Converting Magic the Gathering Cards to D20 D&D?
Funnily enough, just as I thought about doing this, I found a website where someone else has been at it for the last few months. Anyway, this place needs some content and I'm in a doing mood, so I thought I'd continue at it.
A Matter of Scale:
The first thing we need to address about creatures in Magic the Gathering is that the two major ways in which they are rated, attack and defence, take in the efficacy of the card as a whole rather than necessarily a single creature – the best example is that the Benalish Hero, who we can assume is one person, is rated 1 attack and defence, the same as Mon's Goblin Raiders – presumably a small group of goblins. This equivalency is simply defined in D&D through Challenge Ratings and character levels; presumably our Benalish Hero is a high level character, and that makes her roughly equivalent to a group of goblins. From this we can create a scale for conversion between points and levels (this only makes sense if the creatures M:tG stats are both equal; I'll talk about when this isn't the case later). Assuming that a card that represents a squad of individuals numbers roughly ten individuals of CR ½, i.e. Orcs or men, this group would provide a balanced encounter for a 5th level party (that is four characters at an average of 5th level); now we already established that our single brave Benalish Hero is a match for these enemies on her own; the problem is that the CR system assumes a party of four characters is equal to those 10 CR ½ creatures (which is in turn EL 5), but we have just the one Benalish Hero. This means we could assume then that the Benalish Hero would be several levels higher than 5th, 8th maybe, to take on the EL 5 encounter on her own. However, in M:tG, in a fair fight, both the hero and the goblins would be destroyed, where as an 8th level D&D character could probably handily defeat the goblins and carry on her way. The CR system is judged in such a way that a EL equal to that of the average party level will drain approximately 20% of the parties resources (in hit points, spells, healing potions etc…), and after 4 of these encounters the party would need to rest; in our little case study, the goblins and the hero both end up dead (or at least, out of the fighting for good, depending on how long you think the average game of Magic takes in "game time"), so assuming the combatants all expand enough resources to make up for numbers, meaning that the hero uses 20% of her resources for herself and each missing party member, that gives us a 5th level hero 100% used up, either out of the fight for a while, or dead.
| Magic the Gathering Statistics (For creatures with equal attack/defence) | D&D Individual | D&D Group | |
| 1/1 | 5th Level character, CR 5 monster | 10 CR ½ creatures, 5 CR 1 creatures, 15 CR 1/3 creatures | |
| 2/2 | 8th Level character, CR 8 monster | 10 CR 1 creatures, 5 CR 3 creatures | |
| 3/3 | 9th Level character, CR 9 monster | 10 CR 2 creatures, 5 CR 4 creatures | |
| 4/4 | 10th Level Character, CR 10 monster | 10 CR 3 creatures, 5 CR 5 creatures | |
| 5/5 | 11th Level character, CR 11 monster | 10 CR 4 creatures, 5 CR 6 creatures | |
| 6/6 | 12th Level character, CR 12 monster | 10 CR 5 creatures, 5 CR 7 creatures | |
| 7/7 | 13th Level character, CR 13 monster | 10 CR 6 creatures, 5 CR 8 creatures | |
| 8/8 | 14th Level character, CR 14 monster | 10 CR 7 creatures, 5 CR 8 creatures | |
What about uneven stats?
| Magic the Gathering Statistic | Attack Bonus | Armour Class |
| 1 | +10 | 18 |
| 2 | +14 | 21 |
| 3 | +16 | 23 |
| 4 | +17 | 25 |
| 5 | +19 | 26 |
| 6 | +20 | 27 |
| 7 | +22 | 28 |
| 8 | +23 | 29 |
