Mage: The Ascension vs Shifters
Compare Mage: The Ascension and Shifters side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Mage: The Ascension | Shifters | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Modern, Horror | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Urban Fantasy | Atmospheric, Character-Driven, Corruption, Deadly, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gritty, Superpowers, Survival, Urban Fantasy, Weird |
| Core Mechanic | Roll an Attribute-plus-Ability pool of d10s and count dice meeting the difficulty, usually 6. Each rolled 1 cancels a success. A roll botches only when no die meets the difficulty and at least one die shows 1. Magick instead rolls Arete, the mage's enlightenment rating, against a difficulty based on the highest Sphere used and whether the effect violates ordinary reality. Successes determine the effect's extent. | Roll an attribute die and usually a skill die, each sized from d4 to d20 by the character's rating. Read each die separately: 5–9 gives one success, 10–14 two, 15–19 three, and 20 four. A 1 adds a complication even when the other die succeeds. Meet the Referee's required success count or beat an opponent's successes, with extra successes adding Harm or other effects. Each player gets one Nudge per session to shift a single die by one point after the roll. |
| Dice | d10 dice pool | d4–d20 |
| Complexity | Very High | Medium |
| Accessibility | High | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | All Rights Reserved | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault | No verified route found |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | $ |
| Publisher | Onyx Path Publishing | Late Gaming Company |
| Year | 2015 | 2026 |
| Languages | English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish | English |
| Best For | Groups who want long modern occult campaigns about conflicting beliefs and the consequences of reshaping reality. | Groups who want modern occult horror where hunting haunted objects risks eroding their characters' identities. |
| Highlights | Nine Spheres combine into improvised magical effects beyond a fixed spell list. A mage's beliefs determine the practices and instruments that make those effects possible. Concealing magick within plausible events reduces the risk of reality's backlash. | Harm steps attribute dice down directly, so damage weakens the dice used for later actions. The otherworld called the Gloom drains an attribute step at each scene's start and end unless resisted through sacrifice, weakening the dice needed to escape. Haunted objects called Residues have destruction conditions tied to their emotional origins, turning hunts toward memorials or exposing abuse rather than combat alone. |
| Considerations | Improvised magick requires the group to agree on what an effect can accomplish before rolling. Accumulated Paradox can injure a mage or trap them in a distorted reality. Cabals need shared motives to keep incompatible faction loyalties from pulling the campaign apart. | The core provides no advancement procedure, leaving the group to decide how skills or abilities improve over a campaign. The colossal beings called Infadha take no Harm from attacks, so ordinary combat cannot defeat them. Several sample Residues are built on suicide, child abuse, and domestic abuse, with safety guidance limited to brief advice during character creation. |