Burning Grassland

Grassland
Ghilarovus, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Fire has taken the land and will not let go. Volcanoes smoke on the horizon, lava runs in the cracks and ash falls like grey snow. The ground is warm underfoot, and at night the hills glow red. Open steppe and prairie under a huge sky, hot in summer and swept by cold winds in winter. Few trees, much grass: a land for herders and riders, where a traveller is seen from far away.

Over the year it averages 8 °C.

Hear it

For the table

Ground
open, about 30 km a day on foot
Seasons
-8 °C in the heart of winter, 22 °C in the heart of summer
Water
by season
Foraging
poor

Hazards

  • Bitter cold. Without furs, a fire and shelter at night, the cold numbs, then kills. Frostbite takes fingers and toes first.
  • Strong wind. Steady wind tires walkers, blows out fires and, on sand or snow, blinds and buries the track.
  • Wildfire. In the dry season, grass and scrub burn fast, driven by the wind. A fire front outruns a person on foot.
  • Searing air. The heat rises from the ground as much as it falls from the sun, and it does not ease at night.
  • Ember rain. Gusts carry glowing embers and hot ash. Cloth, hair and dry packs catch at a touch.
  • Crusted lava. A black crust over a river of lava looks like any other rock until it cracks.

D&D 5e

Plays as
grassland, fast pace at most
Checks
forage: Survival DC 15 · find the way: DC 5 · search: DC 15
Creatures are spotted at
6d6 × 10 ft
  • Bitter cold. At −18 °C (0 °F) or colder, anyone exposed makes a DC 10 Constitution save at the end of each hour or gains 1 Exhaustion. Cold resistance passes automatically; sleeping in a bedroll does too, and a blanket gives Advantage.
  • Strong wind. Disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks; open flames go out and fog clears; a flyer must land at the end of its turn or fall. In a desert it can raise a sandstorm: Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks.
  • Searing air. At 38 °C (100 °F) or hotter, a creature exposed without drinkable water makes a Constitution save at the end of each hour, DC 5 and then 1 higher each hour, or gains 1 Exhaustion level. Medium or Heavy armor gives Disadvantage; Fire resistance or immunity passes automatically.
  • Ember rain. A creature on fire takes 1d4 Fire damage at the start of each of its turns. It can spend an action dropping Prone and rolling to put itself out; dousing, plunging into a liquid or smothering the flames does it too.
  • Crusted lava. (House rule) A DC 14 Wisdom (Survival) check spots a crust before the party crosses it. A creature that breaks through makes a DC 13 Dexterity save, taking 6d10 Fire damage on a failure, or 2d10 on a success as it scrambles out.

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

Pathfinder Second Edition

Plays as (Pathfinder Second Edition)
plains, open terrain, about 32 km a day at Speed 25
Checks
Subsist: Survival DC 15 · Sense Direction: Survival DC 15
Random encounters
flat check DC 12 each day
  • Bitter cold. Temperature bands (GM Core p. 95): at 0 °C to −11 °C (mild cold) travellers tire after 4 hours; at −11 °C to −29 °C (severe cold) they also take minor cold damage (1d6 to 2d6) every hour; at −29 °C to −62 °C (extreme cold), every 10 minutes. Cold-weather gear removes severe-cold damage and turns extreme cold into severe. A soaked traveller counts the band one colder.
  • Strong wind. Wind gives a –1 to –4 penalty to Perception that relies on hearing and to physical ranged attacks, and puts out handheld flames; strong wind can call for Athletics to move, a critical failure pushing back and knocking prone (GM Core p. 95).
  • Wildfire. A wildfire front advances up to about 20 m a round in forest, twice that on plains; flames are hazardous terrain (moderate damage, 4d6 to 6d6, plus persistent fire), smoke works like fog and can suffocate (GM Core p. 97).

This product is licensed under the ORC License located at the Library of Congress at TX 9-307-067 and available online at various locations including paizo.com/orclicense, azoralaw.com/orclicense, and others. All warranties are disclaimed as set forth therein. Attribution: this rules layer is based on the following Licensed Material: Pathfinder Player Core © 2023 Paizo Inc., Designed by Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, and Mark Seifter. Authors: Alexander Augunas, Kate Baker, Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, Carlos Cabrera, Calder CaDavid, James Case, Eleanor Ferron, Steven Hammond, Joan Hong, Vanessa Hoskins, James Jacobs, Jenny Jarzabski, Erik Keith, Dustin Knight, Lyz Liddell, Luis Loza, Patchen Mortimer, Dennis Muldoon, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Mikhail Rekun, David N. Ross, Michael Sayre, Mark Seifter, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Mark Thompson, Clark Valentine, Andrew White, Landon Winkler, and Linda Zayas-Palmer; Pathfinder GM Core © 2023 Paizo Inc., Designed by Logan Bonner and Mark Seifter. Authors: Amirali Attar Olyaee, Logan Bonner, Creighton Broadhurst, Jason Bulmahn, James Case, Jesse Decker, Eleanor Ferron, Fabby Garza Marroquín, Jaym Gates, Matthew Goetz, James Jacobs, Brian R. James, Jenny Jarzabski, Dustin Knight, Jason LeMaitre, Lyz Liddell, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, David N. Ross, Michael Sayre, Mark Seifter, Owen K.C. Stephens, Amber Stewart, Clark Valentine, Landon Winkler, and Linda Zayas-Palmer; Pathfinder Monster Core © 2024 Paizo Inc., Authors: Alexander Augunas, Dennis Baker, Kate Baker, Joshua Birdsong, Joseph Blomquist, Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, James Case, John Compton, Paris Crenshaw, Adam Daigle, Darrin Drader, Brian Duckwitz, Robert N. Emerson, Scott Fernandez, Eleanor Ferron, Leo Glass, Matthew Goodall, BJ Hensley, Thurston Hillman, Vanessa Hoskins, James Jacobs, Jenny Jarzabski, Miko Kallio, Jason Keeley, Jeff Lee, Lyz Liddell, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Robert G. McCreary, Philippe-Antoine Menard, Jacob W. Michaels, Dave Nelson, Jason Nelson, Tim Nightengale, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Mikhail Rekun, Patrick Renie, Alex Riggs, David N. Ross, Michael Sayre, Mark Seifter, Chris S. Sims, Amber Stewart, Jeffrey Swank, William Thompson, Jason Tondro, Clark Valentine, Landon Winkler, Tonya Woldridge, and Linda Zayas-Palmer. If you use our Licensed Material in your own published work, please credit us as follows: Biomes, Pathfinder Second Edition rules layer © 2026 Michael Ghelfi. Reserved Material: the names of Biomes and its catalogues, its descriptions, sounds, art and code. Pathfinder is a registered trademark of Paizo Inc.; this site is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc.

Adventure hooks

  1. A glassblower wants an escort into the burning land, where sand fused by the lava keeps the last voice it heard before it cooled. She is looking for the piece that holds her brother’s, who died the night the fire came.
  2. Two villages on either side of the fire have quarrelled for generations over whose fault it is, and each hires the party, separately, to prove it was the other. Both are wrong: it was an old goatherd’s wish, made in a temper fifty years ago, and he is still alive and still rather proud of it.
  3. Under the ash lies a town buried in a single night, its people still seated at table. In one house a lamp burns: a clerk has spent eleven years keeping the dead town’s ledgers in perfect order, and he does not want to be rescued.
  4. A fire priest pays handsomely for an escort to the heart of the burning, where he means to ask the fire to go out. On the way the party notices that he never sweats, and that the fire seems to be following him rather than the other way round.
  5. A rider gallops into camp, slides from the saddle and dies, with a message sewn into his coat. It is addressed to a khan who has been dead for a year, and it is urgent.
  6. Two herding families share a well on the steppe, and a quarrel over a broken betrothal means neither side will draw from it while the other is near. The animals will start dying in four days.
  7. A chieftain has set a live great bustard as the price of his daughter’s hand, and the suitor has never got within bowshot of one. He will share the wedding feast with whoever helps him, and he is a very bad cook.
  8. An early freeze has locked the grass under a crust of ice and the horses cannot reach it. A trader with three carts of hay is selling at ten times the price, and the herders are deciding whether to pay him or rob him.

What grows here

  • Black Elder (shrub). A fast-growing deciduous shrub or small tree of Europe, western Asia and North Africa with pinnate leaves, flat sprays of scented ivory flowers in early summer and drooping clusters of black berries in autumn. It favours open, nutrient-rich ground: woodland edges, hedgerows, scrub and riverbanks. The flowers make cordials and the cooked berries jam, soup and wine, while the raw berries, leaves and bark are poisonous. Food of: Sheep. Gives: Elder Flower, Elderberries.
  • Common Wormwood (herb). An aromatic perennial of North Africa and temperate Eurasia with small pale yellow flower heads, growing wild on dry uncultivated ground, rocky slopes and field edges. Its herb is intensely bitter and most forms contain thujone. It flavours absinthe and vermouth, once bittered farmhouse beer in place of hops, and was long given as a remedy against intestinal worms. Gives: Wormwood Sprig.
  • Feather Grass (grass). A tufted perennial grass forty to ninety centimetres tall whose seeds carry long white feathery awns, silvery in summer. It is one of the commonest plants of the Eurasian steppe from Mongolia to the Hungarian puszta, and grows in central and southern Europe on dry, sunny limestone slopes up to 2,500 metres. It needs open grazed ground and retreats where pasture is abandoned and woods return.

Animals

Kept here

  • Cattle (can wound or kill, in herds, by day)
  • Water Buffalo (can wound or kill, in herds, day and night)
  • Goat (dangerous if cornered, in herds, by day)
  • Horse (dangerous if cornered, in herds, at dawn and dusk)
  • Sheep (dangerous if cornered, in flocks, by day)

Creatures

Also met here

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

To gather

Obsidian Powder, Ash Lizard Egg, Firenewt Bile, Native Sulfur Crystal, Volcanic Fume, Efreeti Ashes, Salamander Brain, Azer Flame, Beeswax Block, Elderberries, Cattle Fat, Cattle Hide, Cow Milk, European Badger Hair, European Badger Skin, European Rabbit Skin, Goat Hide, Goat Milk, Goat Wool, Grey Wolf Pelt, Honey Comb, Horsehair, Red Deer Antler, Red Deer Hide, Red Fox Pelt, Saiga Hide, Sheep Hide, Sheep Milk, Sheep Wool, Buffalo Hide, Buffalo Milk, Western Honey Bee Propolis, Wild Boar Bristles, Willow Ptarmigan, Brown Bear Bile, Brown Bear Hide, Crystallized Honey, European Bison Hide, European Bison Horn, Golden Eagle Feather, Wolverine Pelt, Wormwood Sprig, Saiga Horn, Amaranth Seed, Beetle Wing, Dinosaur Skin, Garlic Clove, Hemlock Stem, Poppy Petal, Snake Venom, Valerian Root, Vervain Leaves, Four-Leaf Clover, Henbane Leaf, Opium Extract, Barghest Fang, Concentrated Venom, First Morning Dew, Jackalwere Fur, Leucrotta Jaw, Whirlwind Heart, Adult Dragon Tonsils, Dragon Tongue, Lycanthrope Fur

Beneath

Near the surface the rock keeps the year's mean warmth, without seasons; it warms as one goes down.

At the surface
8 °C
100 m
11 °C
500 m
22 °C
1 km
36 °C
3 km
91 °C

A town here

How large a town this land can feed, what it makes and what it must buy. Build it in Hearth

The same milieu, otherwise

Grassland, Cursed Grassland, Blessed Grassland, Haunted Grassland, Enchanted Grassland, Dead Grassland, Primeval Grassland, Frozen Grassland

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