Crossbow sizes

[Yogibear41]

How big is a large Heavy Crossbow(16 pounds)? A huge Heavy Crossbow(40 pounds)?

What is the largest Heavy Crossbow a 4' 3" dwarf could carry on his back?

[Callin]

The large one is probably about 5 feet long by 3 wide at minimum. Next size up you're looking at closer to 10.

[Yogibear41]

I'm looking to use it as more of a tool than a weapon, this is what im thinking have a very large crossbow tie a rope to the end of the bolt, then use the crossbown to fire at say a wall or something on the other side of a canyon or something of the like, now you have a rope firmly planted in the side of the wall on the other side (hopefully) you can then use the rope to shimmy across, or even zip line if its going down.

Another thought is, could you carry a tripod or somethign to sit the crossbow on while you aim for the cliff to help hold it up?

[Urpriest]

I'm looking to use it as more of a tool than a weapon, this is what im thinking have a very large crossbow tie a rope to the end of the bolt, then use the crossbown to fire at say a wall or something on the other side of a canyon or something of the like, now you have a rope firmly planted in the side of the wall on the other side (hopefully) you can then use the rope to shimmy across, or even zip line if its going down.

Another thought is, could you carry a tripod or somethign to sit the crossbow on while you aim for the cliff to help hold it up?

Larger crossbows don't have longer range increments, so this won't help much. You'd be better off with a regular crossbow, either tying down the rope or weighing it down.

[Yogibear41]

They do however do more damage so they have a higher chance of actually piercing a wall to hold the crossbow bolt in place. In addition my DM doesn't play by the standard range increment rules.

[Callin]

Can be done with a regular heavy crossbow, an adamantite bolt and use silk rope (or better). The Use Rope skill can be used to "set" it like a grappling hook but i would start the DC higher and let it be used father out than 50ft.

You would need to keep back up bolts since they are destroyed once they hit. Adamantite since it will bypass the Hardness of the rock and therefor "set" better. Silk Rope for the light weight and the +2 to use rope with it.

Now true you will take a -4 to hit the wall since its improvised but attacking a square is a very very low AC/DC.

[Fyermind]

A ballista (described both in the dungeon masters guide and in Heroes of battle) is a huge crossbow. It takes up a 5' space and has certain properties attributed to it, I don't recall weight being one of them, but I may be wrong.

[Agent 451]

Light ballistae weigh 400 lbs, heavy ballistae weigh 2000 lbs, as per Heroes of Battle, page 67.

Edit: Hmmm. Would crafting these out of darkwood still reduce the weight 50%?

[Yogibear41]

Im thinking of portable means that can be done by a 1st level character so balista is out and adamantine being very rare would also be out, by time I could afford that I could probably just fly across lol.

[Callin]

from an older thread i found while googling for ya

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2142023&postcount=9