Battering Ram

These are huge mountain sheep with conspicuously oversized horns, otherwise much like their smaller relatives and found in many colors. People often call the whole flock 'battering rams,' lambs and ewes included. The ewes carry far smaller horns, have 4 Hit Dice and AC 6 overall.

A battering ram is usually placid, and its morale applies in every case except one: when a male sees something attacking its flock. Then it charges at once and checks morale no more until it or its foe is dead.

It fights by butting. With 30 feet of straight ground to build speed, its charge gains +2 to hit and deals double damage. Its thick skull and horns give its head a better armor class and let it batter solid objects without hurting itself. A gate, door, portcullis or similar barrier it strikes is smashed unless it succeeds at a save vs. crushing blow with a -4 penalty, and a wall must make a structural save as if hit by a small catapult. Both sexes are immune to hold and slow, though charm affects them normally.

Flocks of 2d4 are typical: one ram, 3-4 ewes and the rest lambs (HD 1, AC 8, MV 12, no attacks). Lambs arrive in spring, grow up over two years, and only one birth in three is male. Rams sometimes wander off alone, but a ewe's shrill bleat carries up to two miles in good conditions, farther among echoing peaks, and a ram that hears it races back regardless of obstacles to defend the flock while the others escape. They favor rocky, grassy hills and mountains and avoid forests.

They live in the wildest mountains, where ordinary sheep would fall prey to ettins and other large monsters. Wizards sometimes charm them and hire them out as siege weapons, with uneven success. A few mountain peoples have tamed them, but no pen holds them for long, since the rams enjoy knocking down gates and fences.