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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 8665924" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/zdmpWyS.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/264238/Siegeball-Sourcebook" target="_blank">Drive-Thru RPG Page.</a>Fictional sports are a pretty old concept,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beheading_game" target="_blank">dating back to chivalric romances</a> and other works of medieval literature. Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop games delved into what sports would look like in worlds of magic, monsters, and interstellar travel. Siegeball is a fanmade concept originating in the 3.5 era on 4chan’s /tg/ (traditional games) forum. The most detailed rules for its original form I found <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201109021527/https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Siegeball" target="_blank">archived on this 1d4chan page.</a>Fast forward nearly a decade later, and it’s been converted to 5th Edition by the third party publisher Mage Hand Press.Chapter 1: the Game is self-explanatory. Siegeball is a full-contact sport between two teams of five players each, where the goal is to use an extremely heavy and dense ball known as the siegeball to damage and destroy an opposing team’s tower. The ball cannot be picked up or pushed within the confines of the rules of the sport, but must be attacked with Siegeball-approved weapons in order to be flung or pushed. The more damage you do to the ball with an attack, the more Momentum Points it generates, which provides it a scalable AC bonus and allows it to move across the field of play until it runs out of momentum or collides with an object or player. Remaining Momentum Points deal damage to a struck object, although as a reaction non-prone creatures can choose to redirect the ball with an attack of their own. This technique replaces the Momentum Points with their own attack, albeit at the risk of being damaged by the siegeball on a miss. We also get 4 new types of actions which can also work in non-Siegeball contexts, such as Block which grants advantage on rolls in being forcefully moved and can attack any ball-like object within 5 feet rather than being directly in its path, Follow which allows you to move in unison with a creature up to what your base speed can allow, Retire which can be called to remove yourself or an adjacent unconscious player from a Siegeball game, Tackle which is a variant of shoving a creature that knocks both of you prone, and two methods for secretly getting away with illegally attacking or casting a spell while playing the sport.What follows are discussions on more intricate and variant rules, as different cities and cultures often put their own spin on Siegeball. The conventional standard is that only Siegeball-specific equipment is allowed, all magic is banned, and you cannot intentionally injure or harm other players (non-damaging shoving is allowed). Underground tournaments, Roman-style colosseum arenas, and high-magic civilizations are more lax about some or even all of these restrictions, allowing a wider variety of equipment, magic, and even the attacking (lethal or non-lethal) directly of other players.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/Ebff4uB.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Chapter 2: Character Options provides us with 4 new subclasses and 5 feats, most of which can be used in conventional campaigns but can also be useful when playing Siegeball. We have the Barbarian Path of the Die-Hard, which is basically a football hooligan who can more efficiently wield improvised weapons, “tank” an enemy by imposing disadvantage on attack rolls against anyone besides the Barbarian, can create a limited number of signal flares every long rest, and can halve the speed of struck opponents. The Fighter’s Star Player archetype grants a variety of broadly-useful abilities, such as double proficiency to Athletics, can reroll the d20 of a Strength-based ability check/save/melee weapon once per long rest, advantage on Persuasion checks against people who recognize their Siegeball prowess, and can gain an Inspiration-like Luck Point that has the typical uses save it can also be regenerated once per long rest or by voluntarily turning one’s critical hit into a normal hit. The Rogue’s Dirty Player archetype allows one to do the new action types in this sourcebook as a bonus action (but not the illegal attacks or spells), can forego sneak attack damage for a melee strike to make onlookers unable to see evidence of the attack, can feign death by dropping prone as a reaction, and can feint a creature and impose one of three general-purpose debuff effects. The School of Charade is a Wizard tradition often taken by spellcasters in magic-intolerant locales, and whose abilities are focused around better concealing one’s magical nature. Its abilities include disguising spellbooks and foci as other objects, suppressing the visual effects of cantrips, the ability to create an illusory double that can act independently for 8 hours and can be spoken through by the caster, and the ability to make targets forget what they saw for the last minute along with an immediate one-round disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks.The five feats include Blocker (can better block/redirect siegeballs), Disguised Spellcaster (can disguise a cantrip as a mundane melee weapon attack), Showman (proficient in Performance and can gain bonuses to an ability check or attack roll when being watched by a non-combative audience up to 3 times per long rest), Striker (proficient with all sigeball weapons, generate more Momentum Points, can maximize the damage die of a melee attack once per long rest), and Team Coordination (can harmlessly pass a struck siegeball to an ally with no attack roll necessary, can can switch initiative results with one ally when initiative is rolled and grant them advantage on the first attack they make).While each feat save Disguised Spellcaster and Showman has some Siegeball-specific applications, Striker and Team Coordination stand out in having some broadly-useful abilities. Disguised Caster, Showman, and Team Coordination all grant +1 to an ability score, which make Blocker and Striker have a bit less of a “wow factor.” Showman is a bit limited in requiring non-hostile witnesses, although there are likely ways around this such as having a party caster summoning harmless creatures to count as an audience.Chapter 3: Equipment provides us with new weapons, armor, and magic items designed for the sport. Siegeball armor comes in three varieties and are actually cheaper than the PHB counterparts who provide the same AC bonuses. Spiked Gear stands out as heavy armor which lets you deal piercing damage to anyone you tackle. Siegeball weapons are all bludgeoning-style weapons ranging in size from mere 1d4 Batons to the martial 1d12 Siege Club. The weapons are unique in being both finesse and bludgeoning for the Baton and Bat, a trait combo that doesn’t exist in core 5th Edition, and with the Siege Bat being a simple weapon and dealing 1d8 it’s basically a clubby rapier that can be equipped by anyone albeit requiring two hands to wield. There are also Spiked Balls which deal double damage to creatures (not objects) they hit. They cannot be thrown or wielded, so it’s presumed that this is done via the Momentum Points way.Our nine magic items tend to be employed by shady teams and underworld figures given the common ban on magic, and include options such as Jax (magical steroids which permanently reduce hit points per use), Ball Magnet (spend a charge to have a siegeball redirect its path towards you), Referee’s Whistle (once per day cast hold person on every creature of choice within 60 feet), and Champion’s Ring (rewarded to each player that wins a Championship, can spend a charge as a reaction to gain a +10 bonus on a single ability check or save).Chapter 4: Tournaments is mostly DM-friendly details and suggestions for how to incorporate Siegeball into a campaign or having an offbeat campaign centering on the sport. It describes a sample outline of a low-level to high-level “rags to riches” plot of impoverished players in improvised street tournaments eventually competing in multiversal planar arenas. We also have four common methods of tournaments (single elimination, double elimination, multilevel, round-robin) and sample cash rewards for completing a tournament based on the party’s level.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/KQb6PTp.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Chapter 5: Arenas provides three sample arenas complete with backstory, a d20 table of unique arena traits to provide for some unique challenges to draw in crowds, and a short list of variant rules for playing Siegeball in three dimensions, underwater, or in zero-gravity. The book actually recommends against this last part due to three-dimensional movement and positioning being much more complex to keep track of. The three sample arenas also have their own gridded maps and come with neat backstories and adventure hooks, ranging from a church-sponsored colosseum dedicated to the god of adventurers and thieves, a domed stone arena that was originally a crypt from some forgotten civilization, and an elven-designed garden whose terrain of arches and walkways allow for various paths for players.Chapter 6: Teams is our last major section. It goes over the roles and duties of sports coaches in real life and also provides a silly d20 table of fantasy-themed corporate sponsors (“Crazy Owlbear’s Used Wagon and Carriage Lot!”). But the thing most useful to DMs are eight sample teams with their stats fitting comfortably in index card formats. Many of them draw from fantasy monsters as players, such as the Archons who are an elven team that have a minotaur named Tiny as their point man, or the storm giant twins known as the Titans who are notable in being just two players rather than the usual five due to how massive and strong they are.Appendix: Game Twists is our final section in the book, a d20 sampling of unique rules variations often applied by arena owners to spice things up. They include peppering the field with invisible walls, the inclusion of a skeletal war chariot which indiscriminately knocks the ball around and runs over any players in its path, audience members using magical ballots to vote on players to give the lowest and highest players a haste or paralyze effect respectively,* and so on.*Presumably votes are bad to gain.Thoughts: Siegeball is a pretty cool concept. The major rules of the game itself are short, easily folded into the existing 5e rules via tactical grid movement and the action economy, and the supplemental material is useful for non-Siegeball PCs in case the sport is more of a fun diversion rather than a major aspect of the campaign. The Champion’s Ring magic item is a particularly great reward, with the book noting that it’s only given out in special Championships (think the Superbowl or FIFA World Cup) rather than just any tournament, and the additions of rules and terrain variations can help keep the mini-game feeling fresh.My main concern is the ban on magic in conventional rules. A huge amount of player-facing abilities easily qualify as magical even discounting outright spells. Does a Monk’s various abilities count as magic when playing Siegeball? How about a Barbarian’s Path of the Ancestral Spirits? What about a werewolf player’s immunity to non-magical, non-silvered weapon attacks being used as a way to safely “tank” incoming siegeballs? The book seems to allow for abilities that aren’t outright spells in the Titans’ entry, noting that they never cast their spells during matches out of the interest of fairness even if playing in an arena that allows it. But this is more an indirect nod than an outright codified ruleset.</blockquote>

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