Exalted vs Rifts

Compare Exalted and Rifts side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Exalted	Rifts
Genre	Fantasy	Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero
Tags	High-Power, Crunchy, Tactical, High-Fantasy, Martial Arts, Lore-Heavy, Character Building, Corruption	Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical
Core Mechanic	Roll a pool of d10s equal to an Attribute + Ability; each die showing 7–9 counts as one success and each 10 as two, measured against a target number of successes. Vivid descriptions of an action (stunts) add 1–3 bonus dice and can restore spent Essence, rewarding evocative narration on every roll.	Combat and saving throws use a d20 plus bonuses, with high results overcoming a target number or opposing roll. Skills use d100 and succeed when the result is at or below the character's percentage.
Dice	d10 dice pool	d20, d100
Complexity	Very High	Very High
Accessibility	Medium	Medium
Runnability	High	Very High
License	Proprietary	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Noncommercial only — Palladium Books Internet Policy limited license
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	$$
Publisher	Onyx Path Publishing	Palladium Books Inc.
Year	2016	2005
Best For	Groups committed to a long campaign about demigod protagonists: mastering deep, individualized Charm builds, fighting Initiative-driven tactical battles, and navigating the political collapse of a mythic empire.	Groups who want long-form science-fantasy campaigns that move from a ruined Earth to other dimensions. The game suits tables whose GM will decide which parts of the broad setting a campaign uses.
Highlights	Combat is a tug-of-war over momentum: withering attacks steal Initiative from enemies into the attacker's pool, and a decisive attack then spends that pool to deal actual harm, so the maneuvering before the killing blow matters as much as the blow itself. Each of the 25 Abilities has its own tree of Essence-fueled Charms gated by prerequisite chains, so heavy investment in one Ability yields a combat or social style a differently-built character cannot reproduce. Intimacies set hard limits on persuasion (social actions roll against a target's Resolve, attempts aligned with a Defining Intimacy are easier and those that violate one are impossible), so social conflict turns on stated stakes rather than GM fiat.	Occupational and racial class packages assign distinct abilities and advancement tracks, giving each archetype a different role in the party. Mega-Damage places many supernatural creatures and war machines on a separate durability scale beyond the reach of ordinary Structural Damage Capacity attacks. Rifts and ley lines make dimensional travel a standing feature of the setting, letting campaigns move between devastated Earth and other worlds.
Considerations	The core rulebook supports only Solar Exalted as player characters: the other Exalt types (Dragon-Blooded, Lunar, Sidereal) appear here as antagonists rather than fully playable PCs. Solars so outmatch ordinary opposition that lone mortal or even Dragon-Blooded foes rarely threaten them, pushing the GM toward Charm-wielding antagonists or massed battle groups to mount a real challenge. Artifact crafting uses three separate experience currencies across four project tiers with long in-fiction time requirements, so a crafting-focused character's payoff arrives only over a sustained campaign.	Character creation combines rolled attributes with extensive skill selection, making first-time preparation lengthy. Combat asks each player to track an action economy, active defenses, and which damage scale applies. Magic and psionics use separate point pools and power procedures, adding class-specific rules to the shared system.