about, but this is actually pretty simple. Don’t blast the Yeti with a Cone of Cold, and don’t be surprised when that Yeti blasts you with a Cone of Cold.
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