Mage: The Ascension vs Twilight Sword
Compare Mage: The Ascension and Twilight Sword side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Mage: The Ascension | Twilight Sword | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Modern, Horror | Fantasy |
| Tags | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Urban Fantasy | JRPG, Heroic, Beginner-Friendly, Theater of the Mind, Inventory Management, Journey, Random Tables |
| 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 a d12 against one of eight Abilities and score equal to or under it to succeed, so low rolls are good. A 1 is always a critical success and a 12 always a critical failure, whatever the Ability score. Modifiers shift the target by up to 3 in either direction. Advantage rolls 2d12 and keeps the lower result, while Disadvantage keeps the higher. |
| Dice | d10 dice pool | d12 |
| Complexity | Very High | Medium |
| Accessibility | High | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | All Rights Reserved | Proprietary (third-party license pending) |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | $$ |
| Publisher | Onyx Path Publishing | Two Little Mice / Free League Publishing |
| Year | 2015 | 2026 |
| Languages | English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish | English, Italian |
| Best For | Groups who want long modern occult campaigns about conflicting beliefs and the consequences of reshaping reality. | Groups who want the feel of JRPG and adventure video games at the table, with a core roll simple enough to teach newcomers. The low-lethality tone suits family or mixed-experience tables running long campaigns of travel and monster hunting. |
| 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. | Eight elements form a cycle where each beats the next, so picking an element against a monster's affinity is a puzzle rather than a flat damage bonus. A monster's Threat rating sets both how many the party should face and how many turns it takes each round, letting one number carry encounter balance and battlefield pacing. Advancement runs off a shared Hope track earned by completing deeds, tying character growth to how much of the world the party has restored. |
| 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. | Defeated Champions are knocked out rather than killed, and permanent death exists only as an optional rule the table must agree to before play begins. Cooking and brewing each require assembling a dice pool from gathered ingredients and reading it against a tiered effect table, a separate procedure from core resolution. Combat positioning uses four abstract ranges rather than measured distances, and the optional battle-map conversion is a short note rather than a developed ruleset. |