The newest adventure for Dungeons and Dragons is Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, and some players have already ventured into the icy climes of the Forgotten Realms’ Far North to follow in the icebound footsteps of dark elf adventurer Drizzt Do’Urden. The adventure module combines modern horror tropes with what players know of Icewind Dale from Salvatore’s Drizzt books to create a truly unique and potentially (delightfully) horrifying Dungeons and Dragons experience.
Many players come to Dungeons and Dragons for the opportunity to fight terrifying fantasy creatures like tarrasques, dragons, and liches, in a quest to test both their character’s finally honed skills and their own mettle as a player. Getting to that point is often not easy, however, as many adventures start the player off at a measly level 1, Icewind Dale included. The longer a DnD campaign runs, the more characters will level up, and Icewind Dale takes characters all the way up to level 12.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for some of the Icewind Dale campaign, proceed with caution!
One of the most powerful enemies players will eventually face while playing through Icewind Dale is the titular Frostmaiden, also known as Auril, the Forgotten Realms’ evil-aligned goddess of winter. Players have the opportunity to face off against an actual deity in multiple forms, which will prove to be a major challenge for even the most experienced of players.
For skilled DMs whose parties have grown tired of “standard” enemies like goblins, orcs, and even mighty dragons, facing their players off against a deity may be just the challenge they need. Here are some gods players may enjoy squaring their characters off against.
Featured in the official adventure module Tyranny of Dragons (including Hoard of the Dragon Queen), Tiamat is the lawful evil dragon goddess of avarice, whom the Cult of Dragons is trying to bring to the Material Plane. Tiamat also features in Tomb of Annihilation and The Rise of Tiamat, and across these adventures, there are opportunities for players to fight a truly formidable opponent that’s a great combination of dragon and deity.
Defeating Tiamat is notoriously difficult, unless she’s facing a level 20 party, and while some people view her as “unbeatable” by a four-person party, fighting the queen of greed can challenge players to think of unique strategies to whittle away at her 615 HP. If a party does manage to work together to defeat her, it’ll surely be an experience memorialized in that group for a long time to come.
This elder interloper god, sometimes known as The Elder Elemental Eye, features in the Princes of the Apocalypse module as a mostly-forgotten god locked away in a prison from the Greyhawk setting, as opposed to the Forgotten Realms. His avatar has a CR of 30 and is immune to lower-level spells, regains 30 HP at the start of every turn, and can deal an extra 60 HP with magical weapon attacks thanks to the Sneak Attack feature. With such a powerful combination of powers, Tharizdun is another deity that could easily turn out to be a major reckoning for the most overconfident of parties.
Since a lot of information about the Forgotten Realms and other DnD settings are available online, DMs can easily find fan-made stat blocks for many of the major deities if they wish to incorporate them into their games, or homebrew deity encounters themselves. Generally, the advice is that greater deities should be around CR 30, which is the highest challenge rating possible and notably held by more powerful gods and of course the dreaded tarrasque.
DndBeyond provides an appendix to all players, regardless of subscription level (or lack thereof) that details some of the gods of the multiverse, from the more well-known deities of the Forgotten Realms to another potentially intriguing option: taking historical pantheons and inserting them into the game. The appendix provides ideas for the Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, and Greek gods and goddesses and what their domains, alignments, and symbols would be when transplanted into the DnD world.
There are tons of gods for DMs to choose from, especially when it comes to pure homebrew and just making up gods that are uniquely suited to the world of the game. Whatever source DMs choose to draw their inspiration from, fighting a deity could provide a steeper challenge for higher-leveled parties that desperately want one.
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