This week’s encounter is Remorhaz Ruckus, a standalone one-shot that you can drop into any D&D campaign while the characters are traveling through a snowy environment. From the vast snowfields of Icewind Dale to the mountainside surrounding a frost giant fortress, this encounter is easily adaptable to any arctic environment. Best of all, you can scale this encounter to almost any tier of D&D play because of its simple premise: while traveling, the characters are attacked by snow-dwelling remorhaz!

This encounter pairs perfectly with D&D adventures that require the characters to travel across snow and ice, like Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, Frozen Sick (an adventure from Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount that’s one of our free Quarantine Resources), or Frozen Memories (a free Encounter of the Week). You can also drop this encounter into your homebrew campaign to stall your players when they decide to do something totally unexpected, like traveling halfway across the continent on a whim or even just going to a town that you hadn’t prepared yet.

What are Remorhazes?

Remorhazes are unusual insectoid creatures found in frigid regions of the many worlds of Dungeons & Dragons. They burst from snowdrifts, displaying their vast, fan-like fins and dozens of skittering legs, as their blade-sharp teeth tear through the frostbitten flesh of their prey. Worse yet, their bodies produce massive amounts of heat and trap it inside their bodies. Their boiling blood keeps them warm in subzero temperatures, but also scalds attackers by bursting from their bodies when they’re wounded. Most frightening of all, these massive creatures can swallow humanoid prey in a single bite—potentially subjecting their prey to a battle where they must contend with bitter cold, scalding heat, and burning acid in rapid succession.

Though its physical form is extraordinary, a remorhaz are still just a cunning, bestial predator. They may be domesticated by powerful ice-dwellers, such as frost giants, and used like a monstrous attack dog—so long as it's kept well-fed.

There are three types of remorhaz that you can use to fine-tune this encounter to suit your party’s strength using the D&D Beyond Encounter Builder: the remorhaz (found in the free Basic Rules), the young remorhaz (found in the essential Monster Manual), or the reduced-threat remorhaz (a creature custom-built for the adventure Dead in Thay, but still useful for this encounter). If you don’t own the Monster Manual or Dead in Thay, but still want to use a creature from it, you can buy a creature’s statistics a la carte in the D&D Beyond Marketplace.

Combat Encounter: Remorhaz Ruckus

This encounter begins as the characters are traveling across an icy wasteland. If you’re playing a published adventure that uses random encounters (such as those listed above), you can choose to use this encounter instead of any rolled random encounter. To begin the encounter, read or paraphrase the following:

The wind tears at your cold-weather clothing, tearing savagely into any tiny portion of exposed skin it can find. You trudge through the snow, shoulders set against the cold, when suddenly a snowdrift before you explodes in a shower of rock-hard packed frost. A long, lithe creature darts out of the crater and lunges at one of your party!

This creature is a young remorhaz, hiding in a snowdrift in an attempt to capture easy prey while its parents are away. A second young remorhaz lurks in wait beneath another snowdrift, prepared to strike when its sibling has distracted its prey. Hopefully, the characters are skilled enough to make it regret its decision. These remorhaz are hungry, but they don’t have a death wish. A young remorhaz burrows into the snow and flees when reduced to half its maximum hit points, or when one of its kin dies.

Surprise. The hidden remorhaz tries to ambush its prey. Any character that has a passive Wisdom (Perception) score of 10 or lower is surprised by the remorhaz’s appearance. Likewise, the second remorhaz is prepared to ambush its prey as well. On their first turn in combat, characters with a passive Wisdom (Perception) score of 16 or higher notice a second snowdrift similar to the one they were ambushed from.

Using Battle Maps

If you enjoy playing D&D using maps and miniatures, you can use the Snowy City Gate or Ice-Flower Dugout maps from Tactical Maps Reincarnated to create an exciting arena for this combat encounter!

Scaling this Encounter

This encounter is designed to test the combat capabilities of a party of 5th-level characters. However, guidance is also provided to help you scale the deadliness of this encounter up or down to suit stronger or weaker parties. You can use the D&D Beyond Encounter Builder to fine-tune these suggestions to fit the power of your own party!

Try these two variants to tailor this encounter to your party’s power level:

Mated Pair

This encounter is suitable for a party of 11th-level characters.

In this version of the encounter, the one young remorhaz is being watched by its parents, a mated pair of reduced-threat remorhazes. Its parents are hiding in snowdrifts 60 feet away, and burrow towards the characters once combat begins. Characters with a passive Wisdom (Perception) score of 16 or higher notice the approaching adult remorhazes.

These creatures also flee when reduced to half their hit point maximum. However, if their child is slain, the parents fight to the death.

Frost Giant Hunt

This encounter is suitable for a party of 15th-level characters.

In this version of the encounter, the young remorhaz hiding in the snowdrift is replaced with an adult remorhaz. Hiding behind a rocky, snow-topped hillock 60 feet away are a pair of frost giant hunters turned slavers. They use their remorhaz as a hunting beast to find prey, be it for eating or for enslaving.

The remorhaz is trained to fight to the bitter end, but the frost giants turn tail and flee if reduced to half their hit point maximum, though they continue to fight while fleeing by throwing rocks at their foes.

Get ready for more icy adventures in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden by buying the digital version on D&D Beyond, so you can play with your friends even while you're sheltering in place.

     Create A Brand-New Adventurer            Acquire New Powers and Adventures           Browse All Your D&D Content 

Did you like this encounter? Check out the encounters in the Encounter of the Week series. You can also pick up the adventures I've written on the DMs Guild, such as The Temple of Shattered Minds, a suspenseful eldritch mystery with a mind flayer villain. My most recent adventures are included in the bestselling Encounters in Theros, a collection of over 70 unique encounters created by the Guild Adepts, which can be used to enhance your campaign in Theros or in your Greek mythology-inspired campaign setting. Also check out the Platinum Bestseller Tactical Maps: Adventure Atlas, a collection of 88 unique encounters created by the Guild Adepts, which can be paired with the beautiful poster battlemaps in Tactical Maps Reincarnated.

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.