Dungeons & Dragons vs Old-School Essentials
Compare Dungeons & Dragons and Old-School Essentials side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Dungeons & Dragons | Old-School Essentials | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Tags | Tactical, Heroic, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Classic Fantasy, Combat-Heavy, Exploration, Resource Management, Strong GM Support, CC-Licensed Rules | Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Deadly, Sandbox, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Random Tables, Vancian Casting, Strong GM Support |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a d20 and add applicable modifiers to meet or beat a target number. Checks and saving throws use a Difficulty Class; attacks use Armor Class. Advantage or disadvantage means rolling two d20s and keeping the higher or lower result. | Attacks roll d20 against an attack matrix or an optional ascending Armour Class target. Saving throws meet a category target on d20. Ability checks roll at or below an ability score on d20. |
| Dice | d20 | d20 |
| Complexity | High | Low |
| Accessibility | Very High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (SRD 5.2.1); proprietary core books | OGL 1.0a |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Publisher | Wizards of the Coast | Necrotic Gnome |
| Year | 2024 | 2019 |
| Languages | English, French, Italian, German, Spanish | English, Italian, Spanish, French, Czech, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean |
| Best For | Groups who want heroic fantasy campaigns with tactical combat and extensive character customization. | Groups who want treasure-driven dungeon expeditions and open wilderness campaigns with fragile starting characters. |
| Highlights | Weapon Mastery adds effects such as pushing or slowing enemies to qualifying weapon attacks. Class and feat choices let characters develop different roles over twenty levels. Optional Bastions give characters home bases with facilities that produce benefits between adventures. | Treasure recovered from adventures provides most experience points, rewarding successful exploration over fighting alone. Reaction and optional morale rolls let encounters lead to negotiation or flight instead of automatic combat. Stronghold construction and taxation let accumulated wealth support a growing domain. |
| Considerations | Spells and class abilities have separate resource limits and timing rules. Higher-level magic can change travel and encounter assumptions that the DM must prepare for. Social encounters rely on ability checks and DM judgments about NPC attitudes. | Characters die at zero hit points, and failed poison saves are usually fatal. Demihuman characters combine ancestry with class and have lower level limits than human classes. Declared spells are lost if the caster is hit or fails a saving throw before acting. |