Tower Ballista

Ultimate Equipment Guide II

Author Greg Lynch, J. C. Alvarez

Publisher Mongoose Publishing

Publish date 2005

A bit smaller than its more common relative, a tower ballista is so called for being specially designed to attack from a fortress tower. A tower ballista looks like a Large (about ten feet wide) crossbow with a man-sized seat where the handle should be. This seat allows a character to actually ‘sit’ on the ballista and fire it from the seat. In addition to the ballista triggers, the seat is equipped with a lever allowing the ballista to be rotated upward or downward up to a 90-degree angle, so as to aim at airborne creatures. The whole contraption is fixed atop a wooden platform, which is in turn mounted on a swivelling mechanism of cogs and levers. By manipulating a set of levers beside the seat, the character on the seat can rotate the platform and the ballista, allowing him to aim in different directions fairly quickly. The whole contraption takes quite a bit of space atop a tower, allowing little room for anything but the ballista and its ‘rider’. Therefore, many landlords have opted to replace their towers’ entire rooftops with rotating tower ballistae. Given their practical size and rotating qualities, tower ballistae are a useful and effective defence
against aerial assault.

A tower ballista counts as a ranged weapon for the purposes of attack rolls, damage, critical threat chance and range increments. Despite being oversized for most creatures, a tower ballista does not impose a size penalty on the wielder, as the weapons’ seat configuration offsets wielding difficulties. A tower ballista can seat a Small, Medium or Large creature without any trouble; a Huge creature may wield it in its hands as a common heavy crossbow. Thanks to its rotating system, a ballista is specially designed for fast, accurate aiming. By spending a move action, a tower ballista can be rotated up to 90 degrees vertically or 180 degrees horizontally, in any direction. Firing a tower ballista always counts as a standard action.

A tower ballista is usually fitted with piercing bolts, designed specifically for the weapons’ size and anti-airborne purposes. However, it can also be adapted to fire various types of bombs (see page 73); treat them as normal ballista missiles except they deal the specified bomb damage instead of ballista bolt damage.

Tower Ballista: Two-Handed Exotic Weapon; 800 gp; Dmg 2d8; Critical 19-20/x2; Range 120 ft.; 600 lb.; Bludgeoning