Giant Vulture

A giant vulture ally is the familiar of a death-domain cleric, the bond-beast of a desert ranger, or a battlefield scavenger that the party fed once and that now follows the army. The vulture understands Common, which makes it more useful than a normal beast companion: simple instructions land. Speak slowly, point clearly, and the vulture will fly there and circle, fly back, or land on a target.

In combat, do not put the vulture on the line. AC 10 and 25 HP means it dies to one fireball or two arrows, and the loss matters more to the player than the damage matters to the enemy. Use the vulture as an aerial spotter and a courier. Fly 60 feet, Darkvision 60, Perception +3, and the ability to follow Common-language directions makes it the best 1-CR scout in the SRD. It can carry a written note across a battlefield, drop a vial on a target, or land on a roof and watch a door for an hour.

Out of combat, lean on the lore. Vultures find the dying. A party traveling with one will keep stumbling onto bodies the size of the world's regret, and the vulture will lead them there because that is what it does. Use this for hooks. Three weeks of travel and the vulture has dropped them at a battlefield, a lone shepherd's grave, and the lich's rumored tomb, in that order.

The vulture asks for nothing but the leftovers. Make a small ritual of feeding it after every fight. The player who owns the vulture should feel the weight of having a creature on their team that is always at the table when something has died.

A giant vulture is a patience encounter, not a damage encounter. The stat block has no actions listed, AC 10, and 25 HP, which means a single vulture is paste under any martial PC's first hit. Use them in flocks of three to six, circling a battlefield where the party has just had a real fight. The vultures land when the party leaves and start eating the dead. The encounter is the moral question of letting them, not the combat.

If the party engages, the vultures are spotters, not fighters. Fly 60 feet and Perception +3 means they see the party from a long way off. They understand Common but cannot speak it (per the stat block), which is the wrinkle: they answer to a Neutral Evil intelligence somewhere, usually a hag, a cult of carrion gods, or a lich who feeds them. The flock takes wing the moment the first one drops, climbs out of bow range, and reports back. The PCs have just been clocked.

If you do need a fight, run a flock. Improvise a Beak attack at +4 for 1d6+2 piercing per vulture, since the SRD did not give them one and your table will expect something to roll. Resistance to Necrotic is the one mechanical wrinkle: a flock guarding a necromancer eats reflavored Eldritch Blast at half, but most parties hit them with anything else and watch them die in a round. That is fine. The point is the smell and the noise, not the kill count.

The setpiece moment is the moment the party realises the vultures are not local wildlife. Three vultures circling a hill is atmosphere; the same three circling the road two days later, in the next country, is a campaign clue. Let the ranger roll Animal Handling to read the pattern and tell the party who is watching them.