Skylance
Skylance — The Encounter
The Anti-Dragon Bow, crewed terror of the watchtowers · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Skylance
Where wyrms ride the thermals and burn the harvest, the wall-folk answer with iron. The Skylance is no beast but a covenant of bowyers and siege-masters: an oversized arbalest crowned upon a swiveling watchtower, its limbs cut from heartwood and bound in cold-forged bands. Its bolt is a harpoon trailing a winch-line, loosed not to slay outright but to tether the untetherable, to drag a dragon down from its arrogant height and pin it within reach of spear and oil. Crews drill for years; the windlass takes three strong backs to span, and a single misfire can fling a man from the parapet. Folk of the dragon-marches speak of it with grim affection, naming each engine for a saint or a fallen captain. A Skylance alone is only timber and tension. Crewed, braced, and loosed at the right instant, it is the reason a village still stands beneath a sky that wants it burned.
Run Skylance in Sixty Seconds
- It's a crewed engine, not a monster. The Skylance does nothing without a crew on the parapet. Take out the operators and the war machine goes silent.
- Open by harpooning the biggest flyer. On a hit against Large+ targets it grapples and winches them down (DC 15 Str) a flying creature's speed drops to 0 and it falls.
- Kill-priority is the crew, then the line. Players who climb the ladder and clear the parapet shut it off faster than hacking 120 HP of oak.
- When bloodied, the crew gets desperate. Have them double up on the windlass to fire every round and drag a tethered hero off the wall for fall damage.
- Three ways to run it: tower-defense centerpiece pulling dragons from the sky a trap that grounds the party's flying mount or a siege prop a smarter boss uses to anchor the heroes in place.
Skylance
Large object (siege weapon), unaligned
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINECrewed War Machine. The Skylance does nothing on its own; a crew of at least one creature must operate it. It uses the operator's attack bonus when noted, and shares the operator's space and turn. If left uncrewed, it cannot attack.
Anti-Dragon Engineering. Signature. A massive harpoon-bolt fired by the Skylance carries a barbed line. On a hit against a Large or larger creature, that creature must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be grappled (escape DC 15) as the line winches taut. While grappled this way, a flying target's speed becomes 0 and it falls unless it can hover.
Heavy Reload. The Skylance can fire only once every other round unless two or more crew operate the windlass, in which case it may fire every round.
Actions
Multiattack. The Skylance makes one Harpoon Bolt attack. With a full crew working the windlass, it may instead make this attack and then a crew member may take a bonus action to re-aim.
Harpoon Bolt. Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, range 120/480 ft., one target. Hit: 33 (6d8+6) piercing damage, and the target is subject to the Anti-Dragon Engineering trait.
Sweeping Reposition. The crew rotates the turntable, allowing the Skylance to change its firing arc up to 180 degrees. A creature already harpooned and dragged into a wall or the ground takes 9 (2d8) bludgeoning damage.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Brace and Loose (Reaction). When a Large or larger flying creature ends a turn within 480 ft. and in the Skylance's firing arc, a crew member may use their reaction to fire a Harpoon Bolt at it, provided the engine is loaded.
Mounted atop a stone-and-timber watchtower, the Skylance is a turntable-borne ballista the size of a wagon, its iron-fanged bolt aimed forever at the sky. A lone crewman heaves the windlass, waiting for wings on the horizon.
Skylance, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEDragonfall Line (signature). Once per short rest, when the bound Skylance hits a flying creature, that creature is yanked 30 ft. straight down and must land or fall.
Actions
Bound Harpoon. Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, range 120/480 ft., one target. Hit: 22 (4d8+4) piercing damage; a Large or larger target is grappled (escape DC 14).
Reactions
Covering Loose. When an ally within 480 ft. is attacked by a flying creature, the crew may fire the bound Skylance at that attacker as a reaction if loaded.
Pledged to a keep's defenders, the Bound Skylance is the engine a wall-captain trusts to pull a wyrm out of the sky long enough for the spears to do their work.
Guideline numbers — formula-tuned and read from the miniature's design, not yet table-proven. Tell us how it ran in the comments.
How It Fights — by Tier
Same creature, scaled threat. The traits never change; only the numbers move.
Open by harpooning the largest airborne threat and winching it to the ground where the party can swarm it. If the crew is exposed, the party should kill the crew first, then the engine is inert. Pair it with a flying boss so the Skylance does the dragging and the melee does the dying.
Open with a Harpoon Bolt at the highest-flying enemy to ground it; the line is the whole point, so prioritize tethering over raw damage. Kill-priority is the crew on the parapet, not the timber. Run it as the centerpiece of a tower defense beside spearmen and oil, never alone.
Open by harpooning the party's airborne mount or the boss's flying servant and dragging it into a wall for the bonus crush. Keep two crews working so it fires every round. Pair it with a bigger threat (a wyrm-rider or a fortress garrison); the Skylance is the anchor, not the kill.
Put Skylance on the table
Download the presupported STL and run the fight tonight — the model, and the encounter that comes with it.
Get the STL on MyMiniFactory →Clay Cyanide Companion Rules v1
How a bound creature acts
- A companion acts on its owner's initiative, immediately after the owner.
- It uses the Companion block above — roughly ×0.6 HP and damage, no recharge abilities, and at most one reaction trait.
- It moves freely; it takes its Action only while its owner is conscious.
- At 0 HP a companion is broken, not dead — restored on a long rest unless your table rules otherwise.
Original Clay Cyanide material © Clay Cyanide LLC — explicitly not the non-SRD official sidekick rules.
Questions, Asked at the Table
What CR is Skylance?
Skylance is built as a CR 6 crewed siege weapon (Tier 2, levels 5-10): AC 16, 120 HP, +6 to hit, save DC 15. It scales down to a CR 2-ish threat at Tier 1 and up toward CR 11 at Tier 3 by swapping the numbers in the tier table; the traits and harpoon-line gimmick stay identical.
Can Skylance be a companion or ally?
Yes. The 'Skylance, Bound' profile (AC 16, 72 HP) lets a party or keep garrison crew it, dragging flying enemies out of the sky with the Dragonfall Line and covering allies with a reaction shot. It is an emplacement, so it does not move, but it anchors any wall or tower defense.
Is Skylance solo encounter material?
No. It is an add-on, not a boss. With no legendary actions and a reaction that only fires when loaded, a four-PC party will out-act it easily. Run it as the centerpiece of a tower defense alongside crew, spearmen, and ideally a flying boss for it to harpoon.
Tell Us How It Ran
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 ("SRD 5.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Clay Cyanide Miniatures is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This content is compatible with the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. Companion rules, lore, names, and original mechanics © Clay Cyanide LLC.
Technical Specifications
32mm, 75mm
STL, Pre-supported STL
Standard or ABS-like resin, 0.05mm layer height
Yes — ready to print, optimized supports included
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