Amazing Heroes vs Call of Cthulhu
Compare Amazing Heroes and Call of Cthulhu side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Amazing Heroes | Call of Cthulhu | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Superhero, Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Play Style | Beginner-Friendly, Rules-Light, Family, Superhero, Narrative, Fiction-First, Cinematic, Theater of the Mind, One-Shot Friendly, GM-Friendly | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Horror, Corruption, Skill-Based |
| Core Mechanic | Each hero has four traits — an occupation, a body attribute, a personality attribute, and a superpower — assigned a d6, d6, d8, and d10 at creation. When the outcome is uncertain, the player rolls the relevant trait die against a difficulty of 3 (easy), 4 (normal), or 5 (hard), adding +1 if a body or personality attribute fits. Rolls of 1 or 2 on a normal or hard test inflict a condition like 'tired' or 'hurt'; a repeated condition becomes 'really [X]' and imposes a –1 penalty, and a third hurt condition defeats the hero. Defeating a villain requires successes equal to the villain's level times the number of heroes. | Roll d100 equal to or under your skill percentage. Success tiers at half (Hard) and one-fifth (Extreme) of the skill value. Bonus and penalty dice adjust the tens digit. Failed rolls can be pushed for a second attempt at greater risk. |
| Dice | d6–d12 | d100 |
| Complexity | Very Low | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | High | High |
| License | Proprietary | Chaosium Fan Material Policy |
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Amazing Tales | Chaosium |
| Year | 2021 | 2014 |
| Best For | Mixed-age tables wanting a fast, narrative superhero RPG that genuinely works for kids aged 7+ alongside adults — sessions are designed to cram an hour of TV-style action into a single sitting. | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. |
| Highlights | Trait dice carry transparent in-fiction meaning at each step — d6 is 'best in your country,' d12 is 'best in the world' — so players and GMs negotiate power level by description rather than parsing stat blocks. Conditions like 'tired' or 'shaken' replace HP entirely and stack into 'really [X]' with a –1 penalty before a third instance defeats the hero, keeping damage in fiction while still tracking toward a losing point. The GM receives plot points equal to the number of players each session and spends them on cinematic moves — villain ambushes, escapes with a planted clue, perfect disguises, 'missing body' recurring foes — encoding superhero-TV pacing as a budgeted resource. | Sanity system mechanically reinforces horror tone. Intuitive percentile skill system with tiered success levels. One of the largest published scenario libraries in the hobby. |
| Considerations | Superpowers have no defined list or mechanical effects beyond a die size, so the GM must adjudicate what each novel use of a power can do on the fly. Advancement caps at d12+1 and amounts to larger dice plus secondary powers branched from a parent power, so long-running heroes don't gain meaningfully different mechanical options from starting ones. Villain fights accumulate flat successes equal to villain level × number of heroes with no incremental damage per hit, which can grind against tougher foes when most attack rolls only mark a single tick of progress. | Chase rules add complexity with limited payoff, 46-skill list requires point allocation across multiple categories, sanity spiral can remove player agency in extended campaigns |