Enchanted Tropical Rainforest

Tropical Rainforest
lubasi, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

The fey have touched this land. Paths shift between morning and evening, lights dance in the trees, and time does not always pass as it should. Everything here can be had, for a price. A tall, closed forest that is hot and wet all year, where most of the life is in the canopy far overhead. On the ground the light is dim, the air heavy, and the way forward is cut with a blade or followed along rivers.

Over the year it averages 26 °C.

Hear it

For the table

Ground
hard going, about 10 km a day on foot
Seasons
25 °C in the heart of winter, 27 °C in the heart of summer
Water
plentiful
Foraging
rich

Hazards

  • Getting lost. Under the trees, in the dunes or in the dark, every direction looks alike. Without a guide or a sure landmark, a party walks in circles.
  • Downpours. Rain for days soaks gear, swells streams into torrents and turns paths to mud.
  • Fevers. Warm stagnant water breeds the fevers that emptied whole expeditions before anyone knew the mosquito carried them.
  • Shifting paths. The path walked this morning is not there in the evening. Landmarks swap places, and the party may arrive somewhere it never meant to go.
  • Fey food. Fruit that is too sweet, wine poured by a smiling stranger. Whoever eats it longs for it ever after.
  • Lost time. A night spent dancing in a fey ring may last a week outside. Beards grow, food spoils, and friends have given up waiting.

D&D 5e

Plays as
forest, normal pace at most
Checks
forage: Survival DC 10 · find the way: DC 15 · search: DC 15
Creatures are spotted at
2d8 × 10 ft
  • Downpours. Heavy rain makes the area Lightly Obscured, gives Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks and puts out open flames.
  • Shifting paths. (House rule) Navigation checks here have Disadvantage. On a failure by 5 or more, the party arrives at a place of the GM's choosing, usually one the fey wanted it to see.
  • Fey food. (House rule) Whoever eats or drinks it makes a DC 13 Wisdom save or has the Charmed condition toward the host until the next sunrise, and will not leave of its own will while the host asks it to stay.
  • Lost time. (House rule) A creature that joins a fey revel makes a DC 14 Charisma save when it leaves. On a failure, 1d6 days have passed outside; on a 1, 1d6 months.

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)
forest, greater difficult terrain, about 11 km a day at Speed 25
Checks
Subsist: Survival DC 15 · Sense Direction: Survival DC 20
Random encounters
flat check DC 14 each day
  • Getting lost. Sense Direction (Player Core p. 246): a Survival check once a day, –2 without a compass; DC 15 in ordinary wild land, 20 in deep forest or underground, 30 in a featureless desert. Getting lost has no fixed penalty: the GM decides where the party ends up.
  • Downpours. Heavy rain gives a –1 to –4 penalty to Perception that relies on sight, conceals distant creatures, douses flames and brings travel fatigue down to 4 hours (GM Core p. 95).

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.

Crossing it

Besides walking, depending on the era and the season (Biomes estimates of a day’s distance):

  • By river boat: about 35 km a day
  • By train: about 250 km a day
  • By airship: about 900 km a day
  • By bush plane: about 800 km a day
  • By rover: about 20 km a day
  • By elephant: about 20 km a day
  • On a flying mount: about 150 km a day
  • By flying carpet: about 100 km a day
  • By motorbike: about 40 km a day
  • By armoured buggy: about 40 km a day

Adventure hooks

  1. A traveller came back from the enchanted land with a basket of fruit and is now sixty, though he left at twenty. He wants the years back, and the fey who sold him the fruit do not give refunds, only exchanges.
  2. A local girl has been promised as a bride to a fey prince, by a grandfather who has since died. She is curious about the prince, and wants the party to find out what he is like before the wedding.
  3. The paths here change between morning and evening, and a merchant has made a fortune selling maps that update themselves. His maps have started showing a place that does not exist, and people are walking into it.
  4. A dancing light leads the party to a feast where they are guests of honour. Everything is free, as long as nobody eats, and someone already has.
  5. A botanist pays well for a flower that opens one night a year, forty metres up in the canopy. The village climbers will take her, but only once someone settles their feud with the village downriver.
  6. The river has dropped so low that a stone stairway has come out of the mud on the bank. Everyone in the village swears it was never there, except the old woman nobody listens to.
  7. Overnight, every mark on a rubber tapper’s trails has been moved, so that each path now leads back to the same giant strangler fig. He wants to know who did it, and he is far too frightened to go and look.
  8. A merchant bought a parrot that speaks three languages, and now it only screams the name of a man he once cheated. He will pay to have the bird taken back to the forest it came from, before that man hears it.

What grows here

  • Açaí Palm (tree). A slender palm over 20 m tall, often with several stems from one base, up to about 12, growing in the swamps, river edges and seasonally flooded forest of the eastern Amazon, above all in the Brazilian state of Pará. Its small black-purple fruit is mostly seed, with a thin layer of pulp. The fruit is picked about six months of the year and not in the rainy season. Gives: Açaí Berry, Açaí Palm Heart.
  • Big-leaf Mahogany (tree). A tree of 30 to 40 m, sometimes 60 m, of the humid forests from Mexico to Bolivia and Brazil, often on rich riverbank soils. Its woody capsules, up to 40 cm long, open from the base to release dozens of winged seeds. Prized for its timber, it is now listed as vulnerable and its trade is controlled under CITES. Gives: Mahogany Wood, Mahogany Bark.
  • Brazil Nut (tree). One of the tallest and longest-lived trees of the Amazon, up to 50 m, its straight trunk bare of branches until the crown rises above the canopy. It bears fruit almost only in undisturbed forest, where large bees pollinate it and agoutis gnaw open the heavy pods and bury the seeds. The nuts are still gathered wild along the Amazon, Rio Negro and Orinoco. Gives: Brazil Nut, Brazil Nut Pod, Brazil Nut Wood.
  • Buriti Palm (tree). A palm up to 35 m tall that grows in and near swamps and periodically flooded ground across tropical South America, from the Amazon to the Orinoco and Trinidad. Humboldt called it the 'tree of life': tapirs, peccaries, fish and monkeys depend on its scaly chestnut fruit. People eat the fruit fresh, as juice, jam or a fermented drink, take a sago starch from the trunk, drink the sap, eat the palm-weevil grubs in the trunk, and twist the leaf fibre into ropes, nets and hammocks. Food of: South American Tapir. Food of: White-lipped Peccary. Gives: Buriti Fruit, Buriti Sago, Buriti Fibre.
  • Cacao (tree). A small evergreen tree of 6 to 12 m that grows in the shade of the humid forest understorey, from southern Mexico to the Amazon basin. Its flowers and pods sprout straight from the trunk and old branches. It was domesticated in the upper Amazon over 5,000 years ago for the pulp and beans that give chocolate. Gives: Cacao Bean, Cacao Pod.
  • Durian (tree). A tree of 25 to 50 m from the dense lowland forests of Borneo, Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. Its fruit, 1 to 3 kg and covered in thorns sharp enough to draw blood, smells so strong that Singapore and Bangkok ban it from public transport. The smell carries half a mile and draws elephants, tigers, orangutans, hornbills, squirrels and macaques. Food of: Tiger. Food of: Asian Elephant. Gives: Durian, Durian Seed.
  • Indian Gooseberry (tree). A deciduous tree of 1 to 8 metres from tropical and southern Asia, growing in mixed and drier forests, held sacred in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. Its small round fruit, the amla, is sour, bitter and astringent, one of the richest sources of vitamin C, and a staple of Ayurvedic medicine. Fruit, bark and leaves also give black ink, hair dye, a brown dye for silk and wool, and tannin. Gives: Amla, Indian Gooseberry Leaves.
  • Jackfruit (tree). An evergreen tree up to 30 m, native to India (probably the Western Ghats) and grown across South and Southeast Asia. It bears the largest fruit of any tree, up to 90 cm long and 50 kg, straight from the trunk. Cut, the tree bleeds a sticky milky latex that is heated into glue and mixed with oils into birdlime. Gives: Jackfruit, Jackfruit Seed, Jackfruit Wood.
  • Kapok (tree). A giant of the tropical forest, up to 60 m tall, with huge buttress roots and a spiny trunk; it flowers while bare of leaves and is pollinated by bats. Native to the American tropics and probably to West and Central Africa, it is held sacred by the Maya and in Caribbean and Surinamese traditions. People take the floss of its pods, oil from its seeds and a light wood. Food of: Goat. Food of: Sheep. Food of: Cattle. Gives: Kapok Floss, Kapok Seed, Kapok Wood.
  • Mango (tree). An evergreen tree up to 30 metres tall and as wide, native to the lands between northwestern Myanmar, Bangladesh and northeastern India and now planted throughout the tropics; in the wild it grows in the middle storey of humid lowland forest. It fruits within a few years and keeps bearing for over fifty. The fruit peel holds urushiol, the poison-ivy irritant, and its juice can give a rash to sensitive people. Gives: Mango, Mango Wood.
  • Pará Rubber Tree (tree). A tree of the Amazon basin up to 43 m, in the middle storey of the rainforest, along riverbanks that flood and on drier plateaux. Its ripe fruit bursts open explosively to scatter its three large seeds. Its latex made the Amazon rubber boom, until Henry Wickham smuggled 70,000 seeds to Kew in 1875 and plantations moved to Southeast Asia. Gives: Rubber Latex, Rubber Seed.
  • Red Cinchona (tree). An evergreen tree of 10 to 30 m with pink fragrant flowers, the most widespread cinchona, in the cool humid mountain forests from Costa Rica to Bolivia, mostly between 1,000 and 3,700 m. Its bark turns red when cut and is rich in quinine, the old remedy for malaria. Fast-growing, it regrows from stumps and has run wild on the Galápagos and Hawaii. Gives: Cinchona Bark.
  • Sago Palm (tree). A palm of 7 to 25 m with leaves up to 10 m long, native to the Moluccas and New Guinea, standing in the freshwater swamps of the lowland rainforest. Felled just before it flowers, one trunk holds 180 to 350 kg of starch, enough to feed a person for a year. Sago is the staple of peoples of New Guinea such as the Korowai, and fed coastal China before rice. Gives: Sago, Sago Palm Leaf.
  • Sausage Tree (tree). A tree up to twenty-four metres found across tropical Africa in the wetter savannas and along rivers, hung with fruits up to sixty centimetres long and five to ten kilograms each, like sausages on long cords. The fruit is not edible: raw it is poisonous and purgative. In Kenya the dried or baked fruit is fermented into a mead-like beer, and the fruit and bark are a widespread folk remedy; elephants and baboons eat the fruit, and the light wood makes dugout canoes. Food of: African Bush Elephant. Gives: Sausage Tree Fruit, Sausage Tree Wood.
  • Teak (tree). A large deciduous tree up to 40 m with huge papery leaves and clusters of small white flowers, native to India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Indonesia. It grows in the tropical forests that have a long dry season. Its durable, oily wood is one of the most prized timbers in the world. Gives: Teak Wood, Teak Leaf.
  • Taro (herb). A tropical perennial with big heart-shaped leaves and a starchy corm, thought native to southern India and Southeast Asia, growing in wetlands, marshes and low ground along streams and rivers. It is one of the oldest crops: traces of taro about 10,000 years old have been found at Kuk Swamp in New Guinea. Raw, the plant is full of needle-like oxalate crystals that burn the mouth and throat: it must be cooked. Food of: Cattle. Gives: Taro Corm, Taro Leaves.
  • Wild Banana (herb). A giant herb whose "trunk" is only rolled leaf sheaths, with leaves up to 2 m long, growing in wet shaded ravines and marshy ground of the Southeast Asian and Indian forests up to 1,200 m. It is the wild ancestor of the dessert banana, but its slender fruit is packed with 15 to 62 hard seeds. Bats, birds, squirrels, civets, monkeys and apes all feed on it. Gives: Wild Banana, Banana Flower, Wild Banana Leaf.
  • Common Bamboo (grass). A large clumping bamboo with yellow or green culms 10 to 20 m tall, native to South and Southeast Asia and Yunnan and the most widely grown bamboo in the tropics. It grows on river banks and open ground in the lowlands and is dense in the Indomalayan rainforests. It flowers only every few decades and spreads almost wholly from cuttings and rhizomes. Gives: Bamboo Cane, Bamboo Shoot.
  • Black Pepper (vine). A woody climber that scrambles up to 4 m on trees and roots wherever its stems touch the ground, native to the Malabar Coast and the Western Ghats of India. It wants moist, rich soil and grows best in the lowlands, below 900 m. Its peppercorns were "black gold": they flavoured the costliest Roman cooking, and Alaric made 3,000 pounds of pepper part of the ransom he demanded from Rome. Gives: Peppercorns.
  • Curare Vine (vine). A vigorous woody climber that hauls itself high into the trees by tendrils, in the forests along creeks from Costa Rica to the Guianas, Brazil, Peru and Bolivia. It is the main source of calabash curare, the arrow poison of Amazonian hunters, named for the gourds it was packed in. Its seeds and bark are deadly; a touch of poison in the blood paralyses the breathing. Gives: Curare Vine Bark.
  • Manau Rattan (vine). A climbing palm of Thailand, Malaya, Sumatra and Borneo, mostly in hill forest between 600 and 1,000 m; its single stem can run over 100 m through the canopy, one reaching 240 m. Its leaf sheaths bristle with black triangular spines that hook onto the trees as it climbs. Rattan is one of the most valuable forest goods of Southeast Asia, still nearly all cut from the wild. Gives: Rattan Cane, Rattan Fruit.
  • Vanilla (vine). An orchid vine that climbs 15 m or more up the trees on aerial roots, in the warm wet lowland forests of southern Mexico, Central America, Colombia and Brazil. Each greenish-yellow flower lasts a single day and only about 1 in 100 is pollinated in the wild, by insects still not identified for certain (perhaps orchid bees); on farms every flower must be pollinated by hand. Wild plants are now endangered. Gives: Vanilla Pod.

Animals

Kept here

  • Goat (dangerous if cornered, in herds, by day)

Creatures

  • Druid (a threat to the unwary, Challenge 2)

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

Moonstone Dragon Scale, Açaí Berry, Açaí Palm Heart, African Buffalo Hide, African Buffalo Meat, Beeswax Block, Brazil Nut Pod, Brazil Nut, Buriti Fibre, Buriti Fruit, Buriti Sago, Cacao Pod, Cacao Bean, Capybara Hide, Capybara Meat, Bamboo Shoot, Bamboo Cane, Durian, Durian Seed, Wild Honey, Wild Beeswax, Goat Hide, Goat Wool, Iguana Eggs, Iguana Meat, Honey Comb, Amla, Indian Gooseberry Leaves, Jackfruit, Jackfruit Seed, Kapok Floss, Kapok Seed, Kapok Wood, Mahogany Bark, Rattan Fruit, Mango, Mango Wood, Rubber Latex, Rubber Seed, Junglefowl Egg, Junglefowl Feathers, Junglefowl Meat, Sago Palm Leaf, Sago, Sausage Tree Fruit, Sausage Tree Wood, Sitatunga Meat, Tapir Hide, Tapir Meat, Taro Corm, Taro Leaves, Teak Leaf, Peccary Hide, Peccary Meat, Banana Flower, Wild Banana, Wild Banana Leaf, Elephant Meat, Peppercorns, Brazil Nut Wood, Coconut Crab Meat, Cougar Pelt, Macaque Meat, Crystallized Honey, Green Anaconda Fat, Jackfruit Wood, Jaguar Fang, Jaguar Pelt, King Cobra Meat, Paca Meat, Mahogany Wood, Rattan Cane, Oilbird Fat, Cinchona Bark, Scarlet Macaw Feather, Sitatunga Hide, Teak Wood, Asian Elephant Ivory, Black Mamba Venom, Curare Vine Bark, Edible Bird's Nest, Hornbill Tail Feather, King Cobra Venom, Leopard Pelt, Tiger Bone, Tiger Pelt, Vanilla Pod, Golden Poison Frog Secretion, Hornbill Ivory, Activated Charcoal, Beetle Wing, Dinosaur Skin, Panther Paws, Snake Venom, Alchemical Resin, Treated Dragon's Blood Resin, Dragonblood Sap, Enchanted Sugar Pinch, Moonflower Petal, Opium Extract, Sacred Basil Leaf, Treated Cinnamon Stick, Concentrated Venom, First Morning Dew, Lightning Strike Ash, 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
26 °C
100 m
29 °C
500 m
40 °C
1 km
54 °C
3 km
109 °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

Tropical Rainforest, Corrupted Tropical Rainforest, Fungal Tropical Rainforest, Primeval Tropical Rainforest, Toxic Tropical Rainforest

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