Water Elemental 5e: Stats, Whelm and How to Run the Drowning Fight

A water elemental is a CR 5 Large elemental with AC 14, 114 hit points, a 90-foot swim speed and two slams for 13 damage each. Its signature action is Whelm: it flows into the space of up to a few characters, and anyone who fails a DC 15 Strength save takes damage, is grappled and restrained inside it, and can't breathe. The 2024 rules make Whelm hit harder up front (22 damage instead of 13, half on a success), add a knockdown to its slam, and swap its resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks for resistance to fire.

Table of Contents

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

Water Elemental Stat Block (2014)

This is the water elemental from SRD 5.1, the same stat block as the 2014 Monster Manual.

Read the condition immunities before you read anything else. A water elemental can't be grappled, restrained, knocked prone, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned or knocked unconscious. Most of the ways a party controls a big melee monster don't work on it. What does work is cold: its Freeze trait cuts its speed by 20 feet until the end of its next turn whenever it takes cold damage, which turns a 90-foot swimmer into a 70-foot one and its 30-foot walk into a 10-foot crawl.

Its 2014 resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks matters most at levels 5 to 7, when some martial characters still swing ordinary weapons. Those characters deal half damage, which makes 114 hit points feel like 228.

The Water Elemental in the 2024 Rules

The 2024 water elemental (SRD 5.2.1) keeps the same AC, hit points, speeds, CR and XP. Whelm and the slam changed, and so did its resistances.

What these changes do at the table:

• •Whelm no longer misses cleanly. In 2014, a successful save shoves the character out and costs them nothing. In 2024 they take 11 damage and stay inside the elemental, where the next Whelm can catch them again.
• •The slam knocks people down. A Medium character hit by a 2024 slam is prone. With two slams, the elemental's second attack has advantage on a prone target within 5 feet, and the character spends half their movement standing up.
• •The holding damage dropped from 13 to 9 per turn, and the 2024 wording says the target "is suffocating". SRD 5.2.1 defines Suffocation as a hazard: a creature can hold its breath for 1 + its Constitution modifier minutes (minimum 30 seconds) before suffocation begins, and only once it runs out of breath does it gain 1 Exhaustion level at the end of each of its turns (all removed when it can breathe again). Read against that definition, a whelmed character starts holding its breath. Even the 30-second minimum is 5 rounds, so the 9 damage per turn matters long before the air does.

DM ruling, not rules text: some DMs read "is suffocating" as "already out of breath", so the victim gains 1 Exhaustion level (−2 to every d20 test) at the end of each turn inside, and is at −6 to escape after three turns. That is much harsher than the glossary definition. If you use it, tell the players before the session, not mid-fight.

• •Fire is resisted, magic weapons don't matter. Plain steel now hits a 2024 water elemental at full damage, but a Fireball only deals half.

How Water Elementals Fight

A water elemental fights by moving into the party, not by standing next to it. Water Form lets it enter an enemy's space and stop there, and Whelm affects every creature in its space.

How Whelm works, step by step:

1. •On its turn, the elemental moves into a space occupied by enemies. It's Large, so it covers a 10-by-10-foot area, enough to overlap up to four Medium characters standing together.
2. •It uses Whelm. Every creature in its space makes a DC 15 Strength save.
3. •On a failure, a creature takes damage and, if it's Large or smaller, is grappled (escape DC 14) and restrained. It can hold one Large creature or two Medium or smaller ones at a time.
4. •At the start of each of the elemental's turns, everyone it holds takes damage again.
5. •A held creature can use its action to escape (Athletics or Acrobatics against DC 14). An ally within 5 feet can use an action to pull them out with a DC 14 Strength check.

Who fails the save. A level 5 fighter with Strength 18 and save proficiency has +7, so they fail DC 15 on a 7 or lower (35%). A wizard with Strength 8 (−1) fails on a 15 or lower (75%). The elemental doesn't need to choose: it moves to cover both the fighter and the wizard, and the wizard is the one it keeps.

Recharge 4-6. Whelm comes back on a 4, 5 or 6 at the start of the elemental's turn, a 50% chance each round. Expect it every other round on average. On rounds without it, the elemental makes two slams: at +7 against AC 16, each hits on a 9 or higher (60%), about 15.6 damage a round in total.

Held targets are in its space. While the elemental holds someone, the held character sits inside it. That has two consequences:

• •Area spells hit the prisoner too. A Fireball or Cone of Cold aimed at the elemental also catches the restrained ally, who has disadvantage on Dexterity saves.
• •It can carry them away. When the elemental moves, it can drag the creatures it holds. A grappler dragging a creature that is only one size smaller pays extra movement (half speed in 2014, 1 extra foot per foot in 2024), so it swims 45 feet a turn with a Medium character inside. That's still 15 feet faster than most characters walk. Into deep water, under a dock, through a sluice gate.

Use the 1-inch gap. Water Form lets it move through a space as narrow as 1 inch without squeezing. A water elemental can come up through a drain, under a door, or through the bars of a portcullis. It can also leave the same way when the fight turns, which no other CR 5 brute can do.

Fight near water. On land it walks at 30 feet. In a river, harbor or flooded dungeon it swims at 90, three times faster than the party. Every water elemental fight should have water in it.

Running a Water Elemental Encounter

Under the 2024 XP budget (SRD 5.2.1), one water elemental is 1,800 XP:

The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide guidelines (used by our encounter calculator) rate a single water elemental as Hard for four level 4 characters (Hard 1,500, Deadly 2,000) and only Easy for four level 5 characters (Medium starts at 2,000). Two elementals at level 7 become 5,400 adjusted XP after the ×1.5 multiplier, which is Hard (4,400 to 6,800).

Two things change its real difficulty more than XP does:

• •Water raises it a lot. A single elemental in a flooded chamber, with the party wading, plays more like a High encounter at level 5, though its XP makes it Low.
• •One water elemental is a better fight than two. Two elementals can hold four characters between them, and a fight where half the party can't act is rarely fun. Pair one elemental with a creature that benefits from it, like a merrow or sahuagin raiders that attack the characters it has restrained (with advantage).

How Players Beat a Water Elemental

• •Cold damage first. Any cold damage triggers Freeze, cutting its speed by 20 feet. A slowed elemental can't reach the back line, and on land it barely moves at all. Cone of Cold does both jobs at once.
• •Banish it. Its Charisma save is −1. Against Banishment at DC 15 it fails on a 15 or lower (75%), and if concentration holds for the full minute, the elemental doesn't come back: it goes to its home plane.
• •Target its mind, not its body. Its Intelligence (−3) and Charisma (−1) saves are its worst. It shrugs off most physical control, but it isn't immune to the Charmed or Frightened conditions. A spell that leaves it Incapacitated also ends its grapples, freeing anyone inside it.
• •Spread out. Whelm only affects creatures in its space. If the party stands 10 feet apart, it catches one character per Whelm instead of three.
• •Free prisoners with actions, not damage. Killing a 114-hit-point elemental takes time. Pulling an ally out takes one action and a DC 14 Strength check. A strong ally next to the elemental saves more hit points that way.
• •Keep magic weapons ready (2014) or skip fire (2024). Against the 2014 version, magic weapons and spells beat mundane steel. Against the 2024 version, any weapon works, but fire damage is halved.
• •Protection from Evil and Good covers Elementals in both editions: the elemental has disadvantage on attack rolls against the protected character. It doesn't help against Whelm, which is a saving throw, not an attack.

Water Elemental vs Air, Earth and Fire Elementals

All four SRD elementals are CR 5 (1,800 XP), so the choice is about how you want the fight to feel.

The water elemental is the only one that takes characters out of the fight. An air elemental scatters the party and a fire elemental burns it, but a whelmed character spends their turns trying to get out instead of fighting.

Summoning a Water Elemental

2014 Conjure Elemental. The 5th-level spell lets a druid or wizard summon an elemental of CR 5 or lower from a 10-foot cube of water. A water elemental is the obvious pick near a river or a ship. The catch is in the spell text: if the caster's concentration breaks, the elemental doesn't vanish. It becomes hostile to the caster and their companions, can't be dismissed, and stays until 1 hour after it was summoned. Keep the caster's Concentration safe, or plan for the elemental to turn on the party.

2024 Conjure Elemental. The 2024 version of Conjure Elemental doesn't summon this stat block. It creates a Large intangible spirit that restrains enemies and deals damage of the element's type (cold for water). If your group plays 2024 rules, the stat block on this page is for water elementals the DM places, not ones the players call.

Water Elemental Encounter Ideas

The lock keeper's mistake. A wizard bound a water elemental into a canal lock to operate the gates, then died. The elemental is still there, opening and closing the gates on its own schedule, and every barge that enters the lock is now stuck in a 10-foot-deep box of water with something angry in it. The guild that owns the canal wants the lock working, not the elemental dead.

The broken summoning (2014). A druid ally summons a water elemental to help the party fight river bandits. In round two, a bandit's arrow breaks the druid's concentration. The elemental, now hostile and impossible to dismiss, is standing in the middle of the party and has most of an hour left. The bandits are still shooting.

The bilge. During a storm at sea, something comes up through the ship's bilge pump. A water elemental fits through the 1-inch gap, rises in the cargo hold, and starts whelming sailors one at a time and dragging them toward the hull breach it opened. The party has to deal with it while the crew fights the storm on deck.

If your sessions get busy, Loreify can record them and keep track of the NPCs and monsters the party ran into, like the canal guild that still owes them.

Frequently Asked Questions

What CR is a water elemental in 5e?

A water elemental is CR 5 (1,800 XP) in both the 2014 and 2024 rules. It has AC 14 and 114 hit points in both editions.

How does a water elemental's Whelm work?

Each creature in the elemental's space makes a DC 15 Strength save. On a failure it takes damage (13 in 2014, 22 in 2024) and, if it's Large or smaller, is grappled and restrained and can't breathe, taking more damage at the start of each of the elemental's turns. It escapes with a DC 14 check or an ally pulls it out.

Can you drown in a water elemental?

In 2014 a held creature is unable to breathe, which in practice means holding its breath for 1 + its Constitution modifier minutes, so drowning rarely happens in one fight. In 2024 the held creature "is suffocating"; under the SRD 5.2.1 Suffocation rules it can still hold its breath for 1 + its Constitution modifier minutes (minimum 30 seconds) before it starts gaining 1 Exhaustion level per turn. Starting Exhaustion immediately is a DM ruling, not the rules text. A creature that can breathe water ignores both.

What is a water elemental weak to?

It has no damage vulnerabilities, but cold damage triggers Freeze and reduces its speed by 20 feet until the end of its next turn. Its Charisma save is −1, which makes Banishment the most reliable way to end the fight.

What damage does a water elemental resist?

In 2014 it resists acid damage and bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks. In 2024 it resists acid and fire instead. Both versions are immune to poison damage.

Can a water elemental be grappled or knocked prone?

No. It is immune to the Grappled, Prone and Restrained conditions in both editions, along with Exhaustion, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned and Unconscious.

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.