Copyright 2009 Wizards of the Coast

Cribbing from paleonthology is one of the classic ways to add interesting monsters to your D&D world. Dinosaurs are the obvious choice, but there’s also a bunch of post-dinosaur megafauna that can be slotted in with no problem at all. Among that set, mammoths are some of the most famous.

Looks like the Monster Manual 2 only had one page to dedicate to them, though, so it decided to skip mundane mammoths altogether and give us a fantastical variety.

Nyfellar Mammoth

These creatures are native to Nyfell, the same frozen realm in the Elemental Chaos from which frost giants originally came. They’re partially made of ice, and subsist on a combination of organic food and ice, so they thrive in the most inhospitable frozen hells.

Frost giants have long ago tamed Nyfellar mammoths for use as mounts, and were responsible for bringing them to the world, where they can still be seen filling that role. I imagine it’s also possible to find wild specimens.

Nyfellar Mammoths are Huge Elemental Beasts with the Mount keyword, and Level 17 Brutes with 202 HP. They have Resist Cold 10 and a respectable ground speed of 8 with Ice Walk, which allows them to ignore “icy” difficult terrain.

They also possess the same Icebound Footing trait that’s common among frost giants, reducing any forced movement inflicted on them by 2 squares, and getting a free save to avoid being knocked prone. They fight with their tusks and big feet in combat.

The tusks are Reach 2 and can either gore as a basic attack or perform a Tusk Toss (recharge 4+) that targets Fortitude, does a little less damage and slides the target 5 squares. At the end of the slide the target falls from a height of 30 feet on the destination square, so it really is a toss. The fall does damage (and can be mitigated) according to the standard rules for falling.

The feet can stamp, a Reach 1 attack that targets fortitude, does about same damage as a gore, and knocks prone. The mammoth can also execute a Blizzard Trample maneuver to move 8 squares, go through enemy spaces, and stamp each of those enemies. This recharges when the mammoth is bloodied, or when it takes cold damage.

If used as a mount, the mammoth can employ a Bitterwind Charge, which allows it to use a Tusk Toss or a Blizzard Trample when charging. Yeah, it moves 8 squares then tramples for another 8 in a single standard action. After this special attack concludes, the rider gets to make a free melee basic attack.

Sample Encounters and Final Impressions

The sample encounter is a level 17 frost giant patrol, with 2 giants riding nyfellar mammoths and accompanied by a rimefire griffon acting as a spotter. The book notes that giants like to play badminton with PCs by readying actions to attack victims of Tusk Toss as they fly by.

These ice mammoths are pretty cool, and I can see why they preferred to include them over the mundane variety. They have a good synergy with frost giants, which also debut in this book.

You could pretty easily derive a mundane mammoth from the nyfellar stat block, making it level 10-13 and removing some of the more blatant elemental abilities. Maybe they could be used as hill giant or ogre mounts then.