Frozen Temperate Conifer Forest

An endless winter holds the land. Snow lies in midsummer, rivers are frozen to their beds, and trees stand cased in ice that never melts. This cold does not come from the sky, and fires give less warmth than they should. Dark woods of pine, spruce and cedar on mountainsides and rainy coasts, green all year. The ground is soft with needles, the trees are tall, and the light rarely reaches the floor.

Over the year it averages 8 °C.

Hear it

In winter: Winter Forest with Wolves (On Patreon, Raven tier)
At camp: Campfire on a Frozen Tundra (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 2)
Blizzard: Magical Blizzard (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 9)
Snowfall: Mystical Snow (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
By day: Calm Forest (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
On foot: Serene Woods (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
In the fog: Shrouded Forest (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 7)
At night: Walking in a Forest At Night (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
In the wind: Windy Forest (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
Getting lost: Enclosed Forest (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 7)
Downpours: Forest Heavy Rain (On Patreon, Guardian tier)

For the table

Ground: rough, about 20 km a day on foot
Seasons: 2 °C in the heart of winter, 15 °C in the heart of summer
Water: plentiful
Foraging: poor

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.
Endless cold. The cold does not lift by day or by season, and a campfire only warms those who sit right beside it.
Glazed ground. Paths, roots and stones wear a skin of clear ice that the sun never softens.
Frostbite. Fingers and toes go white, then stop hurting, which is worse.

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.
Endless cold. (House rule) The extreme cold rule holds in every season, day and night: at the end of each hour outdoors, a creature makes a DC 10 Constitution save, DC 12 at night, or gains 1 Exhaustion level. Cold resistance or immunity passes automatically; furs and winter clothing give Advantage.
Glazed ground. Slippery ice is Difficult Terrain. A creature that moves onto it for the first time on a turn, or starts its turn there, makes a DC 10 Dexterity save or has the Prone condition.
Frostbite. (House rule) A creature that ends a day of travel with wet hands or feet makes a DC 12 Constitution save. On a failure it has Disadvantage on Dexterity checks and on attack rolls with weapons until it finishes a long rest beside a fire.

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, difficult terrain, about 16 km a day at Speed 25
Checks: Subsist: Survival DC 15 · Sense Direction: Survival DC 15
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.

Adventure hooks

A smith whose forge no longer grows hot enough to work iron offers her best blade to whoever finds where the heat of her fire goes. It goes to a hollow nearby where, in the middle of the ice, a patch of grass grows green around a cradle someone has built there.
A merchant has noticed that nothing kept here ever spoils and has opened a cold store for rich clients from the south. Business is splendid until a young lord comes to collect a crate laid down by his grandfather and finds the grandfather inside, alive and furious about the delay.
Every evening an old woman walks out to talk to her son, who stands frozen in the ice where the winter caught him. She does not want him freed; she wants someone to promise to keep talking to him once she is gone.
The village draws lots each year to choose who walks out into the cold to feed the winter. This year the lot fell on the headman’s son, and the headman has quietly decided that a passing stranger will do just as well.
A shipwright has bought the right to fell the tallest cedar on the mountain for a king’s mainmast. The hill folk say that tree holds up their corner of the sky, and they have started rolling boulders onto the logging road.
Resin tappers score the pines and catch the pitch in clay cups. One tapper’s cups have started filling with something red and warm, and the guild wants it hushed up before the price of pitch collapses.
On the rainy coast, a hermit lives inside a fallen giant tree and trades smoked salmon for news. He knows which way a missing courier went, and will tell it only for a story he has never heard.
A black bear has learned to open the woodcutters’ shutters and steals their bread, and nothing else. The woodcutters want it gone; the village priest has decided it is a saint come back, and goes up every Sunday to bless it.

What grows here

Common Yew (tree). A slow-growing evergreen conifer of Europe, North Africa and western Asia with flat dark needles and a red fleshy aril around each seed, often found in the shade of broadleaf woods and on limestone slopes and cliff edges. Every part except the red aril is poisonous, and livestock die of it. Its springy wood made the medieval longbow, and the trade in bowstaves felled it almost to extinction across much of Europe. Gives: Yew Bowstave, Yew Needles.
Norway Spruce (tree). A tall evergreen conifer of 35 to 55 m with hanging branchlets and the longest cones of any spruce, growing in the boreal forest of northern Europe and in the mountains further south. It is one of Europe's chief timber trees and the violin maker's tonewood; its young shoots flavour drinks and food, and its resin served in Nordic folk medicine for wounds. Gives: Norway Spruce Wood, Norway Spruce Resin, Norway Spruce Shoots.
Scots Pine (tree). A pine of up to 35 m with short blue-green needles and orange-red upper bark, ranging from western Europe to eastern Siberia and past the Arctic Circle, on poor sandy soils, rock outcrops and peat bogs. It gave building timber, rosin and turpentine, and in Scandinavia its stumps and roots were burnt down into tar. Gives: Scots Pine Wood, Scots Pine Resin.
Western Red Cedar (tree). A huge conifer of the Pacific Northwest of North America, up to seventy metres tall, which grows with Douglas-fir and western hemlock in wet maritime forests and is not a true cedar. Its light, aromatic, rot-resistant wood gave the peoples of the coast their dugout canoes, house planks split from living trees, totem poles and tools. Its bark, pulled off in long strips, was woven into baskets, mats, rope, rain hats and clothing. Gives: Red Cedar Wood, Red Cedar Bark.
Bilberry (shrub). A low deciduous shrub of 10 to 50 cm with blue-black berries ripening from July to September, found across the northern lands on acid soils of heaths, boggy barrens and open pine and spruce forests. The berries are eaten fresh or in pies, jams and syrups, and in Britain they once dyed food and cloth. Gives: Bilberry.
Common Heather (shrub). A low evergreen undershrub of Europe, under sixty centimetres, with tiny scale leaves and mauve flowers from July to September, the dominant plant of most European heath and moorland, also found on bogs and in acidic pine and oak woods. Grazing and light burning keep the moors in heather, and sheep and grouse feed on it. It dyed wool yellow, tanned leather, bound besoms, flavoured medieval ale before hops, and still gives a prized honey. Food of: Sheep. Food of: Willow Ptarmigan. Gives: Heather Tops.

Animals

Brown Bear (man-killer, alone, at dawn and dusk)
Tiger (man-killer, alone, by night)
Grey Wolf (can wound or kill, in packs, by night)
Red Deer (can wound or kill, in herds, at dawn and dusk)
Alpine Ibex (dangerous if cornered, in herds, by day)
Eurasian Eagle-Owl (dangerous if cornered, alone, by night)
Eurasian Lynx (dangerous if cornered, alone, at dawn and dusk)
European Badger (dangerous if cornered, in families, by night)
Golden Eagle (dangerous if cornered, in pairs, by day)
Snow Leopard (dangerous if cornered, alone, at dawn and dusk)
Common Raven (harmless, in pairs, by day)

Creatures

Ice Mephit (a threat to the unwary, Challenge 1/2)
White Dragon (deadly, Challenge 2-20)
Winter Wolf (a fight to fear, Challenge 3)
Frost Giant (deadly, Challenge 8)
Remorhaz (deadly, Challenge 11)

Also met here

Giant Owl (harmless, Challenge 1/4)
Scout (a threat to the unwary, Challenge 1/2)
Troll (deadly, Challenge 1/2-5)
Worg (a threat to the unwary, Challenge 1/2)
Bugbear (a fight to fear, Challenge 1-3)
Dire Wolf (a fight to fear, Challenge 1)
Druid (a threat to the unwary, Challenge 2)
Ettercap (a fight to fear, Challenge 2)
Giant Boar (a fight to fear, Challenge 2)
Giant Elk (a threat to the unwary, Challenge 2)
Green Dragon (deadly, Challenge 2-22)
Ogre (a fight to fear, Challenge 2)
Owlbear (a fight to fear, Challenge 3)
Phase Spider (a fight to fear, Challenge 3)
Werewolf (a fight to fear, Challenge 3)
Werebear (a fight to fear, Challenge 5)
Oni (deadly, Challenge 7)
Treant (a fight to fear, Challenge 9)

To gather

Winter Wolf Eye, Yeti Glands, Remorhaz Flame, Beeswax Block, Bilberry, Heather Tops, European Badger Hair, European Badger Skin, Grey Wolf Pelt, Honey Comb, Norway Spruce Shoots, Norway Spruce Resin, Norway Spruce Wood, Red Deer Antler, Red Deer Hide, Scots Pine Resin, Scots Pine Wood, Red Cedar Bark, Alpine Ibex Blood, Alpine Ibex Horn, Brown Bear Bile, Brown Bear Hide, Yew Needles, Yew Bowstave, Crystallized Honey, Eurasian Lynx Pelt, Golden Eagle Feather, Red Cedar Wood, Snow Leopard Bone, Snow Leopard Pelt, Tiger Bone, Tiger Pelt, Activated Charcoal, Beetle Wing, Holly Leaf, Snake Venom, Alchemical Resin, Potassium Powder, Barghest Fang, Concentrated Venom, First Morning Dew, Lightning Strike Ash, Oni Liver, 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

Temperate Conifer Forest, Cursed Temperate Conifer Forest, Haunted Temperate Conifer Forest, Crystalline Temperate Conifer Forest, Primeval Temperate Conifer Forest, Eldritch Temperate Conifer Forest, Burning Temperate Conifer Forest

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