Earth Elemental 5e: Stats, Earth Glide and Fighting Through Stone

An earth elemental is a CR 5 Large elemental with AC 17, 126 hit points, two 10-foot-reach Slams at +8 for 14 damage each, and a 30-foot burrow speed. Earth Glide lets it swim through natural rock and soil without leaving a tunnel, and Siege Monster makes it deal double damage to doors, walls and other structures. It's the toughest of the four classic elementals and the slowest, and it's vulnerable to thunder. In the 2024 rules it gains 21 hit points (147) and a 60-foot Rock Launch that knocks targets Prone, but it loses its resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks.

Table of Contents

• •Earth Elemental Stat Block (2014)
• •Earth Elemental in the 2024 Rules
• •How Earth Elementals Fight
• •Earth Elemental vs Air, Fire and Water Elementals
• •Running an Earth Elemental Encounter
• •How Players Beat Earth Elementals
• •Earth Elemental Encounter Ideas
• •Frequently Asked Questions

Earth Elemental Stat Block (2014)

This is the SRD 5.1 earth elemental, the one Conjure Elemental summons from a 10-foot cube of earth in 2014 play.

What each line means for the fight:

• •Earth Glide. It burrows through nonmagical, unworked earth and stone and doesn't disturb what it passes through. A cave wall, a hillside or a dirt floor is open to it. Dressed masonry, brick and a castle's flagstones are not; those are worked stone.
• •Tremorsense 60 feet. It senses anything touching the ground within 60 feet, even from inside solid rock. Invisibility and darkness don't help a character who's standing on the floor.
• •Siege Monster. Double damage to objects and structures. Two Slams average 28 against a creature and 56 against a door, a wall section or a wagon.
• •Vulnerable to thunder, resistant to nonmagical attacks. It resists bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks. A +1 weapon ignores it.
• •Immune to poison, Exhaustion, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned and Unconscious.

Earth Elemental in the 2024 Rules

SRD 5.2.1 makes it tougher in hit points and weaker in defenses, and gives it a way to fight at range.

What changes in play:

• •Weapons hit it at full damage. The 2014 version halves damage from mundane swords and arrows, which matters a lot to a level 5 party without magic weapons. The 2024 version has no resistances at all; its 147 hit points are the whole defense.
• •It can answer archers. In 2014 an earth elemental has nothing to do against a character 15 feet away on a ledge. In 2024 it throws rocks out to 60 feet and knocks the target Prone.
• •Rock Launch grounds fliers. In 2024 a flying creature that gets the Prone condition falls unless it can hover. A druid in bird form or a wizard under Fly who takes a Rock Launch drops out of the sky.

How Earth Elementals Fight

The earth elemental's advantage is that the floor and walls belong to it. It's slow and clumsy above ground (Dex 8, initiative −1) but can appear wherever there's natural stone.

Ambush from below. It waits inside the rock, tracking the party with tremorsense. When someone stands within 10 feet of a cave wall or over bare earth, it surfaces and Slams twice. Two +8 Slams against AC 16 hit on an 8 or higher, 65% each: 2 × 14 × 0.65 = about 18 damage a round, all of it from a creature nobody saw coming.

Use the reach. Slam has 10-foot reach. The elemental can surface 10 feet from a character, attack, and on its next turn sink back into the wall. Characters with 5-foot reach have to step up to it, and it can retreat into the stone where they can't follow. Leaving a character's reach provokes an opportunity attack as usual, so it should start and end its turns out of reach where it can.

Break the room. Siege Monster turns it into a demolition crew. It can smash through a barricaded door, collapse a wooden bridge the party is crossing, or bring down a wall section to open a path. SRD 5.2.1 has an Object Hit Points table, or set the numbers by ruling; the doubling is what matters.

2024: knock them down from range. Two Rock Launches at 60 feet average 0.65 × 8 × 2 = about 10 damage and give each target a 65% chance of going Prone. A Prone character has Disadvantage on its own attacks and spends half its movement standing. Use Rock Launch on archers, casters and fliers, and Slams on whoever is in reach. Don't combine them on one target from 10 feet: an attacker more than 5 feet from a Prone target has Disadvantage, so a Slam at full reach against someone it just knocked down gets worse, not better.

Don't stay in a worked-stone room. In a mortared keep or a crypt with dressed stone walls, Earth Glide doesn't work and the elemental is just a slow brute. If it was summoned there, it fights its way to the nearest natural earth.

Earth Elemental vs Air, Fire and Water Elementals

The earth elemental has the most hit points and the best AC of the four, and the worst mobility on open ground. Put it in caves, quarries, mountain passes and anywhere with natural rock. In an open field or on a ship, pick another elemental.

Running an Earth Elemental Encounter

An earth elemental is worth 1,800 XP. Using the 2024 SRD budget for four characters:

The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide guidelines (used by our encounter calculator) rate one earth elemental as Easy for four level 5 characters (1,800 XP against a 2,000 Medium threshold) and Hard for four level 4 characters. Two count as 5,400 XP after the ×1.5 multiplier, Hard at level 7.

Terrain moves the difficulty more than numbers. One 2014 earth elemental in a natural cave against a party with no magic weapons is a much harder fight than the Easy rating says: it ambushes, resists every hit and leaves through the wall when hurt. The same creature in a worked-stone hall is closer to its rating.

How Players Beat Earth Elementals

• •Thunder damage. It takes double. Shatter (3d8) deals it an average 27 on a failed save instead of 13.5, and 13.5 on a success. Its Constitution save is +5, so against DC 15 it fails 45% of the time. Thunderwave also works and pushes it 10 feet on a failed save.
• •Dexterity saves. Its Dex save is −1, so it fails a DC 15 Fireball or other Dex save 75% of the time.
• •Banishment. Charisma −3. A DC 15 Banishment works 85% of the time, and a summoned or extraplanar elemental banished for the full minute doesn't come back.
• •Magic weapons (2014 only). In 2014 they bypass its resistance. In 2024 any weapon works.
• •Stay off the ground. It has no ranged attack in 2014; a character flying or on a high ledge is out of its reach. In 2024, Rock Launch reaches 60 feet and makes fliers fall, so keep fliers higher than 60 feet or over something soft.
• •Fight on worked stone. Lure it into a building, a paved courtyard or a mortared tunnel. It can't glide there and can't hide.
• •Protection from Evil and Good works on Elementals in both editions and gives it Disadvantage on attacks against the warded creature.

Earth Elemental Encounter Ideas

The quarry strike. Workers at a marble quarry refuse to dig deeper after three of them vanished into a rock face. An earth elemental was bound to guard a sealed vault behind the quarry's back wall centuries ago, and the new cut has come within 20 feet of it. The elemental only attacks people who dig toward the vault. The party can fight it, reroute the quarry, or open the vault themselves and deal with whatever it was guarding.

The siege engine. A warlord's army has an earth elemental bound to a Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals, used once a day to break a town's gate. The party has one night to stop tomorrow's summoning. Stealing the stone works. So does making sure there's no natural ground near the gate: paving it, flooding it, or moving the fight to the wooden palisade.

The collapsing mine. The party is underground when an earth elemental starts bringing the tunnel down behind them with Siege Monster, herding them deeper. It isn't trying to kill them. It's trying to drive them away from a crystal geode that it considers part of itself. Giving the geode back ends the fight; keeping it means fighting a creature that can reach them from any wall.

Frequently Asked Questions

What CR is an earth elemental in 5e?

An earth elemental is CR 5 and worth 1,800 XP in both 2014 and 2024. It has AC 17, 126 hit points in 2014 and 147 in 2024.

Can an earth elemental move through walls?

Through natural, unworked earth and stone, yes. Earth Glide lets it burrow through them without leaving a tunnel. It can't glide through worked stone like brick, masonry or cut flagstones, though Siege Monster lets it smash through them.

What is the earth elemental weak to?

Thunder damage, which it takes double in both editions. Its Dexterity save (−1) and Charisma save (−3) are also very weak.

Is the earth elemental resistant to weapons?

In 2014, yes: it resists bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks. In 2024 it has no damage resistances.

What does Siege Monster do?

The elemental deals double damage to objects and structures. Doors, walls, gates and barricades go down twice as fast.

Can Conjure Elemental summon an earth elemental?

In the 2014 rules, yes: Conjure Elemental summons an elemental of CR 5 or lower from a 10-foot cube of earth, and the earth elemental is the usual choice. In 2024, Conjure Elemental creates an intangible spirit (the earth spirit deals thunder damage) instead of a stat block. The Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals summons this creature in both editions.

Stat blocks: System Reference Document 5.1 (2014) and 5.2.1 (2024), Wizards of the Coast, CC-BY-4.0. Tactics, encounter math and ideas are Loreify's own.