D&D General Golems With Ranged Attacks?

[VikingLegion]

Don't worry about the scenario, let's just say there's a wizard obsessed with protecting his tower and likes to amass as many unthinkingly loyal automatons as possible. He'll put the tanky types at the gates, but what kind of constructs would work well up on the ramparts, firing down on would-be siegers? I saw another thread on this site from 2007 that asked a similar question in the Pathfinder/Starfinder forum, but I wanted to bring it up here to include all D&D monsters. So far from that other thread we have:

Maug with a stone-spitter graft (very cool)
Arcane Ballista
Nimblewright with a crossbow hand

Additionally I've come up with:
Iron Golem (15' poison gas cone)
Glass or Crystal golem that focuses sunlight into a laser attack - I'm sure I've seen this somewhere but cannot recall the source

Anything else?

 

[GMMichael]

The dung golem's ranged weapon is pretty demoralizing, if not damaging.

 

[aco175]

I recall the rolling crossbows from 4e.

I'm also picturing some sort of gear shaft with a crank at the end that pushes poles out from the rampart in order to push away ladders being lifted up. I guess it can be automated, but I like the idea of a golem cranking it. Better if the crank also generates electricity that charges to poles and shocks the ladder it pushes.

 

[Voadam]

5e Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes:
Clockwork Oaken Bolter

The gnomes' efforts to invent and tinker with magic and mechanical devices produce many failed constructs, but also result in genuine advances, such as clockworks. Since their discovery, the methods used to craft clockworks have passed from one community of gnomes to another and down the generations.

No ordinary ballista, an oaken bolter is a construct capable of striking at long distances. The bolts it launches can rend flesh, destroy armor, or drag enemies toward traps or melee-oriented clockworks- and at shorter ranges, burst with explosive force.

Long range is 400 feet away.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

If you're the DM, the sky really is the limit.

Traps galore. Golems that spray grease - both to be slipped on my your average Dex 10 footman, as well as to be prompting flambe'd by support flamethrower droids. The layout of his tower should be designed to optimize funneling enemies into kill zones where they have no hope. An example that came to mind was in Dragonlance, at the Battle of the High Clerist's Tower, using the Dragonorb to pull the dragons into hallways that rapidly narrowed and allowed troops to skewer them from the sides, while leaving the beast trapped.

EDIT: This also would include magical drones to surveil, melee and missile based units acting as a combined tactics unit.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Golems with cannons built into their forms, as in the late-medieval/early-renaissance type artillery cannons, I'd put their damage at 4d6 for "light", 6d6 for "medium" and 8d6 for "heavy". They could either be humanoid shape with a cannon for an arm, or just one of those old artillery cannons that moves autonomously with spider legs instead of needing to be moved around on wheels. Whether or not they need a artillery crew to reload or can do it on their own, is up to you.

 

[deadman1204]

I prefer to use golems AS a range attack. Big catapaults!

 

[MarkB]

Golem weapon platforms. Hulking constructs that move and have deadly melee attacks, with separate ballista constructs mounted atop them that act independently on their own initiative.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Don't worry about the scenario, let's just say there's a wizard obsessed with protecting his tower and likes to amass as many unthinkingly loyal automatons as possible. He'll put the tanky types at the gates, but what kind of constructs would work well up on the ramparts, firing down on would-be siegers? I saw another thread on this site from 2007 that asked a similar question in the Pathfinder/Starfinder forum, but I wanted to bring it up here to include all D&D monsters. So far from that other thread we have:

Maug with a stone-spitter graft (very cool)
Arcane Ballista
Nimblewright with a crossbow hand

Additionally I've come up with:
Iron Golem (15' poison gas cone)
Glass or Crystal golem that focuses sunlight into a laser attack - I'm sure I've seen this somewhere but cannot recall the source

Anything else?

Firelances are a great ranged weapon. A golem with freelance hands might be fun

 

[Voadam]

D&D does not really have a Star Wars Clone Wars droid trooper ranged construct army stand in. You could reskin skeleton archers to be constructs and have the concept easily work though.

Eberron's Warforged come close in they could be low level guards with ranged weapons, but they are intelligent living constructs and not mindless automota.