Barbarians of Lemuria vs Mage: The Ascension
Compare Barbarians of Lemuria and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Barbarians of Lemuria | Mage: The Ascension | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy, Modern, Horror |
| Tags | Rules-Light, Pulp Action, Sword & Sorcery, Beginner-Friendly, Fast-Paced | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Urban Fantasy |
| Core Mechanic | Roll 2d6 + attribute + career (or combat ability), 9+ to succeed. Four attributes (Strength, Agility, Mind, Appeal) and four combat abilities (Initiative, Melee, Ranged, Defence) rated 0–5. Careers replace individual skills: if your career is relevant, add its rating. Boons roll 3d6 keep best two; flaws roll 3d6 keep worst two. Hero Points fuel dramatic escapes and heroic feats. | Roll an Attribute-plus-Ability pool of d10s and count dice meeting the difficulty, usually 6. Each rolled 1 cancels a success. A roll botches only when no die meets the difficulty and at least one die shows 1. Magick instead rolls Arete, the mage's enlightenment rating, against a difficulty based on the highest Sphere used and whether the effect violates ordinary reality. Successes determine the effect's extent. |
| Dice | 2d6 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | Very High |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | High | Very High |
| License | All Rights Reserved | 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 | Beyond Belief Games | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2015 | 2015 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish |
| Best For | Groups who want fast, pulpy sword and sorcery in the vein of Conan: career-based characters, boons and flaws, and combat that resolves in minutes. | Groups who want long modern occult campaigns about conflicting beliefs and the consequences of reshaping reality. |
| Highlights | Career system is intuitive and fast, combat resolves in minutes, Hero Points enable pulp heroics, simple to learn and teach, spawned the Everywhen universal toolkit | Nine Spheres combine into improvised magical effects beyond a fixed spell list. A mage's beliefs determine the practices and instruments that make those effects possible. Concealing magick within plausible events reduces the risk of reality's backlash. |
| Considerations | Tightly coupled to its Lemuria setting, limited character advancement, combat lacks tactical depth | Improvised magick requires the group to agree on what an effect can accomplish before rolling. Accumulated Paradox can injure a mage or trap them in a distorted reality. Cabals need shared motives to keep incompatible faction loyalties from pulling the campaign apart. |