Mangrove

Mangrove
Jonathan Wilkins, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Salt-water forest on tropical coasts, its trees standing on stilt roots that the tide covers and uncovers. A tangle of channels, mud and fish, hard to cross and easy to hide in.

Hear it

For the table

Ground
hard going, about 10 km a day on foot
Water
plentiful
Foraging
rich

Hazards

  • Sucking mud. Firm-looking ground opens onto deep mud or peat. Alone and laden, a traveller can be held until the water rises or the cold comes.
  • Tides. The sea comes back faster than a walker on the flats. A causeway or a beach crossed at low tide can close behind the party.
  • Fevers. Warm stagnant water breeds the fevers that emptied whole expeditions before anyone knew the mosquito carried them.
  • Biting insects. In the warm season, clouds of mosquitoes and flies bite day and night. Sleep and tempers wear thin.

D&D 5e

Plays as
swamp, slow pace at most
Checks
forage: Survival DC 10 · find the way: DC 15 · search: DC 20
Creatures are spotted at
2d8 × 10 ft

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)
swamp, 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
  • Sucking mud. Quicksand (GM Core p. 107): a hidden patch about 5 m wide (Stealth +12; Survival DC 18 to spot by disturbing it). Stepping in sinks a traveller to the waist, then one step each round (neck, then under); Athletics DC 20 climbs back a step, and allies can pull with Athletics DC 20.

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 airship: about 900 km a day
  • By bush plane: about 800 km a day
  • By rover: about 20 km a day
  • By hover sled: about 80 km a day
  • On a flying mount: about 150 km a day
  • By flying carpet: about 100 km a day
  • By armoured buggy: about 40 km a day

Adventure hooks

  1. Pirates hide their boats in the mangrove channels, and the fishermen are paid to keep quiet. One fisherman wants out, and the only safe way is to lead someone to the hideout and make it look like bad luck.
  2. Honey hunters go into the mangrove each spring, and every year a tiger takes one of them. This year a holy man has come to bless them, and insists on going along, barefoot.
  3. A smuggler who uses the channels at high tide pays the crab catchers in pearls to look away. The pearls are fake, the crab catchers have just found out, and the smuggler is due back tonight.
  4. A fisherman’s boy has found a channel that ends in a perfectly round lagoon with no trees around it. He wants someone to go with him, because his father has forbidden it without saying why.

What grows here

  • Black Mangrove (tree). A mangrove shrub or tree up to 12 to 15 m, named for its dark trunk and heartwood, on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of tropical America and the Atlantic coast of tropical Africa, just above high tide on sandy and muddy shores. Its ground is bristling with pneumatophores, breathing roots that stand out of the mud, and its leaves are often white with the salt they sweat out. It grows inland of the red mangrove and seaward of the white. Gives: Black Mangrove Wood, Black Mangrove Bark.
  • Blind-your-eye Mangrove (tree). A mangrove tree up to 15 m of salt and brackish water, from India and Bangladesh to South China and Australia, growing at the back of the swamp where the water is least salty. Its milky latex blisters the skin, and a drop in the eye blinds for a time: Cook's men were blinded cutting it for wood, and Bligh forbade his crew to cut it in 1789, for even the smoke of the burning wood hurts the eyes. Gives: Blind-Your-Eye Latex.
  • Cannonball Mangrove (tree). A common evergreen mangrove of the mahogany family, from Kenya and Mozambique to India, Southeast Asia, northern Australia and the Pacific islands, growing high in the intertidal zone, in estuaries and along creeks. Its buttressed trunk sends roots far to either side, and it bears woody balls 9 to 12 cm across that split into a dozen odd-shaped seeds, which give it its other name, the puzzlenut tree. Gives: Cannonball Mangrove Wood, Cannonball Mangrove Bark.
  • Grey Mangrove (tree). A mangrove tree of 3 to 10 m (up to 14 m in the tropics) that sheds salt through its leaves and breathes through pencil-like roots poking out of the mud at low tide. It lines mudflats, sandy shores and estuaries around the Indian Ocean, from East Africa and Arabia to Australia and northern New Zealand, even on desert coasts. Its heavy, durable wood makes poles and boat ribs, and the smoke of the burning wood keeps mosquitoes off. Gives: Grey Mangrove Wood, Grey Mangrove Seedlings.
  • Mangrove Apple (tree). A mangrove tree up to 20 m tall, ringed by cone-shaped breathing roots up to 2 m high, growing on tidal mudflats and creeks from South Asia to northern Australia and the Pacific islands. Its round, sour fruit tastes faintly of cheese and is eaten raw, cooked as a vegetable or mixed into drinks. Fishermen cut the roots into net floats, and fireflies gather in it. Gives: Mangrove Apple, Mangrove Apple Wood.
  • Nipa Palm (tree). A palm with no trunk above ground: its stem creeps through the mud and only the fronds, up to 9 m long, rise from it. It grows in soft mud along tidal rivers and mangroves from India and Sri Lanka through Southeast Asia to New Guinea and northern Australia. Its sweet sap makes palm wine, vinegar and sugar, its young seeds are a sweet snack, and its fronds make excellent thatch, longer-lasting than coconut thatch. Food of: Crab-eating Macaque. Gives: Nipa Palm Sap, Nipa Palm Seeds, Nipa Palm Frond.
  • Large-leafed Orange Mangrove (tree). A mangrove tree of 7 to 20 m with bright red flowers and knee-like roots, growing on the landward side of mangroves along the Indian and Pacific oceans, from South Africa to the western Pacific. Its long seedlings are full of starch: peeled and boiled in several changes of water to drive out the bitter tannin, they are a staple for the Sowek people of Papua. The bark tans leather and dyes cloth red-brown to black, and the dense wood makes posts and charcoal. Gives: Orange Mangrove Seedling, Orange Mangrove Bark, Orange Mangrove Wood.
  • Red Mangrove (tree). A salt-tolerant evergreen tree, usually about 6 m, raised over the water on arching prop roots, often the most seaward of the mangroves. It grows on muddy tropical coasts and estuaries of the Americas and West Africa, and its seedlings root on the tree before dropping and floating away. Its bark was a major source of tannin. Gives: Red Mangrove Bark, Red Mangrove Wood.
  • Sea Hibiscus (tree). An evergreen coastal tree of the tropics the world over, on beaches, along rivers and in mangrove forests, tolerant of salt and waterlogging. Its flowers open bright yellow with a deep red heart and turn orange, then red, before they fall at the end of the day. Austronesian voyagers carried it across Southeast Asia and Oceania for its wood and fibre. Gives: Sea Hibiscus Bast, Sea Hibiscus Wood.
  • White Mangrove (tree). A mangrove tree with grey-brown or reddish fissured bark and thick, yellow-green leaves, on the coasts of West Africa from Senegal to Cameroon and on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the Americas, the Galápagos included. It grows in bays, lagoons and tidal creeks, usually inland of the other mangroves and well above the high-tide line; two small glands at the base of each leaf ooze sugar.
  • Holly Mangrove (shrub). An erect shrub of the mangroves of Southeast Asia, Indochina, Indonesia, the Philippines and northern Australia, with stiff leaves edged in big spines like holly and two spines at the base of each leaf stalk, and pale flower spikes. Gives: Holly Mangrove.
  • Glasswort (herb). A small succulent annual, 20 to 30 cm, with jointed stems so full of water they look almost translucent, which gave it the name glasswort, and leaves reduced to scales; it grows in salt marshes, on beaches and among mangroves on most coasts of Europe. Eaten as marsh samphire: young shoots raw in May and June, later boiled in plenty of unsalted water; it tastes of young spinach stems, asparagus or artichoke. Its ash long gave the alkali of glassmakers and soapmakers, and the word alkali comes from the Arabic al-qalyah, 'glasswort ash'. Gives: Marsh Samphire.
  • Mangrove Fern (herb). A big leathery fern with fronds up to 2 m (4 m in Malaysian swamps), found across the tropics in mangroves, salt marshes, swamps and on riverbanks; it is the only fern that can grow in, and even be flooded by, the sea. Its very young fronds are eaten raw or cooked: in salads in Cambodia, in a spicy coconut gravy in Goa. Dried fronds are strung on rods and used instead of straw to thatch roofs. Gives: Mangrove Fern Fronds.
  • Southern Cattail (herb). A cattail of 2 to 2.5 m found throughout the tropics and subtropics, in marshes and wet ground; it is one of the main plants of the Sudd and grows as an understorey in some mangroves, for it stands much saltier water than its relatives. Around some lake villages of Michoacán, in Mexico, it spreads so fast that it is cut back every month to keep it out of the fields. Gives: Southern Cattail Pollen, Southern Cattail Leaves.

Animals

Creatures

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

Black Mangrove Bark, Black Mangrove Wood, Cannonball Mangrove Bark, Cannonball Mangrove Wood, Wild Honey, Wild Beeswax, Marsh Samphire, Grey Mangrove Seedlings, Grey Mangrove Wood, Holly Mangrove, Mangrove Apple, Mangrove Apple Wood, Mangrove Fern Fronds, Mud Crab Meat, Nipa Palm Frond, Nipa Palm Sap, Nipa Palm Seeds, Orange Mangrove Bark, Orange Mangrove Seedling, Orange Mangrove Wood, Red Mangrove Bark, Red Mangrove Wood, Saltwater Crocodile Meat, Scarlet Ibis Egg, Sea Hibiscus Bast, Sea Hibiscus Wood, Sitatunga Meat, Southern Cattail Leaves, Southern Cattail Pollen, Peccary Hide, Peccary Meat, Blind-Your-Eye Latex, Macaque Meat, Dugong Meat, Dugong Oil, Dugong Tusk, King Cobra Meat, Paca Meat, Saltwater Crocodile Hide, Scarlet Ibis Feather, Sitatunga Hide, Tortoiseshell, King Cobra Venom, Tiger Bone, Tiger Pelt, Snake Venom, Concentrated Venom

Fantasy variants

Corrupted Mangrove, Fungal Mangrove, Toxic Mangrove

Nearby biomes

Swamp, Marsh, Bog

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