Shadowrun vs Skies Above
Compare Shadowrun and Skies Above side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Shadowrun | Skies Above | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Cyberpunk, Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Play Style | Crunchy, Tactical, Combat-Heavy, Heist, Character Building, Faction Play, Lore-Heavy, Skill-Based, Mission-Based, Urban Fantasy | JRPG, Cinematic, Combat-Heavy, Tactical, High-Fantasy, Heroic, Character Building, Mana Points, Theater of the Mind, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a pool of d6s equal to attribute + skill, counting 5s and 6s as hits. Meet or exceed a threshold to succeed. Situational advantages generate Edge points rather than modifying dice pools directly; Edge is spent on tactical effects like rerolling dice, adding successes, or imposing penalties on opponents. | Roll d8 + two Attributes + modifiers against a Target Number (typically 10, increasing in steps of 4 for harder tasks). Natural 8s explode, rolling and adding again; every additional 8 raises the Critical Level, scaling damage and effects. A natural 1 is an Epic Fail that halves the character's Defences until their next turn. Critical hits dealt and taken generate Overdrive — once eight stacks accumulate, characters spend them to take an additional action that round, modeling the limit-break payoff of classic JRPGs. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | d8 |
| Complexity | Very High | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Community | High | Low |
| License | No open license | All Rights Reserved |
| Cost | $$$ | $$ |
| Publisher | Catalyst Game Labs | Lost Haven Studio |
| Year | 2019 | 2026 |
| Best For | Groups who want cyberpunk-fantasy heists with deep mechanical subsystems for hacking, magic, and combat. | Groups who want a JRPG-inspired tabletop adventure — picking from twelve jobs like Dragoon, Dark Mage, or Engineer, channeling elemental magic blessed by eight goddesses, and journeying by airship across floating sky-islands in the aftermath of a magical cataclysm. |
| Highlights | Unique cyberpunk-fantasy setting blending megacorporate intrigue with magic and metahuman races. Dedicated subsystems for Matrix hacking, magic, rigging, and astral space. Edge system replaces many situational modifiers with a spendable tactical resource. Decades of published lore spanning in-world history from 2011 to the 2080s. | Exploding d8 with stacking Critical Levels — multiple natural 8s in a row cascade into larger crits and bigger effects, so heroic moments scale rather than cap. Overdrive accumulates from critical hits dealt and received, and spending eight stacks grants an additional action that round, giving combat a JRPG limit-break rhythm. Twelve job roles span melee, magic, ranged, and support archetypes, and characters add a second job at level 12 to cross-pollinate abilities and weapon ranks. Eight elemental goddesses anchor both magic and the bestiary — every Skyfolk lineage is blessed with resistance to one element, and creatures carry specific elemental weaknesses that double incoming damage. |
| Considerations | Matrix hacking runs as a parallel subsystem that can leave non-decker players waiting. Multiple supplemental rulebooks needed for full coverage of magic, Matrix, and rigging. Published books have documented editing and layout issues. | Combat is the most heavily detailed pillar of the rules, with conditions, elemental damage, front/back row positioning, and an optional battlefield grid — investigation, intrigue, and downtime get coverage but less mechanical depth. Light and Dark Mages cannot learn from the opposing path, locking each spellcaster out of half the elemental spell list and pushing magical variety into multi-job characters. The exploding-d8 swing is wide — consecutive 8s can demolish encounters while a natural 1 halves a character's Defences and opens them to brutal counters. Setting and mechanics are tightly woven: Skyfolk lineages, the eight Goddesses, and post-Breaking lore are baked into character options rather than presented as swappable flavor. |