Dungeons & Dragons vs Rock & Stone
Compare Dungeons & Dragons and Rock & Stone side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Dungeons & Dragons | Rock & Stone | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Tags | Tactical, Heroic, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Classic Fantasy, Combat-Heavy, Exploration, Resource Management, Strong GM Support, CC-Licensed Rules | Classic Fantasy, Comedy, Dungeon Crawl, Fast-Paced, Heroic, High-Power, Random Tables, Rules-Light, Strong GM Support, Theater of the Mind |
| 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. | For a test, roll a d20 and add the relevant skill; a total above the GM-set difficulty succeeds, while an exact match succeeds with a complication. Natural 20s and 1s produce especially heroic successes and fatal failures. |
| Dice | d20 | d20 |
| Complexity | High | Low |
| Accessibility | Very High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (SRD 5.2.1); proprietary core books | AELF Open License Version 1.0a |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license | Commercial publishing allowed — AELF Open License Version 1.0a |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Publisher | Wizards of the Coast | Sebastian Hahn |
| Year | 2024 | 2025 |
| Languages | English, French, Italian, German, Spanish | English |
| Best For | Groups who want heroic fantasy campaigns with tactical combat and extensive character customization. | Groups who want a fast, rules-light dungeon crawl about unusually capable dwarven mercenaries, with a compact setting and a ready-to-run starting adventure. |
| 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. | Gold committed to the dwarven hoard pays for levels, tying treasure recovery directly to advancement. Archetypes grant selectable active and passive abilities, giving each dwarf a distinct role within the shared skill system. Carousing turns a between-adventure roll into complications and opportunities that can seed later expeditions. |
| 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 are built around the last-dwarves premise, although the rules permit other heroes. Advancement grants its largest skill and ability gains through level four, after which levels add only hit points and one skill point. Spells are fixed archetype abilities with limited daily uses, so groups seeking open-ended magic will not find it here. |