Adventuring through a forest fire.

[JustKim]

What you can do is splash a waterskin on yourself, and then you will be totally impervious to heat because water is a force field against thermodynamics. I saw it in Chronicles of Riddick.

 

[Bryon_Soulweaver]

What you can do is splash a waterskin on yourself, and then you will be totally impervious to heat because water is a force field against thermodynamics. I saw it in Chronicles of Riddick.

Until it vaperizes.

 

[PatrickLawinger]

By the way, a real forest fire is a nightmare. The fire sets up very strong air currents that feed into the base of the fire. The currents do three nasty things:
1) they make the fire burner hotter and higher,
2) they make the fire spread faster, and
3) they can suck you right into the inferno. (like what happens with trains rushing past people)

As hazards go, a forest fire is really really dangerous.

Um, just to stress it again. NIGHTMARE

You don't want to be anywhere near a real forest fire. In an RPG, the characters shouldn't want to go anywhere near a forest fire either. Not that I haven't seen or played similar scenarios. If you are going to make things "realistic" I would suggest character levels 9+ with easy access to teleport, dimension door, protective spells, as well as fly, etc.

If you want to deal with lower level characters, stick to DnD abstractions and ignore some realities (pockets of unbreathable air, pockets of superheated air that would burn your lungs, air currents that can knock you off your feet, changing fire directions, potential speed of a spreading fire, etc.). Extreme heat with some "non-lethal" damage and such.

You can also slow the fire down by having it occur during a "rainy" season where the forest is reasonably wet and doesn't burn well (once a fire is started, things'll still burn, if things are wet enough they can burn themselves out though). If you made it rainy as well this would improve the chances of PCs stopping pockets of fire and trying to track down whatever demon you have setting the fires to begin with.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Usually the PCs are the ones who start the forest fire.

 

[Dirigible]

There was a good article about fighting in hazardous conditions in an old 2nd ed. Dragon. Two things that spring to mind are firebrands (burning tree limbs and such that are projected from the inferno, causing it to spread and, in this case, acting as ranged attacks) and crown fires (the flames spread faster across the tops of trees than through the trunks and undergrowth, so at any moment a canopy full of flaming death can drop on your head).

Also, I seem to recall there are some RL beetles that only emerge from their burrows in the wake of forest fires. In D&D, beetles can get pretty big .

 

[MarkB]

There doesn't seem to have been much mention of smoke yet. I'd tend to assume that's also a major risk factor, in both visibility and inhalation. Or is most of it carried up with the intense air currents?