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We are almost through my month of Magic to D&D conversions. Today's card is the last I go "deep" into, building out the initial inspiration into a full-fledged creation. Be sure to check out some of the previous posts where I went deep into the Talruum Champion, Flame Jet, and Dementia Bat.
Those previous posts included two creatures and a trap. Today, we have a magic item which was inspired by the Magic: The Gathering card Azorious Keyrune. If you are a Magic player, you know that the colors blue and white are heavy on flyers. Add in the flavor text that mentions "soaring high" and the artwork that is an eagle totem if I ever saw one, and this item almost made itself. I image this keyrune (I'm not exactly sure what that is), as the head on an impressive looking quarterstaff. The wielder of the staff gets to activate a variety of cool abilities all centered around the flight-motif. 5e is full of these types of items that center around a particular flavor. The Spider Staff from Lost Mines of Phandelver is an example one. This one is another. This staff could easily be a gift from an grateful Aarakocra NPC. Perhaps the NPC takes a PC's mundane staff and performs a series of rituals, imbuing the power and spirit of their kind into the item, transforming it into this magic staff. This is just one possible option for introducing this into your game. What others can you think of? Let me know on Twitter. Happy Questing!
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One of my recent Magic to DND conversions really sparked my imagination. I'm always interested in finding new ways to make combat exciting and dangerous. Many times, this can be accomplished with dealing some effect other than damage when a creature lands a blow or activates an ability. That's what I employed when converting the Dementia Bat. The art here informs a lot of the creation I came up with. This thing is obviously a construct, a menacing and sinister one to boot. The effect on the card calls for the opponent to discard cards. This translates well to the loss of spell slots in 5e. That ability pairs well with psychic damage as you'll see in the stat block below. Flavor text, too, can help inform a conversion. I just love the first part of that text, "When terror outweighs all other thoughts..." Eerie. Creepy. Perfect for the right setting! Another component I try to consider when home brewing monsters is the "WHY." Why does this thing exist? Who made it? What does it want? Why is it against the party? As you'll see in the description, these creatures were created to suck the arcane power from magic users. Have one of these land on your party's wizard and watch the tension and anxiety go up! Much, much more exciting than 1d6 piercing damage. Without further ado, I give you the Dementia Bat. Feel free to use this in your world. If you do, let me know how it went. Thanks and Happy Questing!
All month long I've been converting cards from Magic: the Gathering into D&D ideas. Today, Flame Jet from Urza's Destiny came up. This card was not particularly good in 1999 when it was printed, and it definitely isn't a good card now (note: it has never been reprinted). Be that as it may, it still managed to inspire a pretty nice environment trap/hazard for our 5e games. Travel is can be a difficult facet of the game for some DMs and players. No one likes a daily grind of random encounters and rotating watches, and a montage-approach can sometimes cheapen the experience if not done correctly. This post DOES NOT come close to solving or addressing this problem, but I have found traps or hazards like the one below helpful in getting players from Point A to Point B with a little bit of excitement, consequence, and action. The important thing is the concept of Failing Forward. Regardless of how the PCs roll and what consequences they face, at the end of the day, they reach their destination...perhaps with a memorable journey to look back on. Without further ado, I give you Flame Jets. Feel free to download the pdf below and use it in your games. If you do, I'd love to hear about. Hit me up on Twitter @rjquestgiver.
I've been busy converting cards from Magic: the Gathering into D&D 5e concepts. Recently, I somewhat randomly selected the Talruum Champion card from Visions, a Magic set which came out way back in 1997. This was the golden age of Magic for me. I was in seventh grade, not a care in the world, playing Magic with my friends and family at every possible moment, and spending all of my lunch money at the local game shop on packs of cards. With that in mind, I jumped at the chance to take this pretty pedestrian Magic card and make it something epic for our D&D games. Below is what I came up with, the Talruum Champion! This guy is an intense, suped-up version of a normal minotaur. He has the Brute ability from the bugbear and wields two scimitars (to match the art) instead of a greataxe. I also home brewed the First Strike ability to match the card's mechanics and flavor text. Included is a little background for he and his clan. I imagine them as desert-dwellers, territorial, and extremely proud. I've been reading Troy Denning's The Verdant Passage recently, which is a D&D novel placed in the Dark Sun setting. These guys would fit perfectly in that world! I must give credit to the wonderful people who created Legendary Bestiary over on the DMs Guild. That is where I got the Legendary Actions that appear in the stat block below. That supplement, in my-opinion, is a must-have for DMs. It helps you take mundane and boring monsters, and create bosses or mini-bosses out of them. Anytime I have a lead ogre or a fabled owlbear, I turn to that supplement to make the creature stand out from its peers. Anytime your Big Bad Evil Guy has a pet dire wolf, or the party must negotiate with the centaur chief....turn to this supplement to make those creatures shine! I can't recommend it enough. (Bonus: they have other supplements in this line to cover higher CRs and extra source books). Without further ado, I give you the Talruum Champion. Feel free to download the pdf below and use it in your games. If you do, I'd love to hear about. Hit me up on Twitter @rjquestgiver. Happy questing!
Back on February 1st I started my month-long project to convert a mostly random card from Magic: The Gathering into a D&D 5e concept. You can view February Feature for more details on that project.
For today, I want to expand on a few of the concepts from the first week and string them together into a rough adventure outline. My goal is to do this a time or two more throughout the month. I hope these expanded treatments provide inspiration to you, dear reader. I can't tell you how often I've received a partial idea from some book, show, piece of art or tweet that has sparked something within me and lead to a great font of creativity. I hope the below can do that for you. Our adventure sketch starts off with the PCs traveling toward a lone, distant mountain in search of treasure and a fabled relic rumored to be lost within the peak. No one has dare braved this mission in generations due to the rumors of undead guarding the horde. First, the PCs must traverse a bleak and swampy stretch of land leading up to mountain. I imagine this place very similar to the Dead Marshes from Lord of the Rings. Instead of the faces of the dead appearing in the muck, however, let's use a howling wind that carries the agonizing cries of the departed. This is where our first Magic card conversion comes in: Maddening Wind. This card serves as an environmental hazard, much like a blizzard or extreme heat. Depending the scale you use, PCs may be traversing this landscape for miles, hours, or days. The scale will determine how often you want to call for checks. Whenever you decide to call for checks, PCs need to succeed on a WIS saving throw or suffer psychic damage. Adjust the DC and damage as you feel appropriate. If stringing checks together, maybe the first failed check deals 1d4, the next failed check 1d8, the next failed check, 2d6, etc. Conversely, perhaps each failed check only deals 1d6, but after the third fail, the PC suffers Madness effect as found in the DMG. As PCs are traversing this landscape, we need another layer of threat. This is where the Bog Rats come in. Treat these critters as a suped-up swarm of rats and introduce them when and where you need to apply extra tension or amp up the sense of despair. The rates get advantage on bite attacks if the scent of blood is in the air. They also carry the troglodyte's stench ability, meaning they can temporarily poison a PC. I imagine the PCs marching along through this muck when one of them steps through a soft spot, sinking one leg deep into the swampy mud below. As they extract their leg, a swarm of rats follows up through the hole and starts crawling up the character who unwittingly disturbed them! Eventually, the PCs make it out of the muck and to their mountain destination. At this point they see an grand and ornate opening carved into the side of the mountain, obviously a vestige of a long-lost kingdom seated here ages before. Before this doorway stands an army of undead at full attention, as inspired by Lim-Dul's High Guard. This is a battalion of skeletons (you decide the appropriate amount for your group). These are special skeletons though. Give them advantage on initiative checks and make it so they can't be surprised. Essentially, these undead stand at the ready, unmoving, unblinking, until a threat enters their radius and then they attack with the unison and determination of Dany's Unsullied from Game of Thrones. What's more, give each skeleton the zombie's undead fortitude ability to account for the card's regeneration ability. Finally, the PCs make it through the undead, into the mountain palace, and find the Big Bad Evil Guy. Depending on character level, this could totally be a lich or some home brewed lessor lich. Maybe it's a wraith or perhaps a Sword Wraith Commander from Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. For flavor and story, I think I'd go with the Commander. Perhaps he orchestrated a misguided coup against his queen long ago and now he is damned to walk these halls as spirit, constantly reminded the the noble oath he broke all those years ago. This can also explain the horde of undead outside the gates. Those skeletons were soldiers under his command that he corrupted toward his ill-fated cause. Sure, they killed the queen and usurped power, but then ruin followed. The kingdom collapsed and their souls were damned. According to its stat block, the Commander's wears a breastplate. Make it magical and make it half-plate or full-plate to better suit the needs of your party. Either way, upon slaying the spirit, the PCs can loot an item inspired by Ashnod's Battle Gear. While wearing this armor, the PC gets +2 damage to all melee attacks and advantage on Intimidation checks. Their Hit Die pool, however, is reduced by two while wearing it and they can't remove the armor without a Remove Curse spell. It's powerful, but it's tinged with corruption of the spirit who previously wore it. There you have it, a sketch of an adventure inspired by just FOUR Magic: the Gathering cards! I hope you enjoyed this creative exercise. What elements would you have included? What obvious opportunities did I miss? Hit me up on Twitter @rjquestgiver to let me know. |
AuthorD&D 5e enthusiast. Creator on DMsguild. Supporter of creators, content and good times. Follow me on Twitter @rjquestgiver Archives
July 2021
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