Hippogriff

A hippogriff on the party's side is almost always a mount. They can be raised from the egg by people with the patience and the right kind of meat, and they bond hard with one rider for life. The classic setup is a ranger or paladin who hatched their hippogriff during downtime, or a quest reward from a sky-elf community that lends mounts to allies on a single specific errand.

Use the hippogriff for travel and reconnaissance, not for combat. The 60-foot fly speed turns a three-day overland trip into an afternoon, and Perception +5 with passive 15 makes the hippogriff a credible scout for spotting bandit camps from a thousand feet up. In combat, the rider does most of the fighting; the hippogriff exists to get them into and out of position. Flyby means the rider can swing past an enemy line, drop a Smite, and keep moving without an opportunity attack on the mount.

If the hippogriff has to fight on its own, the gameplan is the same as the adversary side: dive, two Rends at +5 for 14 average, fly clear. With 26 HP and AC 11 it will not survive a sustained melee, so don't park it next to anything that gets a Multiattack. If the rider goes down and a fight is still happening, the hippogriff defends the body for one round and then flies the rider clear if it can lift them.

Name the hippogriff before the player does. Players will accept your name 80% of the time if you offer it warmly and never if you wait to be asked.

A hippogriff is a flying skirmisher that nests on cliffs and hates trespassers near its young. The whole encounter is shaped by Flyby and a 60-foot fly speed: the hippogriff swoops in, makes its Multiattack of two Rend strikes at +5 for 7 each, and leaves before the party gets to swing back. Run it on the ground only when the GM forgets the trait.

Open from above. Passive Perception 15 means the hippogriff sees the party long before the party spots a brown-feathered shape in a brown sky. The first round should be a dive: 60 feet of fly speed to reach the rear marcher, two Rend attacks for an average of 14 damage, then continue moving without provoking opportunity attacks because Flyby disables them. End the turn 30 to 40 feet up and out of melee range. A first-level fighter takes that hit and is at single digits; a wizard goes down.

Pair them. One hippogriff is a one-round annoyance with 26 HP and AC 11; two or three turn a road encounter into a real problem. Have them strafe from different angles so the ranger can't cover the whole sky. The ground party will burn movement chasing nothing, and the bows will roll at long range while the hippogriffs roll at advantage from elevation. If a hippogriff drops below half HP, it breaks off and flies straight back to the nest. They are animals defending territory, not soldiers.

Set the encounter in terrain that punishes flying targets. A canyon with crosswinds, a forest with a single clearing, a cliff path where missing a save knocks a PC off the edge. The hippogriff's mediocre to-hit and damage do their work when the party can't reliably reach back.

Put the nest on the map. The party can see the chicks if they look up. The fight ends if the party leaves, and the hippogriff will not pursue past the territorial boundary you drew at the start.