MtG and D&D

[VarianArdell]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to merge the two games together? And no, I don't mean the simple "Let's play a game of MtG in-game!"

[Jallorn]

Hmmm... perhaps a system of building an army based on what cards you draw and what lands you have combined with having a DnD character who can interact with that army. The MtG cards would be used for a rule based army system while everything else would be dealt with as DnD.

You might also want to craft your campaign setting around whatever cards you plan to use.

[Ozreth]

4e?

I kid, I kid : p

[Calmar]

Guess the easiest way is simply to use MtG settings for D&D campaigns.

You also could assign all spells to the five colors (yeah, that'd be an awful lot of work) and limit casters to 2 or 3 colors each.

[Jack Zander]

Guess the easiest way is simply to use MtG settings for D&D campaigns.

You also could assign all spells to the five colors (yeah, that'd be an awful lot of work) and limit casters to 2 or 3 colors each.

It would actually be really easy to assign each spell to a color. The only hassle is the sheer number of spells but most of them don't take any thought really.

[Esser-Z]

Game within a game?

[Zaydos]

I did this one time when a player was missing and I had to wing the session ad-hoc. It was a silly, and crazy session (someone ended up dying and possessing a squirrel, they also unleashed an evil elder god from his prison). It wouldn't have worked for a more serious campaign but I allowed them each to get one card at random from a pile at the beginning and use it for a thematically appropriate effect. Shriekmaw was summoned and had a damage dealing effect when it was, and Pattern of Rebirth was a contingent true resurrection (although sacrificed to stop a lethal attack on the other player). They got a second pair of cards, and proved that the warlock could in fact kill a dragon. It was a fun, if silly, session.

[grarrrg]

It would actually be really easy to assign each spell to a color. The only hassle is the sheer number of spells but most of them don't take any thought really.

It's quick dirty and probably wrong more then right but...
Let each "color" have access to 3 schools of magic, and each school is represented by 2 colors (I know, I know, 8*2 /= 3*5, but close enough)
*White*
Abjuration \ Illusion \ Transmutation
*Blue*
Divination \ Enchantment \ Illusion
*Black*
Enchantment \ Evocation \ Necromancy
*Red*
Conjuration \ Divination \ Evocation
*Green*
Abjuration \ Conjuration \ Necromancy
-----
*Abjuration*
White \ Green
*Conjuration*
Red \ Green
*Divination*
Blue \ Red
*Enchantment*
Blue \ Black
*Evocation*
Black \ Red
*Illusion*
White \ Blue
*Necromancy*
Black \ Green
*Transmutation*
White

I know there can/WILL be lots of arguements, adjust pairings as needed.
End results are basically "Pick 2 colors, you'll have 5 (maybe 6) schools", institute some house rules for casting 'outside' spells and go nuts...

[Gametime]

Game within a game?

Yo dawg, I heard you like games so I put a game within a game so you can game while you game.

Also, Red should probably have Transmutation instead of Divination. Neither is a great fit, but it does get the occasional pumping effect.

Honestly, though, it might make more sense to give each color as many schools as they need. Off the top of my head...

White: Abjuration, Conjuration, Enchantment, Transmutation
Blue: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Illusion, Transmutation
Black: Conjuration, Enchantment, Necromancy
Red: Conjuration, Evocation
Green: Conjuration, Transmutation

Yeah, Blue is overpowered, but Magic players have known that for years. :smallbiggrin:

Some of the selections are for real corner cases. Black gets Enchantment just for the occasional Mindrape-y stuff, since I don't think any other school has good discard analogues.. White gets it for Pacifism-like effects. White and Green both get Transmutation for buffing. Blue gets it for Polymorph and the like. Everyone gets Conjuration because, well, summoning!

For real accuracy, you'd have to pick and choose which spells are appropriate for each color, but the above is probably roughly workable. White and Blue can both lose Transmutation, if they need to, which would have the amusing side effect of making Green the most powerful color by a wide margin.

[Binks]

If you want to go the other way around a system like the Planeswalker cards or the deck master system from Yu-gi-oh (uhh...yeah...I heard about that from a friend *shifty*). Let people build D&D characters and interact normally then when combat starts use duels instead of d&d combat with the players getting their character as a card already on the battlefield, and the various other spells being summons/powers (refluffed as needed). Just thinking the other way around :P.

[hamishspence]

Maybe a D20 game, with a reworked magic system that involves "drawing magic from the land"?

Not quite a merger though- more D&D with some MtG flavoring.

[Gametime]

Another option is to forego actual Magic spells and just try to work in the system. Have your spellcasters write down spells on cards, shuffle them up, and draw them randomly during combat.

Presumably, some spells could be accessed at any time outside of combat but not during combat, and maybe you could swap your combat "deck" around during the day with a few minutes of preparation, to mimic the sideboard.

I can't say for sure this would have any good implications for gameplay, but it sounds interesting.

[Master_Rahl22]

You could have everybody base their characters off of Johnny, Timmy, or Spike. Timmy is an uber charger, Johnny is a wizard always searching for the perfect combination of spells to become immortal or to have infinite gold or something, and Spike searches the Theoretical Optimization forums for insane builds and plays a Jack B. Quick or Jumplomancer or something. :smalltongue:

[Dralnu]

If you want MTG with DnD flavor I'd do something like this:

You have MTG decks as usual, lands, creatures, enchantments, equipment, instants, sorceries.

Instants would be swift/free action spells. Sorceries would be standard / full action spells. Enchantments would be buff and debuff spells. Equipment would be magical items. Lands would still be required to cast spells, each card would have a corresponding casting cost based on its level and color.

Turns would work the same way, with similar phases. One land a turn, one combat phase, etc.

The goal would still remain the same: reduce the opponent's health total to 0. The health totals should start much higher though, probably around 500 health or so.

Combat would be similar with some minor differences. There is no move action, it is replaced by a second standard action. Attackers can also choose to attack a specific creature(s) instead of the opposing player, just like you have the option of attacking a planeswalker. The defending player may choose to block this attack with other creatures if able, but the targeted creature isn't under compulsion to block (unless a debuff forces him to).

Flyers can only be blocked by other flyers and "reach." Distance would have to be addressed somehow. "Reach" would have to be elaborated on more.

I would say "Reach" would have varying degrees. Attack range would correspond to what reach modifier the creature / spell has. For example, a creature with Reach +1 may split his attacks (if he has more than one) between two targets (1+1), a creature with Reach +2 may split between three, etc. Reach +2 is required for non-flying creatures to attack flyers. Example: Spiked Chain would be a Reach +1 weapon, whereas a Light Crossbow would have Reach +2.

Color wheel would be tricky and subject to debate, but people have already mentioned possibilities on how each spell fits. There can also be bonuses to combining same-color abilities, and penalties to opposite (white vs. black, blue vs. red etc)

Creatures would have stats, be assigned a color based on their defining attributes, and have a casting cost based on their overall power (ECL). For example, a Human Fighter 1 would be ECL1 and require 1 mana. They still have summoning sickness so they do nothing on the turn that they're cast.

Spellcasters have inferior physical stats to non-spellcasters and don't have spells of their own, but instead can allow the player to use the spells (cards) that they meet the pre-req for. For example, a Human Red Wizard 5 would be ECL5 and cost 5mana. You could then use the wizard to cast the Fireball card, dealing 5d6 damage to all the opponent's creatures.

From here would be the starting point of the strategy. Do you focus your deck on cheap creatures and gradually equip them with stronger magical items? Do you focus on the high-end curve with a much slower start, but then start busting how high level wizards and magic? Do you target the opponent's solitary wizard in hopes of killing him, effectively shutting down the arcane spells in the opponent's hand until he manages to draw another wizard to play?

EDIT: Wow, I ended up writing way more than I expected to.

[boj0]

*Urge to stat over 9000 creatures rising*
Kidding aside, are you trying to implement D&D into Magic or vice versa?
You could have everyone hold Decks of Illusions/Many Things (re-worked to be mainly blast/summon spells).
Also you could have several of the Artifacts work into the game as various magic items (Sword of Kaldra > Sword of Kas :smallsmile:)

[SilveryCord]

It's difficult to make an analogue. You'd be best using an MtG setting, and focusing on non-walker characters. Oldwalkers are epic characters in DnD, and even neowalkers are level 10+ full casters. You could tell a great story, however, focusing on characters in Ravnica, Lorwyn, Dominaria, Mirrodin, etcetera. There's plenty going on there.

White has lots of warblades and clerics.
Blue has lots of swordsages, wizards, and strange monster classes.
Black has... the undead, what else!?
Red has goblins, viashino, kobolds.
Green has all kinds of monsters, elves, and druids out the wazoo.

Keep in mind, though, the colors are more about an attitude and play style than 'the elements'. Red has used everything from fire to lightning bolts to snowstorms to destroy things; it doesn't care what it uses, it just causes pure havoc. Blue doesn't really care about 'water' or 'air' so much as it cares about using the smartest option available. White is not concerned with THE POWER OF GRAIN, it is concerned with equality and justice. Black is not just evil swamp creatures, it's the thief in the marketplace, the corrupt politician, and the backstabbing friend. Green is pretty much about growing stuff wherever it can; huge beasts, awe inspiring forests... and if there's nothing to grow, then the fungus will still survive. Just keep that in mind when you divide spells up.


Edit: Also, if you want to go the opposite direction.. Zendikar or Rise of Eldrazi block draft is pretty much D&D themed. There are traps, there are quests, there are adventuring parties, there is treasure, and there are eventually eldritch abominations to slay.

[Jjeinn-tae]

I have some thoughts on the subject, whether it is to you're liking I don't know, but here it is.

Ok, focusing on spellcasters here, in magic they fuel their spells more or less through tapping the ambient mana of the land. To be able to gain mana from land though, they essentially need to go around attuning themselves to land in the world, as land is limited, and it takes a while to get to places to attune land, there is fierce competition for the land, and it is frequently stolen if the spellcaster does not adequately defend it.

I'd say a square-mile of land will grant one point of mana to the controlling mage. This mana recovers every minute for use in other spells. Each land grants it's own color of mana, you know how that lines up, mountains are red, plains are white, swamps are black, forests are green, islands are blue, as this is not a card game anymore, you could probably let it go by for a player to establish a different kind of mana if they can explain how it is different from the others (i.e. not taking different parts from other colors).

How is this mana used? There's a couple ways you can go about it, it all comes down to the spells, but there are a couple things that you need to decide for it.


In magic, the deck seems to imply that mages do not have the greatest control over their magic, either situations fluctuate to change their "hand" or there is subtle differences in the mana that only allow certain spells.


if you want to keep that flavor, you probably want players to keep a list of their spells, and you either make cards for them to "draw" or roll randomly to decide what they have available. Higher levels could conceivably allow a larger "hand."


Another possibility, turns in magic take place over a long period of time, in which they research new spells, which need to be expended, for room for others.


Here, you have character's getting a smaller repertoire of spells overall, their hand essentially their only abilities they have access to at the moment. With a magic turn lasting a long time, this means that a use in magic is probably several applications of the same spell during it. The catch is to replace a spell for a different spell, you must use it in combat (whether once, or running with multiple applications would have to be decided). Whether their hand is randomly determined, or not should also be decided. Again, I would suggest higher levels grant a larger "hand."


If you don't like either of those options, I suggest giving the players access to every spell they know at any time, provided they have the mana for it. They have to research new spells, which my thoughts on are below.


I would suggest instead of creating individual spells, you have various "seeds" like the epic rules in D&D. DIfferent applications would require different amounts of mana, and most seeds would be exclusive to a mana color.

Let's say a mage who has tuned in with 4 miles of mountains wants to make a new burn spell. He uses the damage seed (which is relatively universal) to give 2 damage, this costs 2 mana to cast (red in this case). He then uses the spell-casting-time seed to reduce it to an instant (a swift action) which costs one colorless mana. This brings the spell's mana cost to 1 and 2 red.

For purely colorless spells, I would suggest making them more "artificial" maybe technologically based (as in artifacts and such). Most regular mages shouldn't be able to make spells that only require colorless mana, but another "universal" seed could be used to make a spell colorless (as you see in some burn spells, like Ghostfire).


A quick brainstorming list of seeds:

Universal:

Spell-casting-time
Area-of-Effect
Most Special Abilities (tacked on to a creature)
*Scalable
*Summons

*seeds are in all colors, and require that type of mana instead of colorless

Black:

Drain (Damage target, heal caster)
Destruction (Should be expensive, with heavy limits built into spells)
Fear (Added to creatures, or possibly caster if you allow gishes here)
Regeneration (Only able to effect undead usually)
Necromancy (Creation of Undead and such)
Swarm Summoning

Blue:

Illusions
Dazing (lock the use of a spell a caster knows for a potentially long while)
Stuns
Clairvoyance (quick research of spells, generally single use)
Divination (figure out what an enemy caster is capable of)
Damage
Protections

Green:

Regeneration (Returns things from death, if cast the instant they die, they come back stunned)
Healing
Destruction (Only against unnatural things)
Swarm Summoning

Red:

Damage
...Mind blank here, can't think of anything else

White:

Healing
Vigilance
First/Double Strike
Stuns
Protections



Of course, there's probably a logical reason to use something like destruction in white occasionally, but that should be limited.



Then, my final idea is for a "sporting duel" of sorts. If two mages need to settle things with violence, and are honorable about it, they will meet in a special demi-plane of sorts. It is a complete void with nothing in it, but it is so alterable that the mages can create land to get mana, it is frowned on for a mage to try and destroy their opponents' lands without casting a spell.



So, what do you think?

[arguskos]

When I was but a young scrub on this here forum, I drew up certain magic cards into D&D stats. They are all artifacts, and are mostly equipment cards, but you may find them of use. Enjoy! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106946)