Rangers and Siege Weapons

[Naanomi]

How does a ranger with a Ballista and volley work? Does archery style help catapult accuracy? How about swift quiver or lightning arrow?

[Gritmonger]

How does a ranger with a Ballista and volley work? Does archery style help catapult accuracy? How about swift quiver or lightning arrow?

Offhand, as a DM, I would say: "Not a jot!" Sure it's fun to speculate, but lumbering through the woods with a ballista and then firing it not from your own steady hand and keen knowledge of the nature of the prey but more a yell of "Fire in the hole!" and pulling the cord...

It's like asking the artilleryman to play sniper. Or vice-versa.

[JNAProductions]

So it's loads of fun?

[Gritmonger]

So it's loads of fun?

Sure, the artilleryman gets to direct-fire for once in his life, but think about getting it up that tree in the first place...

[Naanomi]

It came up in passing when a ranger wanted to shoot a harpoon-ballista off a ship at a Kraken

[calebrus]

It came up in passing when a ranger wanted to shoot a harpoon-ballista off a ship at a Kraken

The last AI game (on the Wizards site to stream) has players firing harpoons and what-not. The way Perkins did it, the weapons had a static bonus to hit (+8 in this case) or the players could use their own Dex. But obviously the +8 was better than a 7th level characters Dex (or anyone else's for that matter) so they always used the static attack bonus.

[Gritmonger]

It came up in passing when a ranger wanted to shoot a harpoon-ballista off a ship at a Kraken
Ah, so it's a real-world fantasy example.
Sailor background, by any chance?

Well, Volley is one-per-target-creature, so I don't think the ranger was facing multiple kraken...

[Naanomi]

Sailor ranger; kraken and merrow minions attacking the ship; wanted to zap merrow around the kraken but none were close enough anyways so it just turned into general speculation

[Gritmonger]

Sailor ranger; kraken and merrow minions attacking the ship; wanted to zap merrow around the kraken but none were close enough anyways so it just turned into general speculation
*sigh*

I'd have to award bonus points for playing to background and type, and probably award an inspiration for considering it, or just give an outright advantage so that the merrow would be in range (advantage offsetting disadvantage)... so, yeah, in that one situation in that one instance, I would probably allow a volley, providing a friend was reloading...


Edited to add: Here's the DM reasoning part. Okay, it fires an arrow-like projectile, so I figure the ranger would understand the flight-path of an arrow, and knowing how to aim could probably draw a bead on a target even with an enormous weapon that was not hand-held faster than a non-expert. But if they don't have a sailing background... oh, they have a sailing background. So not going to disadvantage due to rolling deck. That leaves me with "how cool would this story be to tell?" and that pretty much seals it right there.