Exalted vs Shadowrun
Compare Exalted and Shadowrun side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Exalted | Shadowrun | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Cyberpunk, Fantasy |
| Play Style | High-Power, Crunchy, Tactical, High-Fantasy, Martial Arts, Lore-Heavy, Character Building, Corruption | Crunchy, Tactical, Combat-Heavy, Heist, Character Building, Faction Play, Lore-Heavy, Skill-Based, Mission-Based, Urban Fantasy |
| 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. | Roll a pool of d6s equal to attribute + skill, counting 5s and 6s as hits. Meet or exceed a threshold to succeed. Situational advantages generate Edge points rather than modifying dice pools directly; Edge is spent on tactical effects like rerolling dice, adding successes, or imposing penalties on opponents. |
| Dice | d10 dice pool | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Very High | Very High |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | High | Medium |
| License | Proprietary | No open license |
| Cost | $$ | $$$ |
| Publisher | Onyx Path Publishing | Catalyst Game Labs |
| Year | 2016 | 2019 |
| 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 cyberpunk-fantasy heists with deep mechanical subsystems for hacking, magic, and combat. |
| 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. | Unique cyberpunk-fantasy setting blending megacorporate intrigue with magic and metahuman races. Dedicated subsystems for Matrix hacking, magic, rigging, and astral space. Edge system replaces many situational modifiers with a spendable tactical resource. Decades of published lore spanning in-world history from 2011 to the 2080s. |
| 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. | Matrix hacking runs as a parallel subsystem that can leave non-decker players waiting. Multiple supplemental rulebooks needed for full coverage of magic, Matrix, and rigging. Published books have documented editing and layout issues. |