Avatar Legends vs Mage: The Ascension
Compare Avatar Legends and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Avatar Legends | Mage: The Ascension | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy, Modern, Horror |
| Tags | Narrative, Character-Driven, Drama, Playbook-Driven, Licensed IP, Martial Arts | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics |
| Core Mechanic | Roll 2d6 + stat (Creativity, Focus, Harmony, Passion). 10+ strong hit, 7–9 partial success, 6- miss. Balance system tracks opposing principles: lean one way for bonuses but risk being knocked out of a scene. Combat uses structured exchanges with approach selection. | Build a d10 pool from an Attribute plus an Ability and count each die that meets or exceeds the difficulty, usually 6. Each rolled 1 cancels a success, and a roll with no successes and at least one 1 botches. Magick uses Arete instead: the highest Sphere plus coincidence or vulgarity and witnesses establishes the base difficulty, with situational modifiers applied afterward. Successes determine the Effect, and vulgar casting risks Paradox. |
| Dice | 2d6 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | Very High |
| Accessibility | High | High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | All Rights Reserved (Paramount license) | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | $$ |
| Publisher | Magpie Games | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2022 | 2015 |
| Languages | English, French, Spanish, German | English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish |
| Best For | Groups who love Avatar: The Last Airbender or Legend of Korra and want stories of young heroes navigating internal conflict, relationships, and martial-arts action across the Four Nations. | Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world. |
| Highlights | Balance system creates internal character conflict, combat exchanges feel dynamic, five era settings span the full Avatarverse, mechanically supports emotional play | Nine Spheres combine to build open-ended Effects, allowing the same capability to emerge through different paradigms, practices, and instruments. Coincidental and vulgar classifications make subtlety a tactical choice because conspicuous magick raises difficulty and accumulates Paradox. Focus ties belief to procedure, so a mage's worldview determines the tools and rituals used to alter reality. |
| Considerations | Three overlapping status tracks add surprising complexity, tightly locked to the Avatar IP, combat exchanges have a steep learning curve, no open license | Improvised Effects place frequent adjudication on the Storyteller, who must apply Sphere permissions, focus, required successes, and consequences consistently. Vulgar magick generates Paradox even on success, so overt power can punish a mage through injury or metaphysical breakdown. Faction choices can make a cabal internally hostile, so character concepts need shared motives before play. |