Open Legend vs Savage Worlds
Compare Open Legend and Savage Worlds side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Open Legend | Savage Worlds | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Universal | Universal |
| Play Style | Toolkit, Classless, Hackable, Heroic, Modular, Character Building, Tactical, Crunchy | Cinematic, Fast-Paced, Tactical, Pulp Action, Combat-Heavy, Heroic, Miniatures |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a d20 plus one or more attribute dice (d4 through d12 based on attribute score, scaling to multiple dice at higher scores) against a Challenge Rating. All dice explode on their maximum face and can keep exploding without limit. Characters have eighteen attributes split across Physical, Mental, Social, and Extraordinary categories; extraordinary attributes channel banes (negative effects) and boons (positive effects) instead of tracking a spell list. Advantage or disadvantage adds extra dice and drops the lowest or highest before summing. | Roll trait die + wild die (d6), keep the highest. Target number 4. Raises every +4. |
| Dice | d20 + d4–d12 | d4–d12 |
| Complexity | Medium | Medium |
| Accessibility | Very High | Medium |
| Runnability | Medium | High |
| License | Open Legend Community License (SRD) | Savage Worlds Adventurer's Guild |
| Cost | Free / $$ | $$ |
| Publisher | Seventh Sphere Publishing | Pinnacle Entertainment |
| Year | 2018 | 2018 |
| Best For | Groups who want a single classless engine to handle fantasy, science fiction, modern, or horror campaigns through eighteen attributes spanning physical, mental, social, and extraordinary domains, with magic and special effects folded into the same dice mechanic as combat. | Fast-paced pulp action across any genre. Great for large groups and mass combat. |
| Highlights | All dice explode on maximum rolls with no cap, producing occasional dramatic result spikes through the same mechanic that handles ordinary rolls. Magic is folded into the attribute system through banes and boons, so extraordinary attributes like Energy or Entropy roll for fixed effects rather than tracking a spell list. Hits that exceed a defense by ten or more automatically apply a free bane on top of damage, so big roll-overs translate into status effects like knockdown or stunned rather than wasted overflow. | Fast resolution, genre-flexible, handles large groups well |
| Considerations | First-level character creation spends 40 attribute points across 18 attributes plus 6 feat points across a tiered feat list, producing heavy upfront decision load before play begins. Weapons have no damage dice — damage equals your action roll minus the target's defense — so weapon variety within a category is largely cosmetic, and the book itself notes that a longsword mechanically dominates a shortsword. Hit points come from Fortitude, Presence, and Will (HP = 2·(F+P+W) + 10) rather than from level, so a character who dumps all three stays near 10 HP regardless of how much XP they earn. | Exploding dice can produce extreme variance in outcomes, setting books vary in depth — some provide minimal mechanical content beyond a genre frame |