Temperate Forest

Oak, beech and hazel woods with four clear seasons, green in summer and bare in winter. It is the forest of most old tales: easy to live from, easy to get lost in, and full of game.

Over the year it averages 10 °C.

Hear it

At dawn: Forest At Dawn (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
By day: Sunlit Forest (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 1)
On foot: Walking in a Forest (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
At night: Forest At Night (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 4)
In the wind: Moderate Wind Through Trees (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
In the rain: Forest Light Rain (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
Downpour: Forest Heavy Rain (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
A waterfall: Small Waterfall in a Forest (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
At camp: Campfire in Woods (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 1)
Wolves: Wolves Howling in Forest (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 6)
Boars: Boar-Filled Forest (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
Getting lost: Enclosed Forest (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 7)

For the table

Ground: rough, about 20 km a day on foot
Seasons: 1 °C in the heart of winter, 19 °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.

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

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 10 · 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.

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):

On horseback: about 30 km a day
By wagon: about 15 km a day
By stagecoach: about 60 km a day
By river boat: about 40 km a day
By train: about 400 km a day
By airship: about 900 km a day
By bush plane: about 800 km a day
By 4x4: about 100 km a day
By motorcar: about 60 km a day
By rover: about 60 km a day
On a flying mount: about 150 km a day
By flying carpet: about 100 km a day
By bicycle: about 40 km a day
By car: about 200 km a day
By truck: about 150 km a day
By motorbike: about 150 km a day
By armoured buggy: about 120 km a day

A scene

Treant Forest. The canopy is cathedral-high. There is no sky here, only a dappled mosaic of branches, leaves, and wounded memory. The trees themselves are enormous, bark like armour, roots like buried fists, savagely grasping the earth. They do not move. But their guardians do. The treant forest watches you; it remembers; it broods. Shadows and other servants stalk and silence trespassers. What are you? How long before the forest decides? The full generator on the blog
Forest River. The trail weaves alongside the forest river. Sunlight filters through the canopy in golden shafts; somewhere nearby is the gentle flow of water over stones. A bird calls out for its mate. Is this forest as tranquil as it seems? The full generator on the blog

Adventure hooks

Two villages share one swineherd, who drives their pigs under the oaks every autumn to fatten on acorns. This year he came back with one pig too many, and nobody will admit it is theirs.
A charcoal burner found a white hart in his snare and let it go. The lord’s huntsmen are now looking for whoever freed the beast the lord had promised to a royal guest, and they are starting with his hut.
The village says wolves took a child last winter and wants the old she-wolf in the hollow beech killed. The child’s mother says it was no wolf, and she has stopped speaking to her husband.
A woodcutter has lost his way three times this month on a path he has walked for thirty years. His wife hires the party to chalk the trees along it; on the third morning there are chalk marks on trees they never touched.

What grows here

Black Alder (tree). A tree of 20 to 30 m along riverbanks, in swamps and wet woods of Europe, southwest Asia and North Africa; it bears standing water better than other alders. Bacteria in its roots fix nitrogen, so it grows on poor soil and enriches it, and its roots hold riverbanks. Birds feed on its seeds in winter. Gives: Alder Wood, Alder Bark.
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.
European Beech (tree). A tall deciduous tree with smooth silvery-grey bark that casts deep shade and dominates many forests from southern Scandinavia to the Mediterranean mountains, wherever the air is humid and the soil drains well. Its triangular nuts, the beechmast, fed pigs in the forest and people in lean years, and were pressed for cooking and lamp oil. The fine, even-grained wood is made into furniture, flooring, veneer and charcoal. Food of: Wild Boar. Food of: European Badger. Food of: Roe Deer. Food of: Red Squirrel. Gives: Beechmast, Beech Wood.
European Crab Apple (tree). A small, often thorny wild apple tree of Europe, Anatolia and the south Caucasus, up to 14 m tall and living 80 to 100 years. It needs light, so it grows scattered, alone or in small groups, on wet forest edges, in wood pasture and in farmland hedges, up to 1,500 m. Its white or pink flowers open in May, and its small apples, about 3 cm across, ripen in autumn, fall to the ground and are eaten by cattle, horses and wild boar. Food of: Wild Boar. Gives: Crab Apples.
Pedunculate Oak (tree). A large, long-lived deciduous oak of Europe and western Asia with thick, deeply fissured bark and acorns hung in clusters on long stalks. It forms dominant stands in lowland forests and wood pasture and tolerates occasional flooding. Its hard, durable heartwood went into houses, ships, furniture and barrels, its bark tanned leather, its acorns fattened pigs, and the galls that wasps raise on oaks gave Europe its iron gall ink. Food of: Wild Boar. Food of: Roe Deer. Food of: Red Squirrel. Food of: Common Wood Pigeon. Gives: Pedunculate Oak Acorns, Oak Tanbark, Oak Timber.
Silver Birch (tree). A slender tree of 15 to 25 m with white peeling bark and drooping twigs, native from Europe across Siberia, a pioneer of bare and burnt ground on dry acid soils. Its pale wood made furniture, skis and utensils, its spring sap was drunk fresh or made into syrup and wine, and its bark was distilled into tar and used for tanning. Host of: Chaga. Gives: Silver Birch Bark, Silver Birch Sap, Silver Birch Wood.
Small-leaved Lime (tree). A tall broadleaf tree of 20 to 40 m with heart-shaped leaves, native from Britain and Scandinavia across Europe to the Caucasus; it is common in oak and hornbeam woods, where it can dominate, and still tops 40 m in the primeval forest of Białowieża. It lives for centuries, and some limes in Germany are said to be over a thousand years old. Its scented July flowers feed bees, which make a prized lime honey from them, and its young leaves can be eaten as a salad. Gives: Lime Flowers, Limewood, Lime Bast.
Strawberry Tree (tree). An evergreen shrub or small tree, usually 4 to 7 m tall, of the western Mediterranean and Atlantic Europe as far as western Ireland. It stands drought, frost, shade and salt. Its round red fruits take a year to ripen and are gritty and rather bland; Pliny said of them 'I eat only one', hence the name unedo. Gives: Strawberry Tree Fruit.
Sweet Chestnut (tree). A large deciduous tree of southern Europe and Anatolia, with a deeply furrowed bark and spiny husks that hold the nuts. It was planted widely across western and central Europe from the Middle Ages, both for its nuts, a staple ground into flour, roasted or boiled, and for coppice wood. The tannin-rich wood resists rot and makes posts, fencing, barrels and roof beams. Gives: Sweet Chestnuts, Chestnut Wood.
White Willow (tree). A fast-growing, short-lived willow of Europe, western and central Asia and North Africa, named for the silky white hairs under its narrow leaves, that grows along riverbanks, in wetlands and on floodplains. It is often pollarded for its long flexible shoots, the withies, woven into baskets. Its bark held salicin, the compound from which salicylic acid was first separated, and once tanned leather; its light, tough wood makes cricket bats and small woodwork. Gives: Willow Withies, White Willow Wood, Willow Bark.
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.
Blackthorn (shrub). A dense, spiny shrub or small tree up to 5 or 6 m, with blackish bark, native to Europe, western Asia and northwest Africa. Its white flowers open in early spring before the leaves, and it quickly takes over fallow land and abandoned pasture; its long thorns have long made it a cattle-proof hedge. A prick is painful, and the thorn breaks off under the skin and can fester. Gives: Sloes, Blackthorn Wood.
Bramble (shrub). A thorny, sprawling shrub, in truth a swarm of hundreds of closely related blackberry species, common throughout Europe in hedges, wood edges, clearfellings and neglected fields. Its prickly canes root wherever their tips touch the ground, making thickets that shelter wild boar and foxes and shield young trees from browsing until the wood grows back. Red deer and roe deer feed on the leaves, and foxes, badgers and birds on the berries. Food of: Red Deer. Food of: Roe Deer. Food of: Red Fox. Food of: European Badger. Gives: Blackberries.
Common Hazel (shrub). A many-stemmed shrub or small tree of Europe and western Asia, three to eight metres tall, that grows in the understorey of mixed broadleaf woods and in hedgerows. Its yellow catkins open before the leaves, and its round nuts ripen in autumn. People ate the nuts and cut the coppice poles for wattle-and-daub walls, fencing and baskets. Gives: Hazelnuts, Hazel Rods.
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.
Common Juniper (shrub). A shrub or small conifer of very variable shape, with needles in whorls of three and berry-like cones that take eighteen months to ripen to purple-black. It has the widest range of any woody plant, around the cool north of the world from the Arctic southwards, on heaths, mountains, tundra and in open forest. Its berries flavour gin, beer and meat, and its fragrant wood made dairy vessels in Scandinavia. Gives: Treated Juniper Berry, Juniper Wood.
Dog Rose (shrub). A wild climbing rose of Europe, northwest Africa and western Asia, 1 to 5 m tall, whose arching stems carry sharp hooked prickles; it grows in hedges and woods, mostly in the lowlands. Its pale pink, sweet-scented flowers open in early summer and its red-orange hips ripen in September and October. Pliny thought its root cured the bite of a mad dog, hence the name, and it was the stylised rose of medieval heraldry. Food of: Roe Deer. Gives: Rose Hips, Dog Roses.
Hart's-tongue Fern (herb). An evergreen fern with plain, strap-shaped fronds like a deer's tongue, found across Europe, North Africa and Asia, with rare scattered stands in North America. It wants shade and lime: beech and ravine woods, stream banks, the inner walls of wells, old mortared walls, and in America the pits of sinkholes and limestone caves. Old folk medicine took it for the spleen and liver, and an 18th-century manuscript gives a recipe for hart's-tongue ale. Gives: Hart's-tongue Fronds.
Meadowsweet (herb). A perennial of 1 to 2 m with creamy-white flowers of a strong, sweet smell, dominating damp meadows, fens, wet woods, ditches, stream banks and the edges of alder woods in Europe and western Asia. Its English name comes from flavouring mead. In 1838 salicylic acid was drawn from its buds, and aspirin is named after its old name, Spiraea. Gives: Meadowsweet Flowers, Meadowsweet Root.
Ramsons (herb). A bulbous wild relative of onion and garlic, native to Eurasia from Ireland to the Caucasus, that carpets moist deciduous woods and forms wide colonies along streams; it marks ancient woodland. Its white starry flowers open from April to June, before the trees leaf out, and the crushed leaves smell of garlic. All of it is edible, but every year in Europe foragers are poisoned after picking lily of the valley or autumn crocus by mistake. Food of: Brown Bear. Gives: Ramsons Leaves.
Stinging Nettle (herb). A perennial one to two metres tall with toothed leaves covered in hollow hairs that inject histamine; the burning lasts from a quarter of an hour to an hour or two. Native to Europe, temperate Asia and western North Africa and now worldwide, it marks rich ground: meadows, damp woodland, rubble and the surroundings of houses. Young leaves are a vegetable once cooked, and the stems gave cloth for three thousand years; peacock and small tortoiseshell caterpillars live on it. Gives: Nettle Leaves, Nettle Fibre.
Wild Strawberry (herb). A low perennial of the rose family that grows wild across much of the Northern Hemisphere, in clearings, woodland edges, young open woods, meadows and along paths. It spreads by runners, flowers white from April to July and bears small, strongly flavoured red fruits that last little more than a day on the plant once ripe. People have eaten them since the Stone Age; in 1368, 12,000 plants were set in the royal gardens of the Louvre. Gives: Wild Strawberries.
Yarrow (herb). A strong-smelling perennial up to a metre tall with feathery leaves and flat clusters of small white flowers. It grows across the temperate Northern Hemisphere in meadows, grassland, roadsides and open woods, from sea level to 3,500 metres. Long a wound herb for soldiers and a beer flavouring before hops; it can cause skin rashes and is toxic to dogs, cats and horses. Gives: Yarrow Tops.
Luminous Moss (moss). A tiny moss of China, Japan, Siberia, Europe and North America, also called goblin gold or dragon's gold, that grows in dim places where other plants cannot: on damp mineral soil at the entrances of caves and burrows and under upturned tree roots. Round cells act as lenses that gather the faint light and send back what they do not use, so the moss glows a greenish gold. In 1863 the botanist Anton Kerner described a cave floor sparkling as if strewn with emeralds, which turned to dull earth in the hand; in Hokkaido a monument stands to it where it grows thick in a tiny cave.
Common Morel (fungus). A yellow-brown, honeycombed spring mushroom on a hollow white stem, found in Europe (and reported from China) under hardwoods and conifers, in old orchards, on disturbed ground and on recent burns, often on limestone soils. It fruits only for a short spell in spring and is one of the most prized edible mushrooms. Beware Gyromitra esculenta, a poisonous lookalike. Gives: Morels.
Fly Agaric (fungus). The red, white-warted toadstool of the fairy tales, found in conifer and broadleaf woods across the temperate and boreal Northern Hemisphere, living in partnership with pine, oak, spruce, fir and birch. It is poisonous and hallucinogenic: one cap holds about an active dose, with nausea, twitching, delirium and hallucinations starting after 30 to 90 minutes, though deaths are extremely rare. Its name comes from its use, recorded by Albertus Magnus before 1256, as a fly poison powdered into milk. The peoples of Siberia took it as an inebriant, and among the Koryak the poor drank the urine of the rich who could afford the mushrooms. Gives: Fly Agaric.
Golden Chanterelle (fungus). An egg-yellow, funnel-shaped mushroom 3 to 15 cm wide with forked ridges instead of true gills and a smell of apricot, found across Europe from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean under conifers and broadleaves on acid soil, from early summer to late autumn. A choice edible, but beware the poisonous jack-o'-lantern mushroom and the false chanterelle that look like it. The golden chanterelles of the American Pacific coast are now counted as related species. Gives: Chanterelle.
Porcini (fungus). A big brown-capped bolete, the cap up to 30 cm, that lives bound to the roots of pine, spruce, hemlock and fir, and also chestnut, beech and oak, across Europe, North America and Asia. It comes up in summer and autumn, in rafts after warm rain. One of the safest wild mushrooms to pick: its worst lookalikes are the devil's bolete (red stem, bruises blue) and the very bitter bitter bolete. Gives: Porcini Cap.
Common Hop (vine). A climbing perennial of Europe, western Asia and North America whose rough twining stems reach 10 m each summer and die back to the rootstock in autumn. It grows in half-shade on wood edges, in clearings and hedges and on riverbanks, and its Latin name lupulus, 'little wolf', comes from the way it strangles the willows it climbs. Male and female flowers grow on separate plants, and about one person in thirty gets a rash from handling it. Gives: Hop Cones, Hop Shoots.