Batman Role-Playing Game vs Exalted

Compare Batman Role-Playing Game and Exalted side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Batman Role-Playing Game	Exalted
Genre	Superhero, Modern	Fantasy
Tags	Licensed IP, Heroic, Investigation, Crunchy, Tactical, Character Building, Martial Arts, High-Power, Strong GM Support, Beginner-Friendly	High-Power, Crunchy, Tactical, High-Fantasy, Martial Arts, Lore-Heavy, Character Building, Corruption
Core Mechanic	Abilities and quantities such as weight, distance, and time are rated in Attribute Points (APs), a scale on which each AP doubles the last. A Dice Action rolls 2d10 against a Success Number found by crossing the Acting Value with the Opposing Value on the Action Table. Doubles add and may roll again, while double 1s always fail. When a roll of 11 or more beats the Success Number, it earns a Column Shift for each entry counted rightward past the Success Number that is at least 11 and no higher than the roll. The Effect Value is then crossed with the Resistance Value on the Result Table, moved left by the Column Shifts, to give Result APs (RAPs) of damage or effect. Before the roll, both sides may bid Hero Points, each adding 1 AP to one value without more than doubling it.	Roll a pool of d10s equal to an Attribute + Ability; each die showing 7–9 counts as one success and each 10 as two, measured against a target number of successes. Vivid descriptions of an action (stunts) add 1–3 bonus dice and can restore spent Essence, rewarding evocative narration on every roll.
Dice	2d10	d10 dice pool
Complexity	High	Very High
Availability	Out of print	Paid
Runnability	3 of 5 book tools	4 of 5 book tools
License	All Rights Reserved	Proprietary
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	Not yet researched
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Mayfair Games Inc.	Onyx Path Publishing
Year	1989	2016
Languages	English	English
Best For	Groups who want to play the Batman, his allies, or original Gotham heroes in detective and street-crime adventures against his rogues gallery.	Groups committed to a long campaign about demigod protagonists: mastering deep, individualized Charm builds, fighting Initiative-driven tactical battles, and navigating the political collapse of a mythic empire.
Highlights	Hero Points serve as both the bonus for rolls and the currency for advancement, so every point spent to win a scene is a point not banked toward growth. Starting Killing Combat forfeits all of a hero's Hero Point awards for the adventure, building the Batman's code against killing into the reward system. Interrogation and Clue Analysis turn Result APs into graded information, so a stronger roll reveals more of what a suspect or clue can tell.	Combat is a tug-of-war over momentum: withering attacks steal Initiative from enemies into the attacker's pool, and a decisive attack then spends that pool to deal actual harm, so the maneuvering before the killing blow matters as much as the blow itself. Each of the 25 Abilities has its own tree of Essence-fueled Charms gated by prerequisite chains, so heavy investment in one Ability yields a combat or social style a differently-built character cannot reproduce. Intimacies set hard limits on persuasion (social actions roll against a target's Resolve, attempts aligned with a Defining Intimacy are easier and those that violate one are impossible), so social conflict turns on stated stakes rather than GM fiat.
Considerations	A Dice Action reads its Success Number from the Action Table and, only when the roll succeeds, takes a second lookup on the Result Table for its effect, so each successful attack or other rolled action needs two table references. Designing a Gadget runs a multi-step Hero Point cost formula with Reliability Number modifiers, Drawback discounts, and a final halving. Only one player can be the Batman, so everyone else plays another listed hero or one built with the creation rules.	The core rulebook supports only Solar Exalted as player characters: the other Exalt types (Dragon-Blooded, Lunar, Sidereal) appear here as antagonists rather than fully playable PCs. Solars so outmatch ordinary opposition that lone mortal or even Dragon-Blooded foes rarely threaten them, pushing the GM toward Charm-wielding antagonists or massed battle groups to mount a real challenge. Artifact crafting uses three separate experience currencies across four project tiers with long in-fiction time requirements, so a crafting-focused character's payoff arrives only over a sustained campaign.