There are endless variants on fantasy forests present in Dungeon magazine adventures, with random encounter lists to describe what populates them, depending on the mood and level of adventuring party.
The following is a harmless forest encounter table to use around the Keep on the Borderlands, for areas that are too far from the monster lairs. There are very few dangerous entries in it. If you just use the first 6 entries, and a d6 to pick from them, this is a general encounter table for a temperate forest.
Most players will want to get through the forest to the dungeon as fast as possible, so why not just shortcut this part in a travel montage? Certainly, my group disliked stumbling through the woods and doing navigation checks to see if they get lost. It felt really boring, and we cut it short (with the help of the wizard's familiar, who allowed them to see above the tree canopy).
The idea of this table is not so much to present challenges but to help the DM with more varied description during play, to make the forest feel real. I wrote mine on the borders of the map.
Random Forest Encounter (1 in 6, check once for day, night, dusk, dawn) Roll d10
1. Fowl -- snipe, pheasant, grouse, sparrowhawk or buzzard
2. Small game -- rabbit, hedgehog, lynx, fox, badger, polecat, squirrel, wildcat, marten, snake*
3. Roebuck or roe, roe 50% with fawn
4. 2d100 deer, or 20% instead: a single stag (d12 ended)
5. d20 boars, if <14 50% d3 sows with d6+3 piglets, attack if approached
6. d6+4 wolves, pack will not normally attack
7. 1 brown bear (80%) or 1 mountain lion (20%), aggressive if fast movement or noise
8. Unusual fungi (witches circle, huge mushroom, blue glowing slimes, colorful display etc.)
9. d4-1 Myconoid Sprouts (min 1). If 3 50% with adult. Peaceful, want PCs to clear dungeon for them
10. Special encounter (d6)
1. Owlbear
2. Dryad
3. Rival adventurers in search of treasure (as many as party +1)
4. Mushroom collectors - work for the merchant, scout with d6 helpers (use bandits)
5. Giant slug
6. d8 twig blights, ambush
* can be poisonous, in which case this could be a slightly dangerous encounter
Deciduous forest: Towards rivers and swamp pioneer trees like birch, poplar, willows and alder. The main body consists of ash, elm, beech and oak, with the occasional linden, chestnut and maple tree. Ash and linden provide small nuts, oak acorns, beech beechnut, and chestnut the eponymous nut. The undergrowth is of hazelnut, brambles, fern, nettles and shrubs. You can find wild blackberry and raspberry. The ground layer consists of grass, moss, and lots of different lichens, fungi and mushrooms, as well as small flowers like wood garlic and cowslip.
Lots of small insects can be observed, maggots, worms, woodlice, centipedes and spiders. Flies, horseflies, butterflies, and rarely bees, wasps during the day, glowworms and mosquitoes at dusk and moths at night. The mosquitoes are a pest if the PCs have no good tent. Feeding on these there are birds, newts, frogs, toads, salamanders, lizards, mice, and at dusk and night, bats.
Normally there are always birds to be heard, most prominently raven and crows, but also woodpeckers, tawny owls, cuckoos, doves, nightingales, tits, thrushes, finches, jays and blackbirds.
Coniferous forest: mostly spruce and pine, with the occasional fir. There is not much undergrowth here, as little light makes it down to the needle strewn ground, but there are mosses and old pine cones. Birdsong is mostly from crows.
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