Dungeons & Dragons vs Wicked Ones

Compare Dungeons & Dragons and Wicked Ones side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Dungeons & Dragons	Wicked Ones
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy
Tags	Tactical, Heroic, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Classic Fantasy, Vancian Casting, Ascending AC	Base-Building, Domain Management, Faction Play, Sandbox, Playbook-Driven, Fiction-First, CC-Licensed Rules
Core Mechanic	Make a D20 Test by rolling d20, adding relevant modifiers, and comparing the total to a target number. Ability checks, saving throws, and attack rolls use this procedure. Advantage and disadvantage use two d20s and keep the higher or lower result.	Build a pool of d6s equal to your action rating and keep the single highest die: a 6 succeeds, a 4 or 5 succeeds with a consequence, and a 1 to 3 fails. Before the roll the GM sets position and effect, which fix how bad the consequence can be and how much the action accomplishes. Stress can be spent to push a roll or resist a consequence.
Dice	d20	d6 dice pool
Complexity	Medium	High
Accessibility	Very High	Very High
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	CC BY 4.0 (SRD); core books proprietary	CC0 1.0
Cost	Free	Free
Publisher	Wizards of the Coast	Bandit Camp
Year	2024	2020
Best For	Groups who want heroic fantasy with configurable tactical combat, broad character options, and campaigns that span multiple levels.	Groups who like the fiction-first Forged in the Dark engine and want to flip the dungeon crawl: instead of raiding a dungeon they build, grow, and defend one as its monstrous residents across a long campaign. It rewards tables that enjoy a strategic hoard-and-tier economy layered on villain-POV roleplay, and that are willing to set tone and safety expectations up front given the evil-protagonist premise.
Highlights	Advantage and disadvantage resolve common situational effects by selecting the higher or lower of two d20 rolls. Backgrounds, classes, subclasses, and feats distribute character choices across creation and advancement. Weapon Mastery gives qualifying weapon users distinct tactical effects without replacing the action economy.	Players design their own dungeon during downtime and later roll its traps and defenses against invaders, which turns base-building into the game's central strategic layer. Giving in to a monster's Dark Impulse earns a Dark Heart to spend for a bonus die, so playing to your character's worst instincts is rewarded rather than left as flavor. The four-phase cycle feeds each raid's fallout back as calamity and blowback that summon heroes to your door, so the campaign escalates its own stakes without the GM inventing threats by hand.
Considerations	Spell preparation, spell slots, class features, and conditions create several interacting resources for players to track. High-level characters combine many spells and features, increasing adjudication work for the DM. Bastions add a separate downtime procedure for campaigns that use the stronghold rules.	The three magic disciplines have no fixed spell lists, so a spell's power is decided by the GM in the moment. During a dungeon invasion the player characters cannot leave the sanctum, so most of the defense is run through minions and traps until the heroes reach the final room. There is no published setting, so each group must build its own region and factions before raiding can begin.