Sermilik
Sermilik — The Encounter
Ice-Spined Bear of the Inuit Glacier-Spirits · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Sermilik
In the old Inuit tellings, Sermilik is not merely a bear but the glacier's own wrath wearing fur. When a hunting party breaks taboo or a village forgets to honor the spirits of the ice, the shamans say the floes themselves rise up: a white shape vast as a calving berg, its spine sheathed in crystal that grew there over centuries of cold. It is one of the dread shapes a wronged land sends among the White Runners, kin in menace to Ahklut and the deep mother Sedna. To wound it is to be wounded; spears shatter on its rimed hide, and the man who lands a blow finds his own warmth bleeding into the spines that pierced him back. The People leave offerings at the floe-edge and do not speak its name in the long dark, lest the naming draw its black eyes toward the seal-holes where their children fish.
Run Sermilik in Sixty Seconds
- Hold the spines for melee. Spined Hide hits anyone who strikes it in melee for piercing + cold — announce it the first time so players feel the cost and start aiming spells instead.
- Open on the soft target. Multiattack the nearest caster or archer, lead with a Claw to knock prone, then Bite the prone target with advantage-feel pressure.
- Kill-priority: whoever lands melee hits. Every melee attacker is feeding themselves into your spines — keep swinging at the bruisers and let the ranged crowd waste rounds.
- Punish the backline. If a player thinks they're safe shooting from 30 ft., Frigid Lunge closes the gap as a reaction — there is no safe range.
- Three ways to run it: glacier ambush (Stealth in snow, surprise round), pack muscle (pair with Ahklut/a boss), or rampage (a wounded land's wrath smashing a village set-piece).
Sermilik
Large elemental, neutral evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEIce Walk. The bear can move across and climb icy surfaces without needing to make an ability check. Difficult terrain composed of ice or snow doesn't cost it extra movement.
Spined Hide. Signature. The bear's back and shoulders bristle with jagged ice crystals. The first time on each turn a creature within 5 ft. hits the bear with a melee attack, that creature takes 5 (1d10) piercing damage and 5 (1d10) cold damage from the spines.
Actions
Multiattack. The bear makes one Bite attack and two Claw attacks.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8+5) piercing damage plus 4 (1d8) cold damage.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6+5) slashing damage. On a hit against a creature, the target must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Frigid Lunge. Reaction. When a creature within 30 ft. that the bear can see hits it with a ranged attack, the bear may move up to 20 ft. straight toward that creature. This movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks and may end adjacent to the attacker.
A glacier given hunger, Sermilik rears on hind legs above a shattering ice shelf, jaws agape and its hunched back fused into a ridge of blue-white spines that drink the warmth from anything foolish enough to strike it.
Sermilik, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEFrost Coat (signature). While within 10 ft. of the cub, an ally has resistance to cold damage.
Actions
Rake. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d4+4) slashing damage plus 3 (1d6) cold damage.
Reactions
Cover the Den. When an ally the cub can see within 10 ft. is hit by an attack, the cub interposes its bulk, reducing the damage by 5 (1d10).
A half-grown spirit-bear that pads at the elder's flank, its spines still soft and dripping, loyal to whoever first warmed its frozen heart.
Guideline numbers — formula-tuned and read from the miniature's design, not yet table-proven. Tell us how it ran in the comments.
How It Fights — by Tier
Same creature, scaled threat. The traits never change; only the numbers move.
Open by rearing and charging the softest target; the Claw prone-knock turns a low-level party's front line into easy bites. Let melee fighters spend themselves on Spined Hide while you kill a downed PC. Pair it with a hunter or shaman NPC so it isn't fighting smart on its own.
This is its home band. Open by Multiattacking the closest caster, using a Claw to knock it prone, then Frigid Lunge punishes anyone who tries to plink it from range. Kill-priority is whoever lands melee hits (they feed themselves into Spined Hide). It is the bruiser piece, not the brain — pair it with a flagship glacier-spirit or Ahklut to direct it.
Run it as the muscle alongside a solo boss; it eats opportunity attacks and prone-locks the party while the real threat hammers them. Open on the tankiest melee PC to bog them down, and use Frigid Lunge to collapse onto archers. Don't expect it to outsmart anyone — it is a wall of spined ice, not a tactician.
Put Sermilik on the table
Download the presupported STL and run the fight tonight — the model, and the encounter that comes with it.
Get the STL on MyMiniFactory →Clay Cyanide Companion Rules v1
How a bound creature acts
- A companion acts on its owner's initiative, immediately after the owner.
- It uses the Companion block above — roughly ×0.6 HP and damage, no recharge abilities, and at most one reaction trait.
- It moves freely; it takes its Action only while its owner is conscious.
- At 0 HP a companion is broken, not dead — restored on a long rest unless your table rules otherwise.
Original Clay Cyanide material © Clay Cyanide LLC — explicitly not the non-SRD official sidekick rules.
Questions, Asked at the Table
What CR is Sermilik?
Natively CR 6 (2,300 XP) — a Tier 2 threat for parties of levels 5-10. The stat block also scales to a CR ~2 version for Tier 1 and a CR ~11 version for Tier 3; the traits stay identical and only the numbers move.
Can Sermilik be a companion or ally?
Not the elder itself — it is a wrathful glacier-spirit, not a tamed beast. But a Glacier-Cub, Bound (AC 13, 76 HP) can fight alongside the party, granting nearby allies cold resistance and shielding them with its body as a reaction.
Why does hitting Sermilik in melee hurt my own character?
Its Spined Hide trait: the first melee hit each turn from a creature within 5 ft. takes 5 (1d10) piercing plus 5 (1d10) cold damage from the ice spines. Ranged attacks and spells avoid it — but watch for the Frigid Lunge reaction closing the distance.
Tell Us How It Ran
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 ("SRD 5.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Clay Cyanide Miniatures is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This content is compatible with the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. Companion rules, lore, names, and original mechanics © Clay Cyanide LLC.
Technical Specifications
32mm, 75mm
STL, Pre-supported STL
Standard or ABS-like resin, 0.05mm layer height
Yes — ready to print, optimized supports included
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