Author: kobo1d
About The System
Shadow of the Demon Lord is a grimdark fantasy D&D-esque game with a uniquely flexible class-based character design. It features an extremely evocative setting and character options. It is similar in complexity to D&D 5E in play, but with a greater selection of character options away from the table.
Complexity: (★★★☆☆)
System Strengths
The class system is a must-see for those interested in game design for D&D-like games.
Every player makes essentially four class-like decisions during the course of a campaign, with increasing specificity of concept.
Ancestry is what you would expect, a race choice you make first which has some baseline features such that the recommended campaign starts at level 0. There are 6 ancestries in the core rules, and about 47 more to date in supplemental books. You also receive some additional benefits from your ancestry after a few levels.
After probably one session, you level up and select a novice path among Magician, Priest, Rogue, and Warrior. About 29 variants on each of these paths appear in supplements to the game. You continue to accrue and benefit from new novice path features for almost all of a campaign.
After a few more sessions, you will select another class entirely called an expert path. An expert path is somewhat akin to a subclass in D&D 5E, except that any player may choose from any expert path. So for example, you may start out as an Orc, then become a Warrior, and then become a Fighter…or your Orc Warrior could become a Spellbinder (or Witch, or Sorcerer, or Assassin, etc). There are 16 expert classes in the main book, and 119 more in supplements. Expert paths are typically the most identity-defining and impactful for characters.
The game has been designed so any combination of novice and expert paths works together seamlessly to enable endless concepts.
Late in a campaign, you make another choice, a master path, which is even further specialized. Examples include Duelist, Transmuter, Hydromancer, Templar. As you might expect, any character can take any master path. There are 64 master paths in the core book, and 108 more in supplements. You can also take any second expert path as your master path. Your final level capstone will be determined by your master path.
The game is sufficiently balanced if all players make path decisions based on roleplaying–very few options are individually overpowered. There is, however, a benefit to optimization, in that you can identify cross-class ability combinations to realize some very potent synergy.
Spellcasting
Spellcasting is organized into traditions, which are groupings of spells by type, such as Water, Necromancy, Time, or Rune. Spellcasters are limited to having a small handful of traditions, and as a result you have highly specialized spellcasters very unlike the generalist mages of other systems such as modern D&D. Rather than fungible spell slots, every spell you know also has its own castings, so you can’t simply cast your best spell in every combat.
Game Master
Like many other systems in this article series, Shadow of the Demon Lord compares favorably with D&D 5E for a DM or Game Master with respect to ease of preparation. Premade adventures and GM resources written for the system are well-written, well-organized, and succinct. The game excels at having a small number of big combats, a big pain point in many D&D groups.
Complexity
The system itself is simpler “at the table” than D&D 5E, though still moderately complex in comparison to many other games in this article series. This in combination with the “away from the table” complexity above summarizes the greatest strength of the system: have you ever wanted a TTRPG where building a character has a Pathfinder-like amount of decision making, but playing the game itself was less complex than 5E?
System Flaws
The default setting for the game is definitely not for everyone. It is dark in tone, profane, frequently gross, and in general not safe for work. If you want a “family-friendly” setting for this game, you will have to make your own or look to offshoot games. It is possible to disassociate the bones of the system from the setting by cutting out some of said material that your group won’t enjoy. But by default, you are going to be reading through spells and see one that very descriptively makes opponents shit themselves.
The game has a well-earned reputation for being lethal, most pointedly at low levels. Don’t get too attached to your character Boblin the level 0 Goblin, you might need to roll another PC pretty quickly. Doing so is easy, but if characters dying from a bit of bad luck is anathema to you, the system might rub you the wrong way.
That sounds like another OSR game.
That sounds like another oversimplification. High lethality at low levels is one thing it has in common with some OSR games, but it very much *not* a retroclone and is significantly different from classic D&D mechanically and thematically.
Solid little system overall. It has a lot a lot of player facing things to interact with and it does a good job explaining the rules and supports the DM well enough to be a first system for many if the theme fits.
However, I’d pick Mork Borg over it due to KISS and 3rd party material availability. being reverse capable with most OSR stuff and has easily conversions for new stuff also is nice.
Great article.
Could be nice to see you writing about the comparison of an optimizeds PCs in 5e and Shadow of the Demon Lord.
Like how much stronger one optimized can be from a non-optimized in these two systems.
Showing the math and examples.
The overall math in SotDL is tighter so the breath of player facing options fall in much narrower band of possibilities.
It has a heavy lean on the “choices” over “action” as well which makes it hard to nail down optimal choices in a vacuum.