This was previously posted in Story and Lore but I was told it would fit better here so I'm reposting in this channel.
I have a concept for a druid character I might be using in an upcoming game. It will probably be either this or the centaur I concept I posted a couple days ago. But I had an idea related to an animal companion and thought it might be a good idea to get a second opinion on possible stats.
One of the big things about this character is she really, really loves birds, and I had the idea of giving her an animal companion to reflect that. The strange thing is I had the idea of her companion being a chickadee. I know, maybe an unorthodox choice, but chickadees are really amazing birds. Only problem is that DND doesn't seem to have official stats for small birds. So I have to do some guesswork.
The smallest bird that is available seems to be a raven, which is significantly larger than a chickadee. They have an armor class of 12 and HP of 1. Most smaller animals seem to have 1 HP so that might be a logical starting point, though there would be the question of armor class. A raven's is 12, a chickadee's is much smaller. But a chickadee probably would have the advantage of agility, making it harder to hit. I'm not sure if there would be specific stats for that.
According to google, the average flight speed for a chickadee is about 20 KM per hour, but I'm not sure how well this would translate into a tabletop format. It might be too much from a gameplay perspective.
It is worth drawing a distinction between real world animals and most "Familiars" and "Animal Companions". Like adventurers, it can be assumed that our heroes and their regular companions are made of slightly tougher stuff, even if they are tiny little chickadees.
HP would hit a minimum of 1.
AC for most beasts is a combination of Natural Armor and Dexterity. For a chickadee, I would be fine with it having DEX 18, which would give it AC 14.
However, because of its small size and lack of natural weapons, it would have no capacity for attacking.
It also has no stealth, or sensory benefits. (Though, it would have a naturally higher stealth due to higher Dex)
They're relatively slow, but making them too slow would be a pain, so I would give them a Fly speed of 25.
That said, Chickadees have the advantages of being songbirds, so we could give them the following feature:
Song of Warning The chickadee [has advantage on initiative checks, and] can sing a Song of Warning as a free action on its first turn of combat. Allies within 30ft, who can hear its song, and have not yet had a turn, can reroll their intitiative check and take the higher value, potentially allowing them to act sooner than they otherwise would. Players whose new roll would allow them to act before the chickadee instead take their turn immediately after the chickadee.
So, it would be slow and harmless, but could potentially help the party by letting them act more quickly in battle.
Giving them advantage on initiative would probably make this feature unbalanced, so I'd recommend excluding that piece.
Actually I did have some ideas about how a chickadee could be useful for stealth. It would be great for scouting- you could send it ahead for observation purposes since a small bird has the advantage of being able to fly to high places where it can get a good view without drawing attention. And if anyone does notice it... well, as far as they know it's just a harmless unassuming little bird they have no reason to be concerned about. Especially if they're in an environment where small birds are commonplace.
Though as you noted it wouldn't have much in the way of attacks, unless pooping counts. Maybe that should be an ability for small birds:
"As a bonus action, your bird may poop on one enemy. Successfully pooping on an enemy reduces their constitution by 50%"
Actually I did have some ideas about how a chickadee could be useful for stealth. It would be great for scouting- you could send it ahead for observation purposes since a small bird has the advantage of being able to fly to high places where it can get a good view without drawing attention. And if anyone does notice it... well, as far as they know it's just a harmless unassuming little bird they have no reason to be concerned about. Especially if they're in an environment where small birds are commonplace.
Though as you noted it wouldn't have much in the way of attacks, unless pooping counts. Maybe that should be an ability for small birds:
"As a bonus action, your bird may poop on one enemy. Successfully pooping on an enemy reduces their constitution by 50%"
Roll for a Dexterity Saving Throw on failure you are blinded for one round while you get the excrement out of your eyes.
By "no stealth or sensory benefit" I meant beyond what is normal for the type of creature it represents.
Predators tend to have keen sight or smell, darkvision, or, like owls, a combination of camouflage and noiseless flight.
By comparison, Chickadees survive by large numbers and mass reproduction, so their coloration is more about being selectively visible than invisible.
Being common and capable of flight is inherently great for scouting, but the 25ft speed means that it can easily be chased down by pretty much anything else, so be careful letting it scout in confined spaces, like tunnels or houses. Humanoids may ignore it, but they will have plenty of natural predators. Part of their survival strategy is safety in numbers.
To be fair, would predators not be a potential danger for most animal companions? Especially if you're playing as a druid or ranger who spends a lot of time in the wilderness? Even a raven could be seen as good prey to some animals. Unless you're animal companion is a beholder or something, it's probably something you need to be careful of.
Still, I see your point. I'm pretty sure chickadee survival strategies are a bit more complex than just safety in numbers, but I could see where that would be a problem. A lot of small birds are good at spotting potential dangers and flying away before they can be caught, but obviously that doesn't always work. If anything, the biggest problem would be if my character is in any villages where there might be cats. Fortunately my character really hates cats, but I could see where it would be hard to avoid them. I suppose any time my character is visiting a town she might need her bird to stay outside.
Sure, natural predation is always a concern, but, for birds in particular, size matters. A hawk isn't likely to attack a raven simply because it would be inconvenient. Even if the hawk has a very good chance of killing the raven, the raven might injure it enough to put it at risk. It only takes a few broken feathers to severely compromise flight, and a hawk that can't fly is extremely vulnerable to land predators. The little chickadee is basically popcorn chicken. It doesn't pose a threat, so predators are likely to pursue them on a whim, rather than out of desperation.
Many DMs are lenient and avoid targeting familiars and animal companions, either due to issues with animal abuse, or simply because there are a lot of moving pieces to manage, however many others treat them as completely valid targets. An animal out of its natural habitat is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Just treat the DM like the predator, and use common sense.
i.e. Don't draw the DMs attention to the Chickadee more than necessary, and it should have no problem staying under the radar.
If it starts scouting entire dungeons on its own, it's likely not to return.
There are no rules as yet for "small" creatures. The lowest size category thus far is Tiny. I see no indication that a chickadee is functionally any different from a raven. As far as flying speed goes? The given speed of 20 kph equals 12.4 miles per hour. I took a look at the raven's listed speed of 50 and worked backwards from there and got 158,500 mph or 255081 kph.
I'd suggest taking the stats for the raven and removing their mimicry power. If you have to replace it with something, put in "Fly Away!", because at 255081 kph, they should be pretty good at that.
Then all you need to do is fill out the description, and you already know what they look like.
Watch out for hawks and owls though, they both have a listed speed of 60
There are no rules as yet for "small" creatures. The lowest size category thus far is Tiny. I see no indication that a chickadee is functionally any different from a raven. As far as flying speed goes? The given speed of 20 kph equals 12.4 miles per hour. I took a look at the raven's listed speed of 50 and worked backwards from there and got 158,500 mph or 255081 kph.
I'd suggest taking the stats for the raven and removing their mimicry power. If you have to replace it with something, put in "Fly Away!", because at 255081 kph, they should be pretty good at that.
Then all you need to do is fill out the description, and you already know what they look like.
Watch out for hawks and owls though, they both have a listed speed of 60
How the heck did you get those numbers?
50 feet per round is 5.7 mph or 9.1 km/h. If it dashes, it can double that. A speed of 60 dashing would be around 20 km/h. You were off by a factor of over 25000×!
Anyway. Don't homebrew without consulting your DM. If you want a familiar, reskin a hawk/raven/owl. If you just want a pet, I suggest using raven stats without mimicry.
50 feet per round. A round is 6 second. 3000 feet per second. 5280 feet in a mile. So you divide 5280 feet, by 3000 feet per second, what do you get? A huge gob of feet per second. Fifteen million, eight hundred and forty thousand. Now it gets tricky, and I have trouble using calculators. I learned something called "Reverse Polish Notation" and don't have one that uses it. You figure it out.
50 feet per round. A round is 6 second. 3000 feet per second. 5280 feet in a mile. So you divide 5280 feet, by 3000 feet per second, what do you get? A huge gob of feet per second. Fifteen million, eight hundred and forty thousand. Now it gets tricky, and I have trouble using calculators. I learned something called "Reverse Polish Notation" and don't have one that uses it. You figure it out.
Oh, I see the problem. You multiplied every time you should have divided. And added extra 0s to the answer for no reason (50×6=300 not 3000).
50 feet per round is 8.3 feet per second 1/6 of moment time should also be 1/6 of movement distance.
For unit conversions, you multiply by a fraction with the unit you want on top and the unit you are converting on bottom. So converting 8.3 ft/s to mi/h you will multiply by 1/5280 mi/ft and 3600/1 s/h so the ft/s and s/ft units cancel out and you get (8.3×3600÷5280=) 5.7 mph.
You probably should have realized something was wrong when your reaction of a turn was faster than a whole turn or when there were more miles than there were feet...
This has been your algebra 1 lesson with dxjxc, tune in next time when we cover exponents with tabaxi.
<cackles with laughter> I love that thing about the Tabaxi. I'd imagine you'd need Calculus for Tabaxi Monks. I miss my HP scientific calculator. I was never any good at unit conversion. The one I had contained built in conversions, but it wouldn't help me much. It didn't have built in D&D units, and as observed, I mess things up all the time anyway.
On the topic, it would appear that if a chickadee really can fly at 12.4 miles per hour, a Raven at only 5.7 miles per hour is much slower, so if you feel the need to make a change, get someone other than me to tell you what to fill in for their Flying rate per turn.
A: want the mechanics to reflect the real world capabilities of the bird, in which case it's not going to be especially useful, or
B: want the mechanics to be useful, in which case it's not going to very well reflect the real bird?
If A, then you really don't need a class feature or spell to represent it. It's just a little bird that goes on adventures with you. It won't even need stats most of the time. The Urchin background gives a similar thing -- a pet mouse, IIRC -- and doesn't have any mechanics tied to it.
If B, there are all kinds of options for you to pick from.
The basic rules echo what is found in the Player's Handbook. This came up in a discussion about how far a man riding a Riding Horse could travel in one day. It was pointed out that by the rules, only a humanoid can walk at the listed speed, and anything else can only move at their listed speed in "short bursts". I was told that a horse has to slow down to the speed of the rider. Finding out how far a human being can travel in a day is nearly impossible. I saw claims of over 100 miles in a day, or as little as 50. The Player's Handbook says a humanoid with a listed speed of 30 can travel 24 miles in a day under ideal conditions. That's considered a Normal Pace, and they can walk no more than 8 hours. A Riding Horse has a listed speed of 60. Logic would suggest that if a human can travel 24 miles in 8 hours, that a Riding Horse could travel 48 miles in the same amount of time. I was told no. Only humanoids are able to maintain a Normal Pace. Anything else can only travel at a Normal Pace in short bursts and if you try to get them to travel any faster than that, it's a forced march.
My own interpretation of the "short burst rule" is that what they were trying to do is expressly indicate that Non-humanoids can also use the Dash action, just like humanoids can. That's what they meant about short bursts, but the "Plain English" rules can be very tricky and I constantly get things wrong because of them. They didn't use the words "Dash Action" so Horses cannot dash. I guess they can't gallop at all in the game, since that's the nearest equivalent of a running speed I know of for a horse.
None of this has to do with flying. I made sure not to talk about how far you can fly out of combat. I did start to, but I realized what a can of worms that was and left it alone. Actual speeds in the real world have nothing to do with speeds in the game, but I took a stab at trying to help, and that's something that hardly ever works out for me in the Rules & Game Mechanics forum.
I'll respond in more depth later, but I can tell you from personal experience that walking 25 miles per day with a full hiking backpack and proper shoes is laborious and leaves uncomfortably long blisters. D&D rules are generally based on "practical averages", not the extreme limits of human potential. I could have walked more than 60 miles in a 24 hour period, but that would absolutely not have been sustainable.
I would say that they're not even based on practical averages. They're based on numbers that sync up cleanly with preexisting hex-based map design. The DMG discusses hexes. Tomb of Annihilation is, to my knowledge, the only 5e adventure that actually uses them explicitly. Older editions used them more. They're kind of gone, kind of still here, affecting things from the shadows.
The point isn't really to mirror reality, it's to narrow down the scope to a manageable degree. It's basically the same reason you don't get access to things like Wind Walk and Teleport right away. The game intends for there to at least be a window of levels where exploration is relatively predictable, for lack of a better word. Where it has rules to it, and where those rules are tightly designed to yield interesting/challenging decisions at a higher rate than if you just let it be freeform. I mean, we can discuss how successful those rules are, and I'd agree that they're sort of dull and shallow, but you get my point.
If you need it to work mechanically, then rather than trying to force the rules to reckon with the real world flight speed of this particular bird, why don't you look at the spell Animal Messenger? In that spell, it says "about 50 miles per 24 hours for a flying messenger, or 25 miles for other animals." Simple, easy, evidently balanced as far as the design team was concerned. That's the same whether the messenger has 20ft, 60ft, or even 90ft of flying speed. You could say that it assumes that faster speeds are representative of more strenuous flight, and over long distances it averages out. Go ahead and say that, if it makes it make sense for you. Ultimately it's just the game trying to keep you within certain bounds, and as long as we don't know your DM or whatever, I think we gotta recommend you allow yourself to be kept within those bounds. Don't go trying to hack the rules for real-world science reasons. That's a good general rule for D&D actually.
And while you're at it, you can just steal the stats of a bird pre-approved by the Find Familiar spell. Ideally you'll actually find a way to put said spell on your character, because otherwise you're putting the DM in the position of having the only "balancing" mechanism of your pet be that they can kill it on a whim and it won't come back, which of course they're not going to want to ever do, and rightly so. Tasha's includes an optional feature to let you use the spell. Perfect!
Not every creature needs something unique in its stat block. Especially not tiny birds, I would argue. Just use the stats for the owl or something.
Wow, I don't think I expected to get so many responses to this.
I've seen a lot of recommendations to look at stats for other birds. The smallest one I know of that actually has official stats is the raven, which has an armor class of 12 and 1 HP. 1HP seems to be the standard for animal companions, unless you have a dragon or something crazy. So it's probably a decent point of reference for a small bird. Since a chickadee is much smaller than a raven it might make sense to give it a reduced armor class. I could cut it in half, maybe down to 5 or 6.
These are the standard raven attributes:
STR
2 (-4)
DEX
14 (+2)
CON
8 (-1)
INT
2 (-4)
WIS
12 (+1)
CHA
6 (-2)
I suppose if we wanted to adapt this for a chickadee, we could decrease strength and constitution, since it wouldn't be effective in combat. We can then make up for those weaknesses by increasing dexterity and wisdom, so what it lacks in physical prowess it has for agility and survival skills. Maybe a bonus to charisma as well because... well... it's a chickadee!
Wow, I don't think I expected to get so many responses to this.
I've seen a lot of recommendations to look at stats for other birds. The smallest one I know of that actually has official stats is the raven, which has an armor class of 12 and 1 HP. 1HP seems to be the standard for animal companions, unless you have a dragon or something crazy. So it's probably a decent point of reference for a small bird. Since a chickadee is much smaller than a raven it might make sense to give it a reduced armor class. I could cut it in half, maybe down to 5 or 6.
These are the standard raven attributes:
STR
2 (-4)
DEX
14 (+2)
CON
8 (-1)
INT
2 (-4)
WIS
12 (+1)
CHA
6 (-2)
I suppose if we wanted to adapt this for a chickadee, we could decrease strength and constitution, since it wouldn't be effective in combat. We can then make up for those weaknesses by increasing dexterity and wisdom, so what it lacks in physical prowess it has for agility and survival skills. Maybe a bonus to charisma as well because... well... it's a chickadee!
Armor Class 5 or 6 would make no sense - remember, AC is 10+Dex mod for creatures. It should be AC 12, even more if you spike its Dex (which will also spike its offensive output and therefore its offensive CR).
What I think would fit what you have in mind better is taking that same statline and cutting Constitution (you can cut Str to 1(-5) if you want, as well - it won't affect much, other than Athletics checks to fly in strong winds).
This was previously posted in Story and Lore but I was told it would fit better here so I'm reposting in this channel.
I have a concept for a druid character I might be using in an upcoming game. It will probably be either this or the centaur I concept I posted a couple days ago. But I had an idea related to an animal companion and thought it might be a good idea to get a second opinion on possible stats.
One of the big things about this character is she really, really loves birds, and I had the idea of giving her an animal companion to reflect that. The strange thing is I had the idea of her companion being a chickadee. I know, maybe an unorthodox choice, but chickadees are really amazing birds. Only problem is that DND doesn't seem to have official stats for small birds. So I have to do some guesswork.
The smallest bird that is available seems to be a raven, which is significantly larger than a chickadee. They have an armor class of 12 and HP of 1. Most smaller animals seem to have 1 HP so that might be a logical starting point, though there would be the question of armor class. A raven's is 12, a chickadee's is much smaller. But a chickadee probably would have the advantage of agility, making it harder to hit. I'm not sure if there would be specific stats for that.
According to google, the average flight speed for a chickadee is about 20 KM per hour, but I'm not sure how well this would translate into a tabletop format. It might be too much from a gameplay perspective.
It is worth drawing a distinction between real world animals and most "Familiars" and "Animal Companions". Like adventurers, it can be assumed that our heroes and their regular companions are made of slightly tougher stuff, even if they are tiny little chickadees.
HP would hit a minimum of 1.
AC for most beasts is a combination of Natural Armor and Dexterity. For a chickadee, I would be fine with it having DEX 18, which would give it AC 14.
However, because of its small size and lack of natural weapons, it would have no capacity for attacking.
It also has no stealth, or sensory benefits. (Though, it would have a naturally higher stealth due to higher Dex)
They're relatively slow, but making them too slow would be a pain, so I would give them a Fly speed of 25.
That said, Chickadees have the advantages of being songbirds, so we could give them the following feature:
Song of Warning
The chickadee [has advantage on initiative checks, and] can sing a Song of Warning as a free action on its first turn of combat. Allies within 30ft, who can hear its song, and have not yet had a turn, can reroll their intitiative check and take the higher value, potentially allowing them to act sooner than they otherwise would. Players whose new roll would allow them to act before the chickadee instead take their turn immediately after the chickadee.
So, it would be slow and harmless, but could potentially help the party by letting them act more quickly in battle.
Giving them advantage on initiative would probably make this feature unbalanced, so I'd recommend excluding that piece.
Actually I did have some ideas about how a chickadee could be useful for stealth. It would be great for scouting- you could send it ahead for observation purposes since a small bird has the advantage of being able to fly to high places where it can get a good view without drawing attention. And if anyone does notice it... well, as far as they know it's just a harmless unassuming little bird they have no reason to be concerned about. Especially if they're in an environment where small birds are commonplace.
Though as you noted it wouldn't have much in the way of attacks, unless pooping counts. Maybe that should be an ability for small birds:
"As a bonus action, your bird may poop on one enemy. Successfully pooping on an enemy reduces their constitution by 50%"
Roll for a Dexterity Saving Throw on failure you are blinded for one round while you get the excrement out of your eyes.
By "no stealth or sensory benefit" I meant beyond what is normal for the type of creature it represents.
Predators tend to have keen sight or smell, darkvision, or, like owls, a combination of camouflage and noiseless flight.
By comparison, Chickadees survive by large numbers and mass reproduction, so their coloration is more about being selectively visible than invisible.
Being common and capable of flight is inherently great for scouting, but the 25ft speed means that it can easily be chased down by pretty much anything else, so be careful letting it scout in confined spaces, like tunnels or houses. Humanoids may ignore it, but they will have plenty of natural predators. Part of their survival strategy is safety in numbers.
To be fair, would predators not be a potential danger for most animal companions? Especially if you're playing as a druid or ranger who spends a lot of time in the wilderness? Even a raven could be seen as good prey to some animals. Unless you're animal companion is a beholder or something, it's probably something you need to be careful of.
Still, I see your point. I'm pretty sure chickadee survival strategies are a bit more complex than just safety in numbers, but I could see where that would be a problem. A lot of small birds are good at spotting potential dangers and flying away before they can be caught, but obviously that doesn't always work. If anything, the biggest problem would be if my character is in any villages where there might be cats. Fortunately my character really hates cats, but I could see where it would be hard to avoid them. I suppose any time my character is visiting a town she might need her bird to stay outside.
Sure, natural predation is always a concern, but, for birds in particular, size matters. A hawk isn't likely to attack a raven simply because it would be inconvenient. Even if the hawk has a very good chance of killing the raven, the raven might injure it enough to put it at risk. It only takes a few broken feathers to severely compromise flight, and a hawk that can't fly is extremely vulnerable to land predators. The little chickadee is basically popcorn chicken. It doesn't pose a threat, so predators are likely to pursue them on a whim, rather than out of desperation.
Many DMs are lenient and avoid targeting familiars and animal companions, either due to issues with animal abuse, or simply because there are a lot of moving pieces to manage, however many others treat them as completely valid targets. An animal out of its natural habitat is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Just treat the DM like the predator, and use common sense.
i.e. Don't draw the DMs attention to the Chickadee more than necessary, and it should have no problem staying under the radar.
If it starts scouting entire dungeons on its own, it's likely not to return.
There are no rules as yet for "small" creatures. The lowest size category thus far is Tiny. I see no indication that a chickadee is functionally any different from a raven. As far as flying speed goes? The given speed of 20 kph equals 12.4 miles per hour. I took a look at the raven's listed speed of 50 and worked backwards from there and got 158,500 mph or 255081 kph.
I'd suggest taking the stats for the raven and removing their mimicry power. If you have to replace it with something, put in "Fly Away!", because at 255081 kph, they should be pretty good at that.
Then all you need to do is fill out the description, and you already know what they look like.
Watch out for hawks and owls though, they both have a listed speed of 60
<Insert clever signature here>
How the heck did you get those numbers?
50 feet per round is 5.7 mph or 9.1 km/h. If it dashes, it can double that. A speed of 60 dashing would be around 20 km/h. You were off by a factor of over 25000×!
Anyway. Don't homebrew without consulting your DM. If you want a familiar, reskin a hawk/raven/owl. If you just want a pet, I suggest using raven stats without mimicry.
50 feet per round. A round is 6 second. 3000 feet per second. 5280 feet in a mile. So you divide 5280 feet, by 3000 feet per second, what do you get? A huge gob of feet per second. Fifteen million, eight hundred and forty thousand. Now it gets tricky, and I have trouble using calculators. I learned something called "Reverse Polish Notation" and don't have one that uses it. You figure it out.
<Insert clever signature here>
Oh, I see the problem. You multiplied every time you should have divided. And added extra 0s to the answer for no reason (50×6=300 not 3000).
50 feet per round is 8.3 feet per second 1/6 of moment time should also be 1/6 of movement distance.
For unit conversions, you multiply by a fraction with the unit you want on top and the unit you are converting on bottom. So converting 8.3 ft/s to mi/h you will multiply by 1/5280 mi/ft and 3600/1 s/h so the ft/s and s/ft units cancel out and you get (8.3×3600÷5280=) 5.7 mph.
You probably should have realized something was wrong when your reaction of a turn was faster than a whole turn or when there were more miles than there were feet...
This has been your algebra 1 lesson with dxjxc, tune in next time when we cover exponents with tabaxi.
<cackles with laughter> I love that thing about the Tabaxi. I'd imagine you'd need Calculus for Tabaxi Monks. I miss my HP scientific calculator. I was never any good at unit conversion. The one I had contained built in conversions, but it wouldn't help me much. It didn't have built in D&D units, and as observed, I mess things up all the time anyway.
On the topic, it would appear that if a chickadee really can fly at 12.4 miles per hour, a Raven at only 5.7 miles per hour is much slower, so if you feel the need to make a change, get someone other than me to tell you what to fill in for their Flying rate per turn.
<Insert clever signature here>
Just google their actual speeds. The basic rules also have an official way to convert "combat" speeds to "travel" speeds.
So, the question to ask is, do you...
A: want the mechanics to reflect the real world capabilities of the bird, in which case it's not going to be especially useful, or
B: want the mechanics to be useful, in which case it's not going to very well reflect the real bird?
If A, then you really don't need a class feature or spell to represent it. It's just a little bird that goes on adventures with you. It won't even need stats most of the time. The Urchin background gives a similar thing -- a pet mouse, IIRC -- and doesn't have any mechanics tied to it.
If B, there are all kinds of options for you to pick from.
The basic rules echo what is found in the Player's Handbook. This came up in a discussion about how far a man riding a Riding Horse could travel in one day. It was pointed out that by the rules, only a humanoid can walk at the listed speed, and anything else can only move at their listed speed in "short bursts". I was told that a horse has to slow down to the speed of the rider. Finding out how far a human being can travel in a day is nearly impossible. I saw claims of over 100 miles in a day, or as little as 50. The Player's Handbook says a humanoid with a listed speed of 30 can travel 24 miles in a day under ideal conditions. That's considered a Normal Pace, and they can walk no more than 8 hours. A Riding Horse has a listed speed of 60. Logic would suggest that if a human can travel 24 miles in 8 hours, that a Riding Horse could travel 48 miles in the same amount of time. I was told no. Only humanoids are able to maintain a Normal Pace. Anything else can only travel at a Normal Pace in short bursts and if you try to get them to travel any faster than that, it's a forced march.
My own interpretation of the "short burst rule" is that what they were trying to do is expressly indicate that Non-humanoids can also use the Dash action, just like humanoids can. That's what they meant about short bursts, but the "Plain English" rules can be very tricky and I constantly get things wrong because of them. They didn't use the words "Dash Action" so Horses cannot dash. I guess they can't gallop at all in the game, since that's the nearest equivalent of a running speed I know of for a horse.
None of this has to do with flying. I made sure not to talk about how far you can fly out of combat. I did start to, but I realized what a can of worms that was and left it alone. Actual speeds in the real world have nothing to do with speeds in the game, but I took a stab at trying to help, and that's something that hardly ever works out for me in the Rules & Game Mechanics forum.
<Insert clever signature here>
I'll respond in more depth later, but I can tell you from personal experience that walking 25 miles per day with a full hiking backpack and proper shoes is laborious and leaves uncomfortably long blisters. D&D rules are generally based on "practical averages", not the extreme limits of human potential. I could have walked more than 60 miles in a 24 hour period, but that would absolutely not have been sustainable.
I would say that they're not even based on practical averages. They're based on numbers that sync up cleanly with preexisting hex-based map design. The DMG discusses hexes. Tomb of Annihilation is, to my knowledge, the only 5e adventure that actually uses them explicitly. Older editions used them more. They're kind of gone, kind of still here, affecting things from the shadows.
The point isn't really to mirror reality, it's to narrow down the scope to a manageable degree. It's basically the same reason you don't get access to things like Wind Walk and Teleport right away. The game intends for there to at least be a window of levels where exploration is relatively predictable, for lack of a better word. Where it has rules to it, and where those rules are tightly designed to yield interesting/challenging decisions at a higher rate than if you just let it be freeform. I mean, we can discuss how successful those rules are, and I'd agree that they're sort of dull and shallow, but you get my point.
If you need it to work mechanically, then rather than trying to force the rules to reckon with the real world flight speed of this particular bird, why don't you look at the spell Animal Messenger? In that spell, it says "about 50 miles per 24 hours for a flying messenger, or 25 miles for other animals." Simple, easy, evidently balanced as far as the design team was concerned. That's the same whether the messenger has 20ft, 60ft, or even 90ft of flying speed. You could say that it assumes that faster speeds are representative of more strenuous flight, and over long distances it averages out. Go ahead and say that, if it makes it make sense for you. Ultimately it's just the game trying to keep you within certain bounds, and as long as we don't know your DM or whatever, I think we gotta recommend you allow yourself to be kept within those bounds. Don't go trying to hack the rules for real-world science reasons. That's a good general rule for D&D actually.
And while you're at it, you can just steal the stats of a bird pre-approved by the Find Familiar spell. Ideally you'll actually find a way to put said spell on your character, because otherwise you're putting the DM in the position of having the only "balancing" mechanism of your pet be that they can kill it on a whim and it won't come back, which of course they're not going to want to ever do, and rightly so. Tasha's includes an optional feature to let you use the spell. Perfect!
Not every creature needs something unique in its stat block. Especially not tiny birds, I would argue. Just use the stats for the owl or something.
Wow, I don't think I expected to get so many responses to this.
I've seen a lot of recommendations to look at stats for other birds. The smallest one I know of that actually has official stats is the raven, which has an armor class of 12 and 1 HP. 1HP seems to be the standard for animal companions, unless you have a dragon or something crazy. So it's probably a decent point of reference for a small bird. Since a chickadee is much smaller than a raven it might make sense to give it a reduced armor class. I could cut it in half, maybe down to 5 or 6.
I suppose if we wanted to adapt this for a chickadee, we could decrease strength and constitution, since it wouldn't be effective in combat. We can then make up for those weaknesses by increasing dexterity and wisdom, so what it lacks in physical prowess it has for agility and survival skills. Maybe a bonus to charisma as well because... well... it's a chickadee!
Armor Class 5 or 6 would make no sense - remember, AC is 10+Dex mod for creatures. It should be AC 12, even more if you spike its Dex (which will also spike its offensive output and therefore its offensive CR).
What I think would fit what you have in mind better is taking that same statline and cutting Constitution (you can cut Str to 1(-5) if you want, as well - it won't affect much, other than Athletics checks to fly in strong winds).
I made my own Songbird stat block:
Flyby. The songbird doesn't provoke opportunity attacks when it flies out of an enemy's reach.
Beak. Melee Weapon Attack: +0 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1 piercing damage.