Cool Enemies

[Davethedm]

Im going to running an artic adventure. To cut a long story short..white dragon in a moutain, uaing frost gaints to take villagers to mine for teasure but i need an enemy i can use as minions for the frost gaints ?? Was hoping not to use orks AGAIN! Any ideas ?? My PCs are 3 level 4s
BBG : white dragon
Med level : frost gaints
Low level : ??????

[MrStabby]

Remorhaze
Winter Wolf
Dire Wolf
Animated Snowman (use scarecrow stats)

[Snail_On_Speed]

You could have Kobolds who're on loan from the dragons, and use Worgs as transport/beasts of burden. There's not much option for low level mooks outside of goblins and humans sadly.

Or maybe check Icewind Dale, see what they have in there.

[Marcloure]

Use wolves, bears, raiders (berserker/bandit king), maybe make an ice elemental from the earth elemental (add fire vulnerability and cold immunity, put in some cold damage). You can also use a hag with an artic troll and ice mephits.

If you have access to Rhyme of Frost Maiden, I bet there's a lot of cold themed monsters there.

[J-H]

Evil Psuedodragons (tricky)
Yeti (environmentally appropriate)
Mephits (beware of explosions)
Grimlocks (they're blind)
Ogres, half-ogres, orogs, or goliaths (continuing the trend down, but not much variety).
Nothics (they're weird; I like to change the eye damage to psychic)
Awakened Polar Bears (possibly too hard)
Quasits or Imps under the command of a low-tier fiend.
Goblins riding wargs, with a Winter Wolf in each pack. The Winter Wolf is the boss, the wargs are the main enemies, and the goblins are just there to shoot pointy sticks and open doors for their canine masters.

Edit: Work some Perytons in there somewhere. They are under-used.

[DwarfFighter]

Ogre Zombies, Undead beings preserved by the cold and animated by... I'm going to say Evil Druids drawing power from the Aurora Borealis.

-DF

[Kurt Kurageous]

Acquire RotFM. They've already co-opted your plot...might as well use their monsters.

[KorvinStarmast]

Im going to running an artic adventure. To cut a long story short..white dragon in a moutain, uaing frost gaints to take villagers to mine for teasure but i need an enemy i can use as minions for the frost gaints ?? Was hoping not to use orks AGAIN! Any ideas ?? My PCs are 3 level 4s
BBG : white dragon
Med level : frost gaints
Low level : ??????

Easy: humans, tribal warriors, and reskin the druid NPC as a shaman.

Problem solved.
And I agree with "work in some perytons" ... they are underused. :smallsmile:

[Carpe Gonzo]

Guard Drakes from Volo's Guide to Monsters are CR 2 creatures that are used as guard/hunting pets by giants according to the lore in that book.

I also just so happened to homebrew up an arctic creature recently: a snowy lion. The basic stats are a winter wolf, but with the wolf attacks and abilities (pack tactics, etc.) changed to the lion abilities and with the ability to cast sleet storm once per day without concentration and with only verbal components (a roar). I also gave it the ability to ignore snowy/icy difficult terrain and hazards as well as the ability to ignore obscurement caused by snow/icy/sleet precipitation. I also gave it the ability that as long as it was in falling snow/ice/sleet, it has advantage on all saves and resistance to all damage unless it takes fire damage though that might be a bit much and haven't been able to test it yet.

[Davethedm]

Thats all great ideas..thanks 🙂

[P. G. Macer]

Bheur Hags (CR 7, CR 9 when in a coven)

[Imbalance]

Visual inspiration, even if you're all theatre of the mind...

https://www.minisgallery.com/index.php?id=icons-of-the-realms-rime-of-the-frostmaiden

And
https://www.minisgallery.com/index.php?id=icons-of-the-realms-snowbound

[Contrast]

I've always liked this (https://www.chaosgen.com/dnd5e/random-encounter/) random encounter generator (including a terrain selector) as a resource for sparking ideas. Run in through a couple of times until you see something that feels right/gives you an idea.

[ImproperJustice]

An icy lake with an underground tunnel to the sea, and a perilous ice flow island or bridge with an Orca patrolling the waters could be fun.

[Fatefulforce]

Im going to running an artic adventure. To cut a long story short..white dragon in a moutain, uaing frost gaints to take villagers to mine for teasure but i need an enemy i can use as minions for the frost gaints ?? Was hoping not to use orks AGAIN! Any ideas ?? My PCs are 3 level 4s
BBG : white dragon
Med level : frost gaints
Low level : ??????

Bheur hag.

I had a campaign where a frost hag controlled an area in the Grey Mounts (Forgotten realms)

Bheur Hags can cast control weather 1/day that lasts for 8 hours. Her lair, which is everything within 5 miles, is even colder than the already cold surrounding region. This might force the players to take cold damage when entering it. She makes for a great BBEG or maybe co-conspiritor with your white dragon. Like a junior BBEG.

She has Ice troll bodyguards, maybe an Abominable yeti lives in the area as well as ice mephits, ice spiders, winter wolves maybe a Frost worm!

[Segev]

Im going to running an artic adventure. To cut a long story short..white dragon in a moutain, uaing frost gaints to take villagers to mine for teasure but i need an enemy i can use as minions for the frost gaints ?? Was hoping not to use orks AGAIN! Any ideas ?? My PCs are 3 level 4s
BBG : white dragon
Med level : frost gaints
Low level : ??????

How about dwarves for low-level minions? The white dragon is running a mining operation. Dwarves corrupted by generations of servitude to worship/serve the dragon would be good loyal minions. If you want them a little more exotic or "traditionally" evil dwarves, there are duergar.

Using dwarves, you theme the minions as a particular race/culture, but can use any of the NPC stat blocks you want (possibly with some racial stat adjustments and/or racial features, like proficiencies or the like).

The dragon uses them as agents if it needs infiltrators (which has kind-of backfired as dwarves are viewed with heightened suspicion in local civilized areas due to "dragon agents" always being dwarves, even if not all dwarves are "dragon agents").

Maybe they have a minor boon of resistance to cold (making them immune to environmental cold), but a minor flaw in that they still FEEL cold even when it can't hurt them, and it's miserable. They have a unique ice-mead or fortified coldwine or something that is their "dwarven ale" of choice: it makes somebody who drinks it not feel the cold. Creatures who are not resistant to cold who drink this can go outside in bitter cold perfectly comfortably...not realizing they're taking damage and suffering ill effects of harsh weather. These "ice dwarves," on the other hand, are not harmed by the cold and, affected by this brew, are perfectly comfortable in it.

[LordShade]

Thanoi from Dragonlance
Snow/Ice trolls (from 2nd Edition)
Half-white dragon anything
Arctic Sahuagin

I recently ran an Eberron adventure where the enemies were ice themed. I used the Barovian Witch stats and substituted out some ice spells for the bosses, ice mephits for the support, and undead gnolls as the meatshields.