Bite the Hand vs Call of Cthulhu
Compare Bite the Hand and Call of Cthulhu side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Bite the Hand | Call of Cthulhu | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Cyberpunk, Scifi, Horror | Horror, Modern |
| Play Style | Character Building, Deadly, Fast-Paced, Gritty, Hackable, Horror, Resource Management, Theater of the Mind | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Horror, Corruption, Skill-Based |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d100 under a relevant stat or save. Equal or higher makes a check fail or succeed with a consequence, while an equal-or-higher save fails and incurs harm. Doubles trigger critical results based on success or failure. Advantage or Disadvantage rolls twice and keeps the better or worse result; uncomplicated actions usually work without a roll. | 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 | d100 | d100 |
| Complexity | Medium | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Medium | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | Chaosium Fan Material Policy |
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Spellbook Gaming LLC | Chaosium |
| Year | 2026 | 2014 |
| Best For | Groups seeking lethal cyberpunk missions about vulnerable rebels, with room for hacking, social maneuvering, and direct action. | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. |
| Highlights | Tiered cybernetics raise Minimum Stress as they expand a character's capabilities, linking augmentation directly to emotional resilience. Completing a mission against a corporation, harming law enforcement, corporate assets, or government officials, and every $2,000 of debt each raise Heat; after a day of noticeable crime, a secret d20 roll at or under the highest-Heat character's score produces a Heat consequence. Uncomplicated attacks hit automatically, reserving checks for dangerous complications and keeping firefights moving. | Tracking Sanity as a depletable score ties mental erosion to the fiction, so confronting cosmic horror mechanically wears characters down. The percentile skills resolve on a d100 roll-under, with Hard and Extreme bands at half and one-fifth of the rating. Bouts of Madness convert failed Sanity checks into temporary phobias, manias, or loss of character control. |
| Considerations | Random stats and unequal starting loadouts deliberately create uneven characters. Wounds and failed Death saves can remove characters abruptly. Several procedures rely on Warden judgment: hacking, social checks, cover, and carrying capacity. | The chase rules add a detailed positioning subsystem whose complexity outweighs how often it sees use. Character creation allocates points across a long list of skills, a slow first step for new players. In long campaigns the sanity spiral can strip a character of player control as madness accumulates. |