Bite the Hand vs Mage: The Ascension
Compare Bite the Hand and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Bite the Hand | Mage: The Ascension | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Cyberpunk, Scifi, Horror | Fantasy, Modern, Horror |
| Tags | Character Building, Deadly, Fast-Paced, Gritty, Hackable, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Resource Management, Theater of the Mind | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Urban Fantasy |
| 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 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 | d100 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Medium | Very High |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Medium | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | 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 | Spellbook Gaming LLC | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2026 | 2015 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish |
| Best For | Groups seeking lethal cyberpunk missions about vulnerable rebels, with room for hacking, social maneuvering, and direct action. | Groups who want long modern occult campaigns about conflicting beliefs and the consequences of reshaping reality. |
| 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. | 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 | 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. | 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. |