Blood Hawk 5e: Stats, Flock Tactics and the 2024 Bloodied Bite

A blood hawk is a CR 1/8 Small beast with AC 12, 7 hit points, a 60-foot fly speed and a +4 beak for 4 (1d4 + 2) piercing damage. It has Pack Tactics, so a flock that dives on one target attacks with Advantage. The SRD 5.1 describes blood hawks flocking in large numbers and attacking almost any animal. The 2024 version (SRD 5.2.1) makes the flock nastier as a fight goes on: its beak deals 6 (1d8 + 2) instead of 4 against a target that is Bloodied, at half its hit points or fewer.

Table of Contents

• •Blood Hawk Stat Block (2014)
• •The Blood Hawk in the 2024 Rules
• •How Blood Hawks Fight
• •How Many Blood Hawks for a Level 1 Party?
• •How Players Beat Blood Hawks
• •Blood Hawk Encounter Ideas
• •Frequently Asked Questions

Blood Hawk Stat Block (2014)

The +4 attack is the surprise. A CR 1/8 creature hitting like a level 1 fighter's longsword (+5) is rare. The weak spots are a 10-foot walking speed and no Flyby trait: a blood hawk that flies away from a character after biting provokes an opportunity attack.

The Blood Hawk in the 2024 Rules

Keen Sight is gone, folded into a higher flat Perception. The Bloodied clause is the change that matters: once a character drops to half hit points, every hit from the flock deals 2 more damage on average (6.5 instead of 4.5).

How Blood Hawks Fight

The flock dives on one target, bites, and stays. Flying away provokes opportunity attacks, and staying adjacent keeps Pack Tactics live for the next hawk.

The numbers against a level 1 cleric with AC 16:

• •One hawk alone: hits on a 12 or higher, 45%. About 2 damage a round.
• •Six hawks around the cleric: each attacks with Advantage and hits about 70% of the time (1 − 0.55²). That's roughly 19 damage a round with the 2014 beak, more than the 15 hit points of a level 1 barbarian with 16 Constitution.
• •Same six hawks, 2024, once the cleric is Bloodied: about 27 damage a round.

The 2024 Bloodied clause tells you who to target. A DM running 2024 blood hawks should switch the flock to whichever character is already under half hit points, because each hit on that character deals 6.5 instead of 4.5 on average.

Flight solves Pack Tactics' usual problem. Ground packs get stuck behind rubble, difficult terrain and the front line. Hawks fly over all of it, so in the open a flock can fill every square around the cleric at the back. Small creatures take a 5-foot square each, so eight hawks can be adjacent to one Medium target.

How Many Blood Hawks for a Level 1 Party?

Blood hawks are worth 25 XP each.

• •2024 rules: four level 1 characters have a 200 XP Low budget (8 hawks) and a 300 XP Moderate budget (12 hawks). Twelve blood hawks focusing one character will probably drop someone in the first round, so run 6 to 8 for a level 1 party and 10 to 12 at level 2, where Low is 400 XP.
• •2014 Dungeon Master's Guide guidelines (used by our encounter calculator): four hawks are 100 XP × 2 = 200 adjusted XP, Medium for four level 1 characters. Six reach 300 (Hard). Eight reach 500 adjusted XP, past the 400 Deadly threshold. Try your flock size in the calculator.

How Players Beat Blood Hawks

• •Fight under a roof. A cave mouth, a forest canopy or a stone bridge's underside cuts the angles the flock can dive from (DM ruling on how many can reach). In a 5-foot corridor with a low ceiling, only the squares ahead of and behind a character are open.
• •Area damage. Seven hit points dies to Thunderwave on a failed save about three times in four (2d8 of 7 or more). Hawks clustered around one target fit in a single cone or cube, though an ally in the middle is caught too.
• •Punish the escape. Hawks without Flyby provoke opportunity attacks. A character who saves their reaction gets a free attack on the first hawk that peels off.
• •Stay out of Bloodied range (2024). Healing a character back above half hit points turns off the flock's bonus damage. Healing Word works at range as a bonus action.
• •Protect the downed. A character at 0 hit points next to hawks takes automatic critical hits, and each one counts as two death save failures. Get them up or get them away.

Blood Hawk Encounter Ideas

The cliff road. A mountain path runs past a cliff face full of nests. Eight blood hawks attack anything with a mount or pack animal, going for the mule first. The party can fight, or cut the mule loose and keep walking.

The falconer's mistake. A noble's falconer tried to train blood hawks and lost control. Six of them now hunt the estate's gardens. The falconer wants them recaptured alive, which means nets and no area spells.

The red storm. After a battle, a flock of a dozen blood hawks circles the field. They ignore healthy creatures and drop on the wounded. Any character already Bloodied in 2024 becomes the target.

Frequently Asked Questions

What CR is a blood hawk in 5e?

CR 1/8, worth 25 XP, in both the 2014 and 2024 rules. It has AC 12, 7 hit points and a 60-foot fly speed.

What does a blood hawk do to a Bloodied target?

In the 2024 rules its beak deals 6 (1d8 + 2) piercing damage instead of 4 (1d4 + 2) when the target is Bloodied, meaning it has half its hit points or fewer. The 2014 blood hawk has no such clause.

Can a druid Wild Shape into a blood hawk?

From druid level 8 in both editions. It has a fly speed, which Wild Shape doesn't allow before level 8, even though its CR of 1/8 is low enough from level 2.

Can you have a blood hawk familiar?

Not under either version of Find Familiar. The 2014 spell lists the hawk but not the blood hawk, and the 2024 spell allows only CR 0 Beasts beyond its list, while the blood hawk is CR 1/8. The ordinary hawk is CR 0 and is on both lists.

Stat blocks: System Reference Document 5.1 (2014) and 5.2.1 (2024), Wizards of the Coast, CC-BY-4.0. Tactics, encounter math and ideas are Loreify's own.