Draw Steel vs Mage: The Ascension

Compare Draw Steel and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Draw Steel	Mage: The Ascension
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy, Modern, Horror
Tags	Tactical, Heroic, Cinematic, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Attacks Always Hit, Lore-Heavy	Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics
Core Mechanic	Power Roll: roll 2d10 + characteristic and check which tier the result falls into: Tier 1 (11 or less), Tier 2 (12–16), or Tier 3 (17+). Every ability describes three outcomes by tier, so rolls always produce an effect, with no whiffed turns. Edges and banes (+2/−2, or tier shift at double) modify rolls situationally. Each class builds a unique heroic resource during combat, unlocking increasingly powerful abilities as momentum builds. Victories earned from combat and noncombat challenges accumulate across encounters and convert to XP during respites.	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	2d10	d10 dice pool
Complexity	High	Very High
Accessibility	High	High
Runnability	High	Very High
License	Draw Steel Creator 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	MCDM Productions	Onyx Path Publishing
Year	2025	2015
Languages	English	English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish
Best For	Groups who want deeply tactical, cinematic combat where every ability matters and no turn is wasted. Ideal for players who love build variety and dramatic, heroic battles.	Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world.
Highlights	Power Rolls resolve to one of three tiers, so every roll produces an effect and a turn is never wasted. Each of the nine classes builds a unique heroic resource during a fight, unlocking stronger abilities as momentum grows. A negotiation subsystem tracks an NPC's interest and patience, giving social scenes a structured back-and-forth like combat.	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	Heroes start with many abilities and options even at level 1, creating a steeper initial learning curve. Each combat turn juggles heroic resources, conditions, and edges and banes at once, so play carries real tracking overhead. The system targets heroic tactical fantasy specifically, so it provides no rules for dungeon crawling, hexcrawl exploration, or survival play.	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.