Tropical Rainforest

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

By day: Jungle (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 3)
On foot: Walking in a Jungle (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
At night: Jungle At Night (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 4)
In the rain: Jungle Rain (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 3)
Downpour: Rainfall in the Rainforest (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 5)
By the river: Jungle River (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
A waterfall: Waterfall in Jungle (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
By boat: Rowboat on Large Tropical River (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
At camp: Campfire in Jungle (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 3)
Getting lost: Enigmatic Jungle (On Patreon, Guardian tier)
Fevers: Tropical Swamp (In the album RPG Ambiences Vol. 8)

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: fair

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.

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.

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.

Adventure hooks

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.
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.
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.
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

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.