The forest can be a mysterious and sometimes dangerous place in a fantasy world. You never know what is going to happen at every bend in the path. Use the following table to generate some interesting encounters for players who are traveling through the woods.
| d100 | Entry |
|---|---|
| 1 | The party comes across a noble, who is trying to get his hands on some gryffin eggs. He want to use party as bait for mother, so he will be able to approach the nest and sneak some eggs out. The newborn gryffon will be a mount for the son of the nobleman. |
| 2 | The forest itself seems to be against your presence. Roots seem to spring up to trip you and branches swat at you when moved out of the way. The canopy closes around you shutting out the sunlight. |
| 3 | You find an old hermit hut with the dead man still in his bed. His mastiff needs a new master. |
| 4 | Just off the forest road you stumble across a clearing and a small cave that have been converted into a road wardens outpost. You find the fire burning and food cooking but the place is deserted. There are tracks all over the clearing and heading into the forest, including some that definitely aren’t human. After closer inspection you find a small lockup inside the cave, the cells are all locked and empty except for one that has been forced open from the inside. |
| 5 | An empty suit of plate armour stands rusted solid. In it’s hands are a woodsman’s axe, still posed in a vicious downward stroke. |
| 6 | Early in the day the party passes underneath a suit of armor suspended in the trees, branches occupying the inside of the suit as if they had squeezed out the body that occupied it before. Branches sprout from the facemask wildly, limbs protrude from the leg and armholes, and the entire chest piece is nearly bursting from the volume of foliage it contains. |
| 7 | The party comes across a goblin trapped in a giant spider’s web. If the players approach, the goblin untangles himself and attacks as a Druid alongside the spiders. It was a set-up! |
| 8 | As the party passes beneath a large oak that has grown over the road, a branch swoops down and snatches the backpack from one of your group. The tree proves vocally petulant when you attempt retrieval, tossing the bag from one branch to another. |
| 9 | On the path up ahead, the party hears a group of goblins arguing over directions. One of them is screaming and the another is holding a map, looking frustrated. They haven’t noticed the party yet. |
| 10 | Someone’s crying in the woods: a man sitting on a rock holding his head with both his hands, elbows resting on his knees. He’s a wizard who tried a forbidden ritual. His head fell off, but he didn’t die, and feels no pain. The wound is barely noticeable—as long as he holds his head in place. He’d like help, but fears you and what he’s become. |
| 11 | When your players awake in the morning after a restless night of camping, they discover footprints all around them in the dirt. Their backpacks have been looked through, but nothing has been stolen. This happens a few more nights in a row. |
| 12 | Cloying mist drifts into the region. You can barely see five paces ahead of you. Vague, bulbous forms can be seen protruding from the trees as you pass. Fungus. This isn’t mist, it’s spores. |
| 13 | A deep fog rolls in faster and thicker than one would think is natural. All rolls related to navigation or investigation based on the terrain have disadvantage. |
| 14 | The party runs into three men travelling with a dozen big mastiffs (trained wardogs). They train and breed them and travel from place to place, selling them. They are willing to sell them at the greatly discounted price of 20gp each. |
| 15 | On the side of the road is a small shrine to a forest god. The shrine is a one-foot-thick wooden wall with a small roof over it with a wooden carving of an elk protruding from the wall. A handful of scraps of parchment bearing prayers are tacked to the wall. Various offerings lie at the foot of the shrine: Fresh cut grain, flowers, a woven cord bracelet, a wooden carving of a boy, etc. A wooden bowl contains 1d6 gold pieces. |
| 16 | You are walking through the tall grass when you hear the shrieks of a hippogryph. One of its legs seems to be tied to a corpse on the ground. It would seem someone was trying to train and capture the beast and failed. His tools are still lying there with him... |
| 17 | The party is forced to dive for the trees as a sable-black coach thunders down the road in the opposite direction, spraying them with mud and fallen leaves. When they reach the next village, they learn that the same coach has been seen three times in the last three months, always when the moon is full, the coachman always driving his horses as if the demons of hell were behind him. Each time the coach passes through, a child from the village has gone missing... |
| 18 | You past through a barren section of the forest that was damaged about a decade ago by a forest fire. In the middle of this relative desolation, you find a circle of trees that seems untouched by fire that destroyed the surroundings. |
| 19 | As the party is walking along the forest path, pick one of your players at random. This player randomly spots a small ring of red mushrooms off the beaten path. If they destroy the mushrooms or disturb them, they wither and die within a few minutes. If they leave an item of worth in the center of the ring, they will wake up the next day with a bag of gems sitting next to them. |
| 20 | The party meets a jovial travelling friar named Krieger. He has a big beard and closely cropped hair. He is missing a couple of teeth and has a large belly. He is genuinely friendly and likeable. If they agree to share their rations with him, he will bless them all. |
| 21 | While camped for the night, the party’s extinguished campfire relights to a full blaze. The second the party member on watch looks at the fire, it extinguishes completely. The only sign that the mysterious fire ever existed is a faint smell of burning twigs. |
| 22 | An overgrown and crumbling statue of a long, dead human king juts from the ground along the forest path. Built of white stone, stained with age, it depicts a lost dynasty forgotten by time. The roots of a nearby tree are beginning to surround the statue. |
| 23 | Glowing eyes stare out of a knothole in an old and gnarled tree. When the players notice it watching, the thing scampers deeper into the tree. If they investigate the knothole they’ll find it goes deep, deeper than the tree itself. At the bottom of the hole something glitters. Gold? Many more glowing eyes stare up around it. |
| 24 | Six mounted road wardens halt anyone passing by. They are on the lookout for a group of cultists. They will make the men remove their shirts and reveal any tattoos they might have. They then pat everyone down. They pay very close attention to any tattoos anyone has. They will ask if they have seen anyone or anything suspicious. As long as they don’t find anything and no one refuses their demands, they will let them continue on their way. |
| 25 | The party stumbles across a commotion in front of a small hut. A beautiful innocent looking young woman is gagged and tied to a post, a group of villagers claim she is a witch and are preparing a pyre to burn her. The woman is indeed a Green Hag, but she will try to put on a good show for the players to get them to help her escape. |
| 26 | You come across a cottage in the woods belonging to a friendly woodsman and his wife. They provide food and shelter for the night. When the party awakes they are in the burned down ruins of a cottage with the skeletal remains of the farmer and his wife reaching desperately for the party. |
| 27 | The smell of wood-smoke alerts you to a small group of charcoal burners before you get sight of them in a clearing across a small brook. A conical hut clad with turf stands next to a smaller kiln which is releasing blueish tendrils of smoke, while three men (Henk, Darby, and Maddock) sit nearby eating cheese with bread. A fourth man (Fenn) is tied to a tree a few feet away, muttering and thrashing his head from side to side. If approached the three rise, apprehensively, and, if pressed will claim that the tied man (Moddock’s brother) is just unwell. However, a convincing attempt to help Fenn might prompt Maddock to reveal that his brother is gripped by a vision - it’s the swinelung fungus on the hazel bundles that they burn, it gives Fenn a turn, and he starts seeing things, things that the others don’t really want to hear about, but the players might... |
| 28 | An old twisted tree sits shortly off the path. It radiates a dark energy. If the tree is damaged, it will begin to leak a monster that grows from unnatural pollution. |
| 29 | A group of six massive treants are congregating around a stone circle. They notice the players, but pay them no mind. |
| 30 | The party comes across a bridge, guarded by a lone warrior clad in all concealing black plate armor, bearing the marks of an evil god. The warrior gives the party a simple challange: They slay him, they cross the bridge. He slays them, he adds their skulls to the ominously large skull pile next to him. |
| 31 | The party encounters a ragged human in ragged clothes. He insists that he is the goblin warchief Grumbl’buk and that he has done terrible things, resulting in him getting transformed into a disgusting human. He insists on confessing the tales of his many horrible raids against human settlements. He begs them to take him to the authorities and turn him in. |
| 32 | The forest path is narrow and overgrown. Looking down the tunnel-like trail gives you vertigo and puts you off balance. Shadows appear to move and you feel like you’re just going in circles. |
| 33 | You come across a fir tree garlanded with intestines and hung with bright red human hearts and small burning candles. Under the tree are a number of small boxes wrapped in colorful paper. |
| 34 | There is a roadblock manned by three road wardens. A mile up the road there is a small town infected with the yellow plague. It has been quarantined. The road wardens will explain a circuitous route that will only add a day or so to their travel. |
| 35 | A small group of Orcs and Goblins are betting on a fight between a kobold and a Snake. Copper and Silver coins are being tossed about with reckless abandon as things continue to get heated. Their raucous cheering and focus on the small battle could allow you sneak up on them, go past them... or set up an ambush. |
| 36 | About a hundred yards off the path, the players spot a ravine. The wind makes an eerie howling sound as it blows through it. At the top of the ravine there is an old decrepit shack. It leans toward the ravine, as do all of the trees on either side of the ravine. |
| 37 | A bear with a very violent temper comes out of the wilderness and attacks the players. |
| 38 | The party comes across a male human sleeping against a tree, covered in cobwebs. It looks like he has been there for a LONG time. Apparently, he lost a drinking contest to a Fey creature 25 years ago. |
| 39 | The party walks into a ‘fairy ring’. A ring of odd mushrooms. These are tainted in some way which produces a cloud of spores that affect the party in some way. Psychogenic, psychologically, transport to another locale... |
| 40 | An old dwarf with a bit of a limp is leading a donkey that is overladen with various junk and knick knacks. His name is Grindel. He will try to sell the PCs all sorts of strange items. |
| 41 | A great elk is seen watching the party from a distance. It almost looks as if the elk is wearing a crown made of twigs and vines. |
| 42 | The party begins to have an overwhelming sense of dread, they start to notice the smaller local wildlife dropping dead as they pass by. Birds and squirrles going stiff and then falling dead from branches and plumetting to the ground. |
| 43 | A massive spider, more than ten feet across has been spotted in the area. It has been dragging small and medium-sized livestock back to its web. A posse is being put together to hunt it down. |
| 44 | The party notices a big, somewhat overgrown, stone statue. It is worn down by time and weather. The statue is squarish and somewhat simplistic. It appears to be a man-shaped figure wearing a necklace of skulls who is impaling a deer with a spear. |
| 45 | A massive mastiff comes bounding by, shortly followed by an exhausted warrior holding a leash attached to a broken collar. |
| 46 | An aged knight and his young squire are travelling the forest. In addition to the horses they ride, the knight also has a fine war horse in tow. They each wear a yellow and red tabard with a black lion on it. They each only speak a little common, but are apparently on some sort of quest. |
| 47 | The party comes across a medium-sized hut made of gingerbread and various pieces of candy dotting the path to it. A kindly old woman asks you in for dinner. |
| 48 | After resting on what appears to be a burnt out log, you stand, stretching, ready to continue your journey. You suddenly pick up a whiff of a very sweet, almost candy like scent. You follow your nose and discover a patch of purple, white, orange and yellow mushrooms growning from underneath the log you were resting on. |
| 49 | A small brook cuts across the path. The water is not deep, perhaps a foot at most, and the crossing is unremarkable. But upstream a slight way a rudimentary bridge can be seen, and it is obvious that at some time in the past the path took advantage of this drier crossing point. The bridge is little more than a few planks of wood and a pile of stone at either end, one of which has mostly collapsed. But the route to it is overgrown and unused. What could have caused the local folk to avoid it? |
| 50 | Cats appear to be watching the party from the trees. Dozens upon dozens of them. Whenever a member of the party approaches them they run away and can’t be found (may serve as lookouts for a darker force). |
| 51 | You find a corpse with it’s eyes and mouth filled with dirt, still grasping the axe that is embedded in the nearest tree. |
| 52 | The party runs into eight halflings who are camping along the side of the road. They are drunk on brandy. They are happy to share their brandy and the cheese and sausage they are eating. They insist on referring to everyone in the party as Lars. They start to refer to each person by the name Lars with a number after it. “Some more brandy, Lars number two?”. Each time it sends the halflings into a fit of drunken giggling. One of the halflings will continuously try to tell a joke he can’t remember. |
| 53 | The party reaches a small bridge that crosses a river impeding their path. A Troll lumbers up from under the bridge to challenge the party but in a peculiar turn of events, is not openly hostile if they do not attempt to cross the bridge. He will permit passage for a paltry offering of coin or food and appears capable of understanding common. |
| 54 | A boar bursts out of the undergrowth; foaming spittle flecks its tusks. It charges, eyes bloodshot, but makes no move to defend itself. All its attacks seem half-hearted. What drove this beast to seek death so? |
| 55 | The party comes across a dwarf caught in the grip of an angry treant. He calls to the party for help, claiming that he is a noble, and he can reward the party beyond their dreams if they help him! Whether he is really nobility or not is up to the DM. |
| 56 | Thunder heralds a sudden and torrential downpour. While the heavy rain may be inconvenient to the party, a greater danger is posed by the rapidly growing stream of water coursing through the area, revealing the path (or campsite) to be an ephemeral watercourse. |
| 57 | A tremendously large oak tree looms over a crossroads. The tree is crowded with crows and the corpses of seven orcs hang from its branches. |
| 58 | The party finds a cart on the side of the road that has been overturned and lit ablaze. The horse that was pulling the cart has been killed and much of its meat removed. The corpse of the cart driver can be found in the bushes nearby. If the party examines the contents of the charred cart, they find it was carrying a number of bundles of lucky charms. Most of them have been burned or melted together, but they do manage to find 1d10 trinkets that survived the fire intact. |
| 59 | The players find a wooden hut built next to a small stream. The hut belongs to an evil alchemist who is pouring their failed experiments into the stream, causing strange things to happen downstream. |
| 60 | A raven seems to be following one member of the party. |
| 61 | You find a positively desiccated skeletal corpse on the side of a well traveled path with an ornate looking dagger between its crumbling ribs. It is highly unusual that a corpse could remain untouched even near as long as it would take to induce this state of decay, yet is so fragile from age it is unlikely that it was placed there. |
| 62 | A random player’s coinpurse has fallen out of their backpack. When they kneel down to pick the coins up, 1d4 squirrels approach and begin quickly grabing the coins and running up into the trees. |
| 63 | A pair of wood elves are seen setting traps for poachers. If the party proves to be friends of the forest, the elves will try to recruit them on their quest to hunt the hunters. |
| 64 | The party passes an apple orchard. Anyone who fails a constitution check is inexplicably drawn toward the orchard. At the orchards center is a gnarled apple tree larger than all the rest. It’s fruit is oversized and the most beautiful red. Those that fail a second constitution check will do anything, including fighting, to get their hands on one of the apples. The owner of the orchard paces erratically under the tree. His hair and beard are wild, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in several days. He is carrying a woodsman’s axe. Three corpses lay around the base of the tree. |
| 65 | You approach an empty clearing , and as you near a wide stone tower suddenly coalesces into view in the clearing in front of you. The door opens to a man standing in the doorway (but not crossing the threshold). He looks around and says to himself “Another 30 years already!” Then he spots the party - “Hello there, come inside!” |
| 66 | The party comes across a small local halfling turnip festival. A giant pot of turnip stew is cooked in the largest cauldron the players have ever seen. There are foot races, dancing, eating, etc. |
| 67 | The party notices they are being stalked by men wearing wolf hides. ‘The Pack’ is a group of bandits who worship a dark and twisted god, obsessed with predation. Even some of the local nobility is involved. |
| 68 | Two travellers on horseback: a very large man in full plate minus the helm, with a massive black beard, sharp, thin nose and cold eyes, leading the second horse by the reins, upon which rides a young woman with long black hair. The man will ignore the players and ride on, and will not reply if spoken to. The woman has a dejected look, and as she passes she looks at the players and mimes the word ‘help.’ |
| 69 | A wounded bounty hunter stumbles out of the bushes. He has taken an arrow through the arm, which now hangs limp. He tells the PCs that he and his partner tracked three infamous bandits to a wooded hill nearby, but they were ambushed. His partner was killed. He needs to retrieve a locket from his partner for the man’s widow. He will give the PCs half of the bounty if they help him capture the bandits. |
| 70 | You find a massive circle of felled trees, in the center of which is a malnourished and wild-eyed greataxe wielding orc, yelling about fending off an endless hoard of regrowing enemies. |
| 71 | Whoever is traveling in front of the party should make a Perception check. If they roll about a DC13, they spot a camouflaged giant trapdoor spider’s nest set up in the middle of the path. If they roll lower, they fall into the trap and the spider attacks, draging them into the hole. |
| 72 | The party comes across a lost child hiding behind a tree in the forest. The child is desperately lost, claiming that ‘the trees came alive and protected me’. The child asks the party if they can help. If returned home, the players are greeted with praise and a massive banquet in their honor. |
| 73 | Road wardens are dragging a poacher out of the woods. He is manacled, and sobbing that he only did it to feed his family. He begs them to be merciful. One of the road warden carries the two pheasants that the man killed. |
| 74 | The trees shake and thunder, and part as an ancient ‘treeman’ steps forth onto the road. They talk slow and deliberately, speaking of ‘rivers of black metal men marching’, ‘so loud and so hasty’, curious about what they are but too afraid to ask themselves. The last army marched by a hundred years ago or more. |
| 75 | In a glade ahead, the party sees a unicorn drinking from a pond. But as they approach, it shies away and flees into the trees. |
| 76 | You come across a lone wizard setting up camp for the evening. He begs the party to join him ( on the grounds that there is safety in numbers), and will offer them delicious tea. If asked about why he is out here, he says he’s going to see his son at a local temple. The wizard is actually a necromancer and the tea is poisoned. |
| 77 | Three humans sit around an intricate table, carefully set with an exquisite tea service. All around them for hundreds of yards in every direction, the area is strewn with the bodies of wood-elf warriors. The humans greet the party politely and offer refreshment, although the table is not large enough for all to sit. The humans explain they are waiting for a friend and know little about the area. If the party refers to the bodies around them, the humans seem embarrassed and change the subject, as though the party had engaged in a social faux pas. |
| 78 | A small woodland creature, like a squirrel, appears and starts pantomiming at the party. It appears it is a forest Druid that has had a beast transformation spell gone wrong, and now requires the aid of the party to return to his original form. |
| 79 | You stumble acrossed a series of caves ruled by a mountain troll and his forest goblin worshippers. Dispatching them is simple, however after the battle you discover the corpses of a long dead dwarven prospectors and companions. It seems these caves are full of silver, and the dwarves bags contained the claim. |
| 80 | A mother bear is teaching her baby how to fish in a stream. They are not hostile towards the party unless attacked (or someone gets between the baby and the momma). They don’t flee but keep their distance. |
| 81 | In the distance you see a light. When you get closer you see a lamp hanging from a tree swinging in the wind. It is full of oil but there are no signs of whoever put the lamp there. |
| 82 | As you walk through the Forest, the dirt under your feet becomes softer. As your character inspects the area, he finds a spade leaning agains a tree. Something was burried here. Is it a treasure or have you discovered a crime scene? As your character leans towards the soft mound under his feet, an emaciated hand shoots out of the ground. |
| 83 | An old man with wild grey hair and a bit of a stoop is travelling from town to town with five trained small dogs. He has various props like hoops and ramps as well as a miniature table and chairs which the dogs sit at as if they were people. He has a small cart pulled by a nag of a mule. A girl of eleven, either his daughter or his granddaughter, travels with him and does much of the work. The man travels widely and is a notorious gossip, so can be a good source of information. |
| 84 | A party member trips on a hidden rock. As they are falling, they feel as though they are being ‘caught’ before hitting the ground. A nearby ent uses it’s vines to catch the player before they hurt themselves. |
| 85 | The undergrowth is thick confining you to a narrow path. It switched sharply left then right…. to a dead end. Turning back it is a dead end that way. The only way forward is to hack through the lower branches and scrub. |
| 86 | The party spots a band of poachers, emerging from the wild with a freshly killed deer. They will offer the party a haunch from the deer if they promise to keep quiet about their poaching. |
| 87 | A lost warband of wood elves offers to trade for supplies and rations. |
| 88 | An ancient tree has been blown over in a recent storm. A skeleton tangled in its roots holds a chest with a very familiar symbol. |
| 89 | A judicial duel is taking place between a man and a women. She has accused him of marrying her only so he could sell off her livestock and disappear with the money. He has accused her of casting a spell upon him. |
| 90 | A bank shifting its assets via canal has run aground on one of the banks and is now spilling copious amounts (3d100) of silver pieces into the river. Several fisherman have set up nets further down the river, but in the distance the sound of Roadwarden’s horses can be heard. |
| 91 | The party hears a faint panflute in the woods nearby. If they investigate, a satyr is seen playing around a campfire with his two friends. The saytr welcomes the group to sit with them and rest. If the invitation is accepted, the group gets to drink honey flavored ale and eat cooked fish and fruits with the three woodland beings until morning. When the party wakes up, the saytr and his friends are completely gone. |
| 92 | You hear whispers in what could be elvish and see branches shivering all around you. Surely wood elves are more quiet than this, unless they want to be heard. |
| 93 | A big family of refugees in a covered wagon is traveling down the path. The grandmother is a skilled fortune teller and will tell fortunes with rune stones for six gold pieces. She speaks almost no common, but her son can translate. |
| 94 | You come across a strangely unprotected caravan, with but a few knights in full plate defending a full cart, being led by a pale man in red and black noble’s attire. Upon closer inspection the cart is loaded entirely with cadavers, the caravan leader using it as a cover for the corpse cart he’s transporting to raid a nearby town for riches and more servants to add to his army. |
| 95 | The party comes across a hunting party made up of trappers heading home for the evening. If befriended, they can provide useful information about the nearby forest. |
| 96 | The party finds a scared injured owlbear cub hiding under a large bush. The party can choose to leave it, or keep it and nurse it back to health. |
| 97 | You come across a huge pillar of rock, roughly rectangular in cross section, that has, judging by the state of the vegetation and earth around the base, very recently arrived here, apparently coming from above and piercing the ground. It appears far too large to be moved by man power alone. At one edge of the interface between earth and pillar you find an arm, apparently attached to a body that must be crushed beneath the bottom of the pillar. Even in death it still clutches a sealed scroll... |
| 98 | A dog with a fancy collar appears to lead the party to an area of disturbed dirt and begins to dig it up. Upon closer inspection the party finds the body of a small girl holding a leash that looks quiet similar to the dogs collar. When they turn to examine the dog, he is nowhere to be found. |
| 99 | A hunter rushes past the players in a frenzy. They claim to have spotted an albino bear in the clearing ahead, and it’s pelt could be worth LOTS of gold! The albino bear is a druid who is trying to escape the hunter. |
| 100 | There is a large fish hanging above the road. It is tied to the branch of a tree by a rope. What could it mean? |