Need to spice up your Dungeon’s and Dragon’s campaign with a monster your players have never seen before? Looking for a striking, dramatic creature as the inspiration for a spirit, guide, or a mount for an NPC? Luckily, Magic: the Gathering can help you bring your next D&D session to life!
There are a ton of unique creatures in Magic to use in your campaign. Some may be great for single encounters, while others might become mainstays of your campaign. Whatever the case, Magic’s encounters are sure to make your campaign much more interesting.
Here are a few creatures that would be a great fit for your next Dungeons and Dragons encounter. Just for fun, I’ll even include a fictional taxonomy sure to get your creative juices flowing, as well as some ideas to inspire you. Here’s hoping your next D&D session is awesome!
Creatures Galore
Magic: the Gathering has a lot of creature types, including plenty of types with only a few cards. There are also some types of creatures that don’t have a specific type, but are referenced by name and have a distinct design. It would be impossible to recount every striking design, but there are a few designs in particular I think have potential.
While there may only be a few pieces of art and a few cards for these creatures, that can be more than enough to introduce them as a type of creature in your D&D game.
Thrinax
Hailing from the ferocious environs of Jund, the Thrinax is a perfect encapsulation of life on this plane. This creature is on the smaller side, each variant possessing some array of quills or plating, not unlike a pangolin or porcupine. The Thrinax, however, is no mere porcupine. What may in another environment be a peaceful herbivore is here a ravenous carnivore with deadly teeth and an appetite to match. However, this is just one interpretation of a creature that might fit into your setting.
The Thrinax is a creature that is ripe for conversion into D&D. It is a creature that depicts a violent circle of life where the strong devour the weak, and then the weak devour the strong. This is depicted both through flavor text and mechanics. Both “Scarland Thrinax” and “Bloodspore Thrinax” have abilities that simulate them eating other creatures to become stronger. However, “Sprouting Thrinax” and “Infested Thrinax” both indicate that other creatures swarm the corpse of a Thrinax once they die and feed on what remains.
The implications gleaned from the Thrinax card might inspire you when building a hostile environment. Certain forests or jungles in your setting may have creatures that attract other smaller creatures once they die. While this is up to your discretion, the Thrinax is a creature that has a lot of potential.
Thoctar
The Thoctar is a large quadruped monster from the plane of Naya. Its fearsome claws and wickedly sharp teeth suggest a lethal and carnivorous predator. Unlike a predator, however, it sports a pair of intimidating tusks which fuse into plate-like protrusions along the spine. Did this creature evolve from a prey animal? Do the plates on its back indicate it was once a beast of burden that developed these protrusions so that it could no longer be saddled or yoked?
Thoctars may not have a lot of art, but even the few cards we have paint a fascinating picture. The more effort and attention you put into a creature, the more questions arise about how this creature came to be and what place it has in your setting. The more of these questions you answer, the more compelling the monster becomes for your party.
The Thoctar is an excellent monster design that I have incorporated into several encounters. Even though there are only a few cards depicting these creatures, they are very striking. The lore on Wooly Thoctar even suggests that it could be worshipped in your campaign setting, which leads to a lot of potential for encounters. Additionally, the other Thoctar cards, especially “Cavern Thoctar,” seem to suggest that the Thoctar evolves to fit its environment. This gives you the freedom to alter Thoctars to fit your setting and easily slot them into your campaign!
What Even IS That?!
Some of my favorite creatures in Magic: the Gathering don’t have proper species names. Calling something a “Behemoth” or “Gargantuan” is not the same as pointing to an animal and calling it a rhino or an elephant. That said, these cards are still awesome and still portray some incredible creatures that you may want to use.
The advantage of adapting these cards into creatures for your D&D game is that they become a creature all your own. Take the “Rakeclaw Gargantuan” as an example. While this is a good descriptor, what is its proper name? Where does it live, and where does it come from? What does it hunt? Is it feared or venerated? Once you answer these questions you’ll have created a unique encounter.
When converting a Magic card into D&D, don’t be afraid to take inspiration from the italicized flavor-text and mechanics when building your creature. For example, Spellbreaker Behemoth’s card mentions it has eaten a bunch of mages. This might mean it exclusively feeds on spellcasters, leading to fights where it aggressively attacks your party’s mages. Likewise, its abilities on the card indicate it’s hard to fight magically. This might inspire you to give it Magic Resistance or even immunity to a certain school of magic if you want your party to have a challenge.
Don’t be afraid to take your favorite Magic card and turn it into a creature unique to your game! In doing so, you’ll create memories unique to your table that your players will remember forever.
Kavu
Kavu are lizard-like reptiles hailing from Dominaria. While there are obvious comparisons to be made to dinosaurs, Kavu are well known for their huge teeth and distinctive underbites. A Kavu’s fangs dominate their facial features, making hard to tell if these creatures even have eyes. Curiously, it seems that some Kavu even have a talent for magic. While this magic is typically used to escape or devour prey, it begs the question: just what are these creatures?
Kavu’s date back to the earliest days of Magic: the Gathering. Kavu’s have been around for so long that they were dinosaurs before that was even a creature type in Magic. Kavus don’t see much story relevance or many new cards nowadays, but they’ll still appear occasionally. Regardless, there is a lot to love with Kavu, and adding them to your campaign can add a unique twist.
Kavu are vicious predators and possess powerful primal magic. During combat, this can swiftly surprise your players who might believe they’re fighting some form of dinosaur. With over 40 different cards, there are a lot of Kavu to inspire you. With some cards hinting at powerful evolutionary potential and some that are outright just strange and weird, you can even have Kavu encounters at different tiers.
Whether they’re a random encounter during travel or central to your worldbuilding, Kavu make for a great D&D monster. Instead of using a dinosaur or throwing boar or mammoth encounters, you might spice up your setting with these exciting and versatile monsters.
Baloths
Found across the multiverse, the Baloth is best known for its unique facial crests, its customary back spikes, and its ceaseless hunger. While these elements are present in all baloths, there are several examples of how different environments and planes have shaped these creatures. Some baloths have evolved to have craggy plates, others to have a more leathery hide.
Baloths are one example of a distinct Magic creature without its own creature type. In contrast to Thrinaxs and Thoctars however, there are more than 20 cards depicting Baloths. This is great! With such a variance in what Baloths can look like and mechanically do across their cards, you can draw a lot of inspiration for settings and encounters.
With so many different cards that show different variations on a Baloth, you could even end up designing high and low-level encounters with this monster. A party might encounter a Baloth that looks like the “Enormous Baloth” early in their campaign before later encountering an “Elder Baloth” with four horns, reminiscent of “Rampaging Baloths” or “Cragplate Baloths.” With so many cards and so many pieces of art to draw from as inspiration, the Baloths are an excellent monster to place into your D&D campaign easily.
Wait, That’s a Thoctar!
I was honestly shocked to see the art for Territorial Baloth when searching for cards on Scryfall.com for this article. Primarily because, well, that’s just a Thoctar, right? At first, I thought this might genuinely be a mistake in art direction. I could easily imagine the designs for Thoctars and Baloths accidentally blending. It’s hard to keep hundreds of creature types straight and keep them all distinct from each other.
Eventually, however, I found more art that featured Baloths with a version of the Thoctars distinctive sweeping horns. This can feel a little disappointing to see that your distinct and iconic monster is actually not so distinct.
It got even worse when I found an alternate art for “Ravenous Baloth.” You may notice this card bears a striking resemblance to a Kavu! Despite my initial disappointment, there’s actually an exciting world-building opportunity here that you could use for your own campaigns.
Depending on what kind of campaign you’re running, Baloths could serve as an example of dramatic and rapid evolution. To start, you might introduce your players to a herd of Thoctars styled after the “Wooly Thoctar.” Then later you can throw them into a tougher battle against a “Territorial Baloth.” This would show that your current setting is undergoing a dramatic change that causes wildlife to evolve into different species. This might then culminate in a final fight against a “Ravenous Baloth,” a creature fully evolved and distinct from its predecessors, with different behaviours, and much more dangerous.
Make Fun Encounters
Sadly, I couldn’t talk about every fun MtG creature I think would be a great fit for your D&D campaign. However, I hope I’ve managed to inspire you to think outside of the box and give you new creatures you feel like you can add to D&D. Feel free to take a look at some MtG cards and find your own favorites to convert.
Good luck with your next session, and remember to stay creative! Inspiration comes in many forms. There’s no rule that says you can’t combine your favorite hobbies. In the end, you just might create unforgettable encounters your party will talk about for years to come.
