Flying Snake

A flying snake is a familiar, a druid's wild shape, or a courier trained by a jungle priesthood. The point of the snake is not damage. It is mobility, scouting, and message delivery in places ground couriers cannot go.

Run it as a tool. Fly speed 60 ft., swim speed 30 ft., walk speed 30 ft., 5 HP, AC 14. The snake can carry a folded letter, a small key, or a vial in its coils. It can deliver across a chasm, through a barred window, over a city wall. Blindsight 10 ft. is short, so dark spaces are not its specialty, but daylight reconnaissance through dense foliage is. If anything notices it and rolls an attack, the snake dies. So plan the route, send it once, and accept that any return trip is a separate gamble.

In combat, a familiar snake uses Help via the familiar rules to grant Advantage on one attack against an enemy it can reach, then retreats to a high perch. A druid wild-shaped into one drops out of the form when the snake hits 0 HP and takes no damage personally, which makes the snake the safest aerial scout shape at low level.

Describe what the snake sees in short clauses, never full sentences. Snakes do not narrate; they catch movement and color and heat. The cadence sells the perspective.

A flying snake is a jungle hazard with a CR. It is the encounter you stage when the party is doing something else, like crossing a rope bridge, hauling an idol out of a temple, or sneaking through a canopy. The snake itself is barely a threat (5 HP, AC 14, Flyby), but a single bite landing on the wizard mid-spell is a poison save and a Concentration check, and that save is why this monster exists.

Treat the snake as opportunistic. It does not march toward initiative. It drops from a branch when something walks underneath, makes one Bite (plus 4 to hit, 1 piercing plus 2d4 poison), then either flies off at 60 ft. or hangs on for one more round if momentum favors it. Flyby means it can attack and escape in the same turn without provoking opportunity attacks. The party will spend two rounds trying to hit a Tiny aerial target with AC 14 and feel ridiculous about it.

Use them in flocks of three or four if you want a real fight. Coordinated bites against the same target multiply the poison damage and the Concentration problem. A party crossing open terrain is an easy target. Flocks rarely fight to the last snake; once one or two drop, the rest scatter into the canopy and don't return unless the party presses back through.

Have the first snake strike before initiative, mid-description of the environment. The player whose turn was about to begin loses a beat figuring out what just happened. That is the snake doing its job.