Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons are two of my longest-running gaming hobbies. I love the cards from Magic: the Gathering, and I love making awesome monsters as a DM for Dungeons and Dragons. One day about five years ago, I decided to try and convert a creature from MtG to D&D. This started an obsession that has lasted with me to this day.

Converting Magic cards to D&D creatures just makes sense! Since Wizards of the Coast owns both products, bringing in creatures based on MtG cards feels natural. While WotC has released various products for 5e that take a crack at this, I continue to enjoy bringing the cards to life in my own way.

D&D stat blocks can be complicated, and the rules for making new creatures in the 5e Monster Manual can be very confusing. However, I’ve found some simple ways to convert a Magic card to a D&D stat block without too much effort. With these handy tips, you’ll have the tools to take a MtG card and create an awesome D&D monster for your party to encounter.

Realizing the Fantasy

There are many factors that you could take into account when porting a MtG creature to DND. You could consider its power, toughness, text block, cost, art, or even just its flavor, how the card intersects mechanically and narratively. However, the most important thing to focus on is capturing the fantasy of a card.

When converting a MtG creature to D&D, you don’t have to match everything exactly. Chances are, if you’re interested in going down this route, there’s something about a creature that interests you already. That is what you are trying to capture when creating the stat block.

For the most part, I’ve found that focusing on realizing a few aspects of a card in a stat block has the intended effect. Most of the time, realizing even one aspect of a Magic card helps a D&D creature stand out.

Starting Simple

Faithfully bringing a Magic card to life in D&D can easily get overwhelming. When I first tried my hand at this, I created full character sheets for important NPCs. After realizing that was too much effort, I started making complex stat blocks from scratch. This was also very involved. While both methods can be useful, depending on the NPC, I now have an easier method.

When making a creature based on a MtG card, it is helpful to use an existing stat block from D&D as a template. Adapting the iconic elements of a MtG card as a D&D creature is easier if you already have a baseline. For instance, when converting an MtG dragon into a D&D dragon, it’s helpful to start by taking a Red Dragon and making a few tweaks.

This method of creation makes a complicated process much easier. Even small tweaks to ability scores, hit points, or damage can turn a generic stat block into something special.

Trick or Trait

Many MtG cards can be realized by adding a trait to a stat block without many more changes. Traits passively affect creatures and how they behave in combat. This can help create dynamic encounters that play out very differently than normal fights.

Masters of Mind

Let’s start with Sen Triplets. Sen Triplets is a card that lets its controller cast spells from other players’ hands and keep them from playing their own cards. To realize the fantasy of this card, we can take the archmage stat block and give it a unique trait that mimics the ability of Sen Triplets.

A good example of a possible conversion of this ability might be: “Masters of Mind. Sen Triplet may cast spells that any other creature within 30 ft. of it can cast, in addition to its own spells. Whenever it casts another creature’s spell, that creature must make a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or be unable to cast that spell until the end of its next turn.” This ability captures both the capacity to cast other’s spells and denies them the ability to use them.

Shield of Emeria

Iona, Shield of Emeria has an ability that is so powerful that it has been banned in the Commander format. So, let’s turn that ability into an awesome trait!

When building Iona, let’s use a Solar as a base. Since Iona is the most powerful angel in her setting, it makes sense to give her the strongest angel as a template. 

For Iona’s signature ability, we can save some time by altering an existing ability from another stat block. In 5e, a rakshasa has Limited Magic Immunity, which gives it immunity to certain spells. This is already very similar to Iona’s ability to stop players from summoning creatures or casting spells of a certain color. Using Limited Magic Immunity as a base, we can construct a new ability for Iona.

With the leg work done, Iona’s signature ability might look something like: “Shield of Emeria. Whenever Iona rolls initiative, she chooses a spell school. Iona can’t be affected or detected by spells of the chosen school unless she wishes to be until the next time she chooses a different spell school. She has advantage on saving throws against all other spells and magical effects.” This ability mirrors the flavor of eliminating one color of MtG from being played by shutting down a wide array of spells of any level.

Elderscale Wurm, My Beloved

I have made my love for Elderscale Wurm very clear. As a janky, non-legendary mythic, it has a special place in my heart. However, directly converting Elderscale Wurm’s ability to lock a player’s life total into MtG is hard. In MtG, life totals and creature durability are kept separate, but in D&D, they are interconnected. Preventing Elderscale Wurm’s life total from changing in D&D is infeasible and likely overpowered.

Instead of directly converting Elderscale Wurm’s ability to D&D, let’s instead focus on creating a trait that preserves this card’s flavor. Elderscale Wurm cares about 7’s. It has 7 power, 7 toughness, 7 total cost, and its ability cares about 7’s. 7’s are usually associated with luck. Additionally, Elderscale Wurm’s ability, and even its name, speaks to something that is long-lasting and potentially primordial. Therefore, let’s create a creature that is primordial and cares about luck.

We’re going to start with a purple worm as a base. While this does not visually match Elderscale Wurm, you can change your description to match the card while DMing. With our template set, we can craft a trait like: “Elder Scales. Elderscale Wurm rolls a critical success on a roll of 20 or 7.” This preserves the theme of 7’s and luck while also doubling the wurm’s chances of critical attacks.

While the crafted ability isn’t a perfect one-to-one recreation of the card, it aims to capture the feeling of the card. You could also consider adding Magic Resistance or Legendary Resistances to capture its enduring primordial and ancient nature. You could even increase its intelligence or Wisdom to capture the feeling of an elder creature or give it a language to speak. Once you feel more confident altering stat blocks, these changes might even feel like second nature.

Equal and Opposite Reactions

While adding traits to a stat block can alter the rules of combat, adding reactions can change the flow of combat. For certain cards in Magic, converting their ability into a reaction makes more sense. These reactions can make players act more cautiously and force them to adapt in order to survive.

Mortal Ingenuity

Hisoka, Minamo Sensei is another wizard from MtG that we can convert into a stat block. I find that wizards in MtG are ripe for conversion since it is commonly accepted that powerful wizards in D&D will have powerful arcane techniques they’ve honed over decades. For our purposes, we’ll be using the archmage stat block again as a base.

Hisoka’s ability in his card allows for an alternate way of countering spells. Instead of needing to have the right card in hand, you can discard cards to counter spells. While there’s no direct analogue to discarding cards in D&D, we can preserve the intention of the card when making this reaction. The ability we craft should let Hisoka counter spells by draining his resources without expending spell slots.

The reaction you craft may look something like this: “Mortal Ingenuity. Hisoka attempts to interrupt a creature casting a spell within 60 ft. by unpreparing a spell from his spell list. If the unprepared spell was the same level as the spell cast, that spell is countered.” This ability works by draining the amount of spells Hisoka has access to, whittling away his resources. 

This captures the mechanics of the Magic card while also allowing for interesting combat potential. Since this ability requires Hisoka to exactly match the level of the countered spell, this ability can still fail if Hisoka unprepares a spell of the wrong level. This might happen if a player upcasts a spell or casts a spell Hisoka is unfamiliar with, such as a spell from a different class. When creating reactions for creatures, keep these kinds of considerations in mind to make things interesting for your players.

Screaming Vengeance

Screaming Nemesis is a good example of a MtG card with an ability we can turn into a reaction. Since the creature is themed around vengeance and damaging others when it is hurt, we can create an ability that evokes this feeling. While we could also turn the ability from this card into a trait, that may be too powerful on a D&D monster. Turning it into a reaction makes the creature choose a player to reflect damage to, making it their own personal nemesis.

To capture the theming of a vengeful spirit seeking to harm others who harmed it, we’ll start with a revenant as a template. From there, we can craft a new ability like “Screaming Vengeance. In response to a creature damaging the Nemesis, it swears vengeance against that creature. That creature must then make a DC 13 Charisma saving throw or take half as much damage as it dealt to the Nemesis.” Not only does this capture the ability from the card, but it also turns on existing abilities from the revenant’s stat block. 

With Screaming Nemesis, the stat block we used was actually enhanced by what we added from a MtG card. This is one of the reasons that choosing the right stat block can be important. When converting cards, try to use D&D stat blocks that meld together well with the mechanics you’re adding.

Ready for Action!

While traits and reactions can spice up a fight, actions and attacks will truly capture your players’ attention. With practice, you will find that creating new actions for creatures comes naturally.

Knowledge is Power

Once more with feeling; let’s make another wizard! This time, we’ll convert Arcanis the Omnipotent. Arcanis has two abilities, which we’ll both convert. Once again, we’ll use the archmage as a base. 

The first ability of Arcanis features drawing cards. While there’s no direct correlation to this ability in D&D, there’s a handy way to simulate this for a wizard: learning spells. This might result in an action like “Knowledge is Power. Arcanis learns three spells from any spell school until his next short or long rest.” This gives Arcanis the ability to learn the perfect spells for any situation, while still being limited in power by spell slots and unlearning spells on the next rest.

The second ability Arcanis has might initially seem tricky, but it is actually quite easy to convert. There is no “returning a creature to its owner’s hand” in D&D, but we can interpret this as Arcanis having a repeatable way to flee combat. In this case, we’ll simply give Arcanis a robe of stars! This item allows a creature to enter the astral plane as an action, escaping from combat without a spell and handily mimicking the card’s ability. This also gives the wizard an obscuring cloak like Arcanis has on the card, combining mechanics and visuals!

When converting a MtG card to D&D, keep in mind that sometimes existing items can give a creature the abilities you’re interested in. You can save time and effort by giving them an applicable item instead of making new abilities.

Maw of Flames

Drakuseth, Maw of Flames is a pet card of mine. While its ability isn’t overwhelming, dealing direct damage with dragons is fun. When making a stat block for Drakuseth in D&D, we’ll need to find a way to emulate this direct damage-dealing ability. Luckily, there’s an easy way.

In some cases, you can convert a MtG creature’s ability by using an existing D&D spell. In this case, we’ll start with a red dragon stat block and tweak the multiattack action to say: “Drakuseth can cast scorching ray (+11 to hit). It then makes three attacks: one with its bite and two with its claws.” By turning Drakuseth’s ability into a spell, we save work for ourselves while also preserving the fantasy of a fire-breathing dragon.

In Drakuseth’s case, this spell has also replaced its Frightful Presence action. The core fantasy of fighting Drakuseth is about battling a dragon that breathes fire every turn. Capturing Drakuseth’s fire-breathing matters more than preserving its Frightful Presence action. 

While turning Drakuseth’s MtG ability into a spell is easy, you might not be satisfied with this. Truthfully, this doesn’t deal much damage and isn’t as dramatic as Frightful Presence. If you want to go the extra mile, it is possible to convert Drakuseth’s ability more faithfully while still using scorching ray as a template to save time.

The more faithful conversion of Drakuseth’s card might result in an action like “Maw of Flames. Drakuseth makes three ranged attacks with +11 to hit with gouts of fire at three different targets within 120 ft. On a hit, two targets take 3d8 fire damage, and one target takes 4d12 damage.” While this ability isn’t perfect, it better captures the destructive power of Drakuseth’s flames.

Sanguine Tribune

Licia, Sanguine Tribune is an awesome creature for which I have never quite found the right deck. However, we might be able to do her justice as a D&D creature. Licia is a vampire and a soldier, so we’ll use a vampire as a base, though the “Vampire Warrior” is a better choice if you own the Monster Manual.

Once we have our base for Licia, we’ll want to convert her abilities into D&D format. In this case, some abilities just won’t convert into D&D. Licia’s ability to cost less based on life gained does not apply to D&D, as creatures aren’t summoned like they are in MtG. 

We can, however, convert Licia’s last ability to D&D. This ability makes the player lose life in order to make Licia stronger. The player can then gain that lost life back with Licia draining life when she deals damage. This ability is also very restrictive in MtG, limiting it to once a turn and only on your turn. So, when converting this ability, we’ll want a restrictive action that buffs Licia at the cost of HP.

With our plan set, we can give Licia an action like “Sanguine Tribune (1/Day). Licia uses blood magic to gain power at the cost of vitality. Licia loses 50 hit points and may increase any ability score except Constitution by +5 for the next 24 hours.” This captures all of our wanted elements while also being very strong.

Centurion

But wait! While we’ve faithfully recreated Licia’s ability in a D&D stat block, we may not have captured the fantasy of a vampire soldier. This card depicts Licia as a Roman-style soldier or centurion. The ability we’ve crafted actually captures the fantasy of a vampire skilled at blood magic, not necessarily a vampire centurion. So, let’s fix that!

To successfully bring this fantasy to life, we’re going to give Licia some class features. To avoid complications, we’ll cherry-pick a few abilities instead of giving full class levels. In this case, let’s take some battle master maneuvers from the fighter (available in the PHB). To make our job easier, we’ll give Licia disarming attack, trip attack, and sweep attack, as they all trigger as part of an attack and can, therefore, be written as a part of an attack action. With these actions replacing the greatsword action in the Vampire Warrior stat block, we can then word the multiattack to read, “Licia makes two weapon attacks.”

While giving Licia class features makes her stronger, it is an excellent way to help her stand out. When crafting monsters your players will encounter, you want them to be interesting. Licia’s ability to use multiple maneuvers every turn does make her potentially make her stronger than a PC’s fighter, but we’ve balanced this by not giving her the rest of the fighter abilities.

The World is Your Oyster

Magic: the Gathering has a lot of ideas that I’ve taken for inspiration when making D&D creatures and characters. WotC’s ownership of both has let me feel very comfortable experimenting with putting MtG cards into my games. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time bringing these cards to life in a new setting.

If you have a favorite MtG card and you play a D&D, you may want to try your hand at this as well! Remember to have fun and experiment. As a DM running homebrew, you don’t need to follow the rules of creature creation as strictly as the DMG tells you to. The world is your oyster, and you can make whatever you want!