(3.5) Help Finding a Monster

[Lateral]

My dungeon crawl players, stay out. Especially you, Jeff.

Basically, I'm looking for a monster that's effective in long-range combat. To be clear, we're talking at upwards of 400 feet, and behind some reasonably thick defenses (not sure what yet, but it'll probably involve walls and arrow slits, and possibly some walls of fire). Ideally, it'd be about CR 4-5, although anything up to CR 7 would be acceptable.

Yeah, I know I could probably just throw some sorcerers who know Fireball at them, but I'm looking for something maybe a little less boring.

Oh, and character sheets:


{table=head]Player | Character | Race | Class | Speech Colour
Lix Lorn | Vivian (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=439927) | Lesser Cryophoenix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13761574#post13761574) | RHD 3/LA 3/Wilder 2//Radiant 8 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=249172) | Navy
Jeff the Green | Davhkur (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=470241) | Necropolitan Unseelie Illumian |Beguiler 7/Mindbender 1//Archivist 6/Swordsage 1/Shadow Adept 1| Sandy Brown
BelGareth | Oberon (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=470305) | Pixie | LA 4/Warlock 4//Warmage 8 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131346) | Dark Green
GuyFawkes |Ravana (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=472538) | Rakshasa | Rakshasa 8 (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2245.0)//Swordmage 8 (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Swordmage) | Cafe Noir
Derjuin | Titania (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=464202) | Gloura | RHD 6/LA 2//Ranger 2/Targeteer 4/Deepwod Sniper 2 | Dark Olive
[/table]

The phoenix's attacks are pretty short range, but with that flight speed she could easily get close within a couple rounds. The necropolitan has a lot of spells, but he'll probably either opt for teleporting within range or defenses so that they can advance without dying. The pixie is pretty much a straight-up blaster, but his constant invisibility makes him a pain to target. The rakshasa is the party beatstick, and likely won't be hit by normal attacks, so ideally I'd want him trying to make saving throws. The gloura can score almost a hundred damage on a full attack, but of course high-AC or high-DR enemies'll bring that down a whole lot.

[Khedrac]

What's wrong with Kobold archers - or <insert race here> archers?

Choose a couple of class levels - probably fighter for the feats - and a few feats with a little care and they could be pretty annoying for your players.

Archers always have a slight advantage in that they don't need to close, and if the terrain makes that difficult then they can keep peppering the party from a distance.

At CR7 itself is also the rather under-CR'd Arrow Demon from MMIII - use carefully though as given sufficient space they are very powerful for their CR.

[NevinPL]

...long-range combat. To be clear, we're talking at upwards of 400 feet
I don't think you can get ranged weapons to fire that far, with any accuracy (maybe with some brokentastic combos).
The only creature that comes to mind, is Siege Golem from Cityscape, but even it has "only" 200 feet, and CR 12.

[Spuddles]

I don't think you can get ranged weapons to fire that far, with any accuracy (maybe with some brokentastic combos).

Longbow has -6 penalty to shooting at 4 range increments out. With Fell Shot and Psionic Meditation, those can be a ranged touch attack once per round.

Far Shot increases your range increment by 50%, so Far Shot and a Longbow lets you make attacks at 400 feat with only a -4 penalty.

[Lateral]

I thought about using archers (with range-increasing effects, 400 feet could easily be only a couple increments away), but... well, most of my party has upwards of AC 25. Normal archers likely won't cut it. Hell, even an arrow demon would have to roll a natural 20 to hit the beatstick (though he'd have to roll a natural one to miss the caster, so eh).

Although... arrow demons would probably work, even though their attack bonus is... actually kind of mediocre, at least for their level, though they do get a lot of attacks. At distance, the amount of arrows they can pump out should make up for that. They have poor AC and their DR is way too low (babaus are a CR lower and have twice their DR), though, which has me worried that the party archer will just slaughter them, but they've got a nice big chunk of HP so they should last a while.

Yeah, I could go with arrow demons. That'd work pretty well. Any other ideas? I'd like to maybe have a couple different ones, perhaps one or two arrow demons and a few other long-range monsters at about CR 5-ish.

Also, I'm going to just go ahead and put up their sheets in the first post, so you have some idea of the party composition.

[ShurikVch]

Do you need weapon attacks or not?

If not, just take a dragon with line breath weapon and enlarge it as far as you need. Dragons also have bonus points for mobility (fly/borrow/swim)

If you need strictly weapon attacks, heavy crossbow have Range Increment 120 ft., Musket - 150 ft.; and, if you don't mind war-machines, 200 ft. for Scorpion or Heavy Mangonel, 250 ft. for Light Trebuchet and 300 ft. for Heavy Trebuchet.

[Drachasor]

Hmm, Warlocks can do 250 feet with Eldritch Spear. Make-up a spell-like ability feat to double that and you'd be set (would work 3/day perhaps like other spell-like feats, or you could make it custom so that it always works, extra range on an EB is hardly a big balance concern). You'd have some Eldritch Blast Essence options to toss on that. Not so bad.

An 8th level Bard leading people can give a +2 on to-hit/damage rolls -- I'm pretty sure that can be bumped up.

Catapults have a range increment of 200ft and attack squares that have an AC of 15. 6d6 damage to a creature in the square. Slow rate of fire.

[Lateral]

I'm not going to do artillery, because I have an encounter already set up for later that uses it extensively. Warlock might work, but it's a bit short.

[ShurikVch]

Frost Helm soulmeld RAW gives you a ray attack, of arbitrary range, when bound to the Crown Chakra.