Hello zoologists of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 25th episode of our beast series. Today we’re going to be taking a look at the Raven 5E Monster. Which you should be all too familiar with if you’ve ever played curse of strahd because they are absolutely everywhere. Outside of that they’re also a very popular choice amongst those who use the find familiar spell and i’ll get into why that is in a little bit.
They have a very particular ability. That being said, i love the ravens they’re very foreboding provide a great ominous atmosphere that’s why they are so prevalent in this curse of strahd campaign. In addition to that once again they have some very interesting uses because of one ability in particular. Now without further ado let’s actually take a look at its stats.
Raven Beast 5E Stats
- Type: Tiny beast, unaligned
- Armor Class: 12
- Hit Points: 1 (1d4 – 1)
- Speed: 10 ft., fly 50 ft.
So the raven is considered to be a tiny beast, which is interesting because they’re actually quite large in reality. They have an AC of 12, one hit point calculated by rolling one d4 and then subtracting one as it’s modifier. The raven also has two different speeds walk speed of 10 feet, and the fly speed of 50 as you might imagine traditionally the raven does a lot more flying than anything else. Now let’s look at its actual stats there.
Stats
- STR: 2 (-4)
- DEX: 14 (+2)
- CON: 8 (-1)
- INT: 2 (-4)
- WIS: 12 (+1)
- CHA: 6 (-2)
- Skills: Perception +3
- Senses: Passive Perception 13
- Languages: —
- Challenge: 0 (10 XP)
You do see that it’s not particularly strong, particularly intelligent or even really not great health. Ultimately the only thing that ravens really good at its dexterity and wisdom slightly. Now looking at its senses nothing really to brag bout just a passive perception of 13 and under its skills it does have a +3 bonus to perception which is how it gets there. Very cool stuff! Now the best part of the raven is its mimicry ability.
- Mimicry: The raven can mimic simple sounds it has heard, such as a person whispering, a baby crying, or an animal chittering. A creature that hears the sounds can tell they are imitations with a successful DC 10 Wisdom (Insight) check.
Now there’s a lot of interesting implications there and i’ll get to that in a little bit. Before we do though, let’s take a quick look at its action.
Actions
- Beak: Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1 piercing damage.
The raven can perform a beak attack. This is considered to be a melee weapon attack, plus four to hit which is actually pretty decent. Range of five feet, it can target one thing and on a hit deals one piercing damage. Now one of the cooler ways i’ve seen ravens used in the past is used to communicate simple messages from a magic user or druid or dark nefarious individual to the party and back again.
Kind of use it as a sham of a parrot messenger as it were, which it has led to some pretty interesting results. Outside of that a huge number of them would be pretty terrifying and or even a simple one used to spook party members would be pretty cool as well. Maybe even in the flick the fear condition for a moat around or so around being six seconds is about how long you would take for them to be spooked. So very interesting stuff there.
Conclusion
That being said, let me know how you would use the raven down beneath in the comment section. Just tell me how you’d fold it into your game. That being said, if you have any other thoughts, questions, ideas, comments, concerns please put it down there as well. I hope you all have a great day and as always happy researching my friends.