Mutants & Masterminds vs Vampire: The Masquerade
Compare Mutants & Masterminds and Vampire: The Masquerade side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Mutants & Masterminds | Vampire: The Masquerade | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Modern, Superhero | Horror, Modern |
| Play Style | Superhero, Heroic, Crunchy, Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Tactical, Cinematic | Social Intrigue, Drama, Roleplay-Heavy, Atmospheric, Faction Play, Investigation, Collaborative, Character-Driven, Urban Fantasy, Corruption, Lore-Heavy, Noir |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d20 + modifier against a Difficulty Class. Heroes are built from a Power Points budget capped by a series Power Level (usually 10), which limits paired trait totals — attack bonus + effect rank, dodge + toughness — to twice the level. Damage is resisted with Toughness checks that escalate conditions (bruised, staggered, incapacitated) instead of tracking hit points. Hero Points let players reroll, edit scenes, or recover from conditions; complications coming into play earn them back. | Roll a pool of d10s (attribute + skill), count successes (6+). Hunger dice replace regular dice in the pool — their 10s trigger Messy Criticals and their 1s trigger Bestial Failures, making the Beast an ever-present threat. |
| Dice | d20 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | High | Medium |
| Accessibility | High | Medium |
| Community | High | High |
| License | OGL | Proprietary |
| Cost | $$ | $$ |
| Publisher | Green Ronin Publishing | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2013 | 2018 |
| Best For | Groups who want unlimited freedom to design any superhero concept — from masked vigilante to cosmic powerhouse — with a flexible point-buy build system and tactical combat that emphasizes power-level balance. | Drama-heavy campaigns exploring themes of addiction, power, and losing your humanity. |
| Highlights | Modular power-construction system builds any superpower from effects, modifiers, and flaws; Power Level caps enforce balance even when individual traits vary widely; Hero Points reward roleplaying complications with mechanical benefits; conditions track damage progression instead of using a hit point pool | Hunger system mechanically integrates the vampire's predatory nature into every dice roll. Detailed social and political frameworks with clan-based faction play. Humanity and Stains system tracks moral erosion with narrative consequences. |
| Considerations | Character creation requires significant rules mastery to navigate the point-buy power construction; resolving an attack involves multiple checks per action — attack roll, Toughness resistance, condition tracking; Power Level caps can frustrate players who want to push paired-trait limits like attack and effect rank | Hunger dice introduce high randomness at critical moments, dense lore spanning 30+ years can overwhelm new players, predator type and clan choice during character creation require setting knowledge to make informed decisions |