Fun encounters in a burnt forest

[kraftcheese]

Hey folks! Just tryna blast out as many ideas for encounters (combat and non-combat) that might happen in a big forest and a town that were burnt to the ground by an invading army a few years ago.

There's 2 level 2 PCs, a rogue and a life cleric, and they're likely going to be at least skirting around this forest in our next session.

Obviously, realistically there'd be lots of plant regrowth, but I'm thinking maybe because we've got magic in play, the massive use of fire magic and prolonged burn has thinned the veil between the Prime and The Plane or Fire, or warped nature spirits that lived there beforehand (I'm thinking maybe like the Burnt Spriggans from Skyrim's Dragonborn dlc).

But yeah I'm open to any ideas!

[Unoriginal]

Lava and Smoke Mephits could be fun. Especially if they're not hostile.

[Afrodactyl]

Various fire elementals (mephits, magmins, etc)

A scorched Treant and the last dryads of his grove trying to bring life back to the forest

Some druids doing what druids do

Centaurs fleeing a forest fire

[Quoxis]

Various fire elementals (mephits, magmins, etc)

A scorched Treant and the last dryads of his grove trying to bring life back to the forest

Some druids doing what druids do

Centaurs fleeing a forest fire

To further this idea while including the burnt spriggans: a bunch of homebrew treants who are still smoldering, driven mad by pain and just blindly swinging around - attacks do minor fire damage on a hit, but their AC, stats and hit points are drastically lowered and they can’t animate other trees. Something between animated shrub and animated tree regarding CR, if that helps with building them (i have no idea how calculating the cr of a homebrew monster works, honestly).
Maybe even have them burn out after 1d4+x rounds if they’re still too much of a challenge for your group.

[hymer]

An elementalist wizard and her/his apprentices, studying the phenomenon and looking to use it for easy access to the elemental plane of fire. Could be squabbling with the abovementioned druids, who would be looking for ways to repair the tear.

[the_brazenburn]

Ash zombies from LMoP.

[Aett_Thorn]

You could always go the other way with it, too, where the remaining residents opened up a portal to the Plane of Water in order to put out the fire, and are now having trouble with that.