making stats for card monsters

[jonnybard]

I am trying to find a way to easily convert stats from other games sources especially card games in to d20, magic the gathering, yugioh,heroclix. Etc. Any ideas?

[inuyasha]

You could just basically hand a decent homebrewer the card and say "have at", I could certainly try and help, I've been meaning to get back into homebrewing for a while now.

[Jormengand]

I am trying to find a way to easily convert stats from other games sources especially card games in to d20, magic the gathering, yugioh,heroclix. Etc. Any ideas?

Look at the current Base Class Contest. There are two people doing classes based on MtG in the running.

[Zaydos]

Define "easy way". In my experience there's no algorithm, formula, or program you can use to convert monster from X to D&D (or ttrpg of your choice). It's not necessarily particularly hard, but neither is making a monster from scratch. It trades one difficulty (coming up with concept) for another. It's a project of translation, and requires the additional balancing act of figuring out when what's acceptable in one game is too powerful in another. And yeah, Inuyasha may in fact have the "easy" way, make a request interesting enough on a message board full of people who enjoy homebrewing stuff and various tcgs and someone will probably convert it for you.

As for advice on doing it yourself:

With creatures one thing to consider is what you intend to use them for. Antagonists, or summons? With M:tG (since that's the one I've had experience converting it will be the one primarily referenced) you can get into interesting difficulties. With summons you get creatures with powers that make them vastly more useful relative to their P/T and therefore cannot be available at low levels, but if you give them hit dice and basic combat abilities in line with other creatures of their P/T you have creatures which are useless. This gives 3 options: Don't convert certain creatures; accept them being useless; or don't hold printed P/T as sacrosanct. I decided that similar to video games in the early 90s a heavy helping of localization was probably useful in making things function well in D&D, i.e. I put an emphasis on making them function for D&D over remaining true to M:tG. You could do it the other way, which is probably easier, but easily becomes broken as a creature in D&D.

Now of course if PCs can't summon them things get easier. You can throw creatures with powers you don't want the PCs to have (though be careful because look at the cockatrice, notice the problems, look at efreet and consider those as well). I made slivers in this category, but they do have less of this problem than one might fear. You could probably allow a sliver familiar, for example, if you weren't making slivers a large part of the game, or if you decided to follow new slivers (they didn't exist when I converted ones) and have the benefits only apply towards others of their hive. But in general it is easier to make/balance monsters that are not summonable.

The biggest thing to remember, though, is if you intend to use them in the game (I'm assuming 3.5 here but this really doesn't matter which system) make them for that game and do not feel bound by their official stats in another game. Except as an intellectual exercise it's more important that they work than perfectly duplicate. Don't be scared to make a 2/2 stronger than a 3/3, or a 4/4 stronger than a 5/5. You have players who will enjoy fighting a god from Theros? Make it level appropriate whether it's a 4/4 or an 8/8.

And if you're interested in some previous attempts... here have some slivers. Three years old, and definitely a learning project (they taught me some of the above). If I made them now they'd not end up the same, but they'd still possibly be similar. And someone else's take on slivers, I learned about it after I'd started making mine.

I will also note making things as summons much, much, much harder than making them as just antagonists. Which is pretty predictable since stuff for PC use has to have a lot more checks against abuse, and in general just a more fine tuned balance. That and CR is so vague already, and ultimately dependent upon what sort of party they're going up against I might not normally try to be particularly accurate in that department and leave a "use your judgment on whether this is a good encounter" guideline... which ok I take as a given with homebrew and typically forget to list.

[Debihuman]

I am trying to find a way to easily convert stats from other games sources especially card games in to d20, magic the gathering, yugioh,heroclix. Etc. Any ideas?

Unfortunately, there is no "easy" way to stat monsters. Stats in card games don't necessarily mean the same in 3.5 (D20 is now strictly D&D). See my versions of Springjack ,Storm Crow, and Dreidel Golem as examples in my creations.

Debby

[jonnybard]

Thanks all i was specifically looking at some of the cyber or machine monsters from yugioh for current cyberpunk adventure, was thinking of mtg cards as summons for my next hi fantasy game. given me some ideas to launch from