Shadow of the Demon Lord vs Shifters
Compare Shadow of the Demon Lord and Shifters side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Shadow of the Demon Lord | Shifters | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Horror | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Dark Fantasy, Gritty, Deadly, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Corruption, Character Building, Tactical, Combat-Heavy, Atmospheric, Strong GM Support | Atmospheric, Character-Driven, Corruption, Deadly, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gritty, Superpowers, Survival, Urban Fantasy, Weird |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d20 plus an attribute modifier against 10 for a challenge or the target’s Defense or attribute for an attack. Boons and banes cancel one for one. Roll the remaining d6s and add the highest boon or subtract the highest bane. | 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 | d20, d6 | d4–d20 |
| Complexity | Medium | Medium |
| Availability | Free quickstart | Paid |
| Runnability | 4 of 5 book tools | 2 of 5 book tools |
| License | All Rights Reserved | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Community content program | No verified route found |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Schwalb Entertainment | Late Gaming Company |
| Year | 2015 | 2026 |
| Languages | English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Chinese | English |
| Best For | Groups who want lethal fantasy horror with flexible character paths and campaigns built around eleven adventures. | Groups who want modern occult horror where hunting haunted objects risks eroding their characters' identities. |
| Highlights | Novice, expert and master paths combine freely to create specialized characters. Fast turns trade movement for an earlier action. Insanity and Corruption give frightening encounters and forbidden acts lasting mechanical consequences. | 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 | Starting characters can die from a single strong hit. The rules include graphic body horror and disturbing effects of forbidden magic. Advancement ends at level 10 after the campaign’s final adventure. | 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. |