D&D: Five Card-Based Magic Items For When Your ‘D&D’ Characters Want to Have Magic Cards
This is a gathering of magic cards, but not in the way you’d think. Here are five card-based magic items from D&D.
D&D and Magic: the Gathering go hand in hand, and have since the money-printing collectible card game propelled Wizards of the Coast to the top of the charts. But even more so these days. Sets like Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, and Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate are sure to be only the beginning. Especially as WotC faces mounting pressure from Hasbro to keep making the numbers go up while having fewer employees with which to do that.
But the flow is two-way. And recently, D&D got a whole slew of magic cards. Though not Magic cards. Just plain cards that are magical. However I feel like it’s only a matter of time before Commander Decks start appearing in D&D as magical items that you can acquire with some kind of crossover purchase.
In the meantime, here are some of the best magical card-based items out there.
Deck of Wonder
The Deck of Wonder is a deck of 13-22 cards that was created “in the image” of the Deck of Many Things. Although it behaves in a much kinder way. The Deck of Wonder is like a Deck of Many Things for people who want to do something like indoor skydiving, where it feels like you’re risking your life, but you’ll be not actually in any real lasting danger.
Most of the “negative” cards in the Deck of Wonder last only until your next long rest. While positive cards allow you to gain some lasting benefits that are surprisingly powerful. From a Deck of Wonder, you might gain resistance to an energy damage (acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder) for 1d12 days, or gain one-time Death Ward that lasts until you would next drop to 0 hit points, instead of dropping to 1 hit point.
Or you might be trapped in an extradimensional space for 1d4 minutes, reappearing potentially nauseated for an hour. Or maybe you’ll end up with an uncommon magic weapon!
The possibilities are endless and mostly positive.
Fate Dealer’s Deck
This magic item, introduced in the Book of Many Things, is for the holy warrior in your party. It’s a Deck of Cards that functions as a spellcasting focus for a Cleric or Paladin. While holding the deck, you gain a +1 bonus to your spell attack rolls and save DCs (+2 and +3 variants can be found as well).
But it also has another useful feature that makes it more enticing. While holding the deck, you can draw a card and roll one of your Hit Dice, adding the Deck’s bonus to the number rolled. When you do so, one creature that you can see either takes that much radiant damage or regains that many hit points. No saves, ifs, ands, or buts. So when you realllllly need to finish someone off, this is the icing on that cake.
Deck of Wild Cards
The Deck of Wild Cards, on the other hand, just lets you be Gambit. The Deck of Wild Cards lets you draw a random card and throw it at a target (using your Dexterity modifier for the attack roll). On a hit, your target takes 1d4 slashing damage and is affected by one of four different magical effects:
- The card bursts into flames, causing the target and everyone near it to burst into flames, taking 2d8 fire damage unless they succeed on a DC 15 Dex save
- The card bursts with lightning, blinding the target for a turn, and dealing 1d6 damage to each creature within 10 feet of the target, unless the target succeeds at a DC 15 Dex save
- The card freezes the target, dealing 1d10 cold damage period, and then if the target fails a DC 15 Con save, they are restrained
- The card explodes with concussive force, dealing 1d6 force damage to the target and each creature within 5 feet of it, knocking them prone unless they save on a DC 15 Str save.
Deck of Illusions
When you want to live out your Yu-Gi-Oh! dreams, you want to reach for a Deck of Illusions.
This deck of magical cards allows you to draw a card and hurl it to the ground, at which point it becomes a convincing illusion of one or more creatures, depending on what card you draw.
You could get anything from a Dark Magician (Archmage) and Apprentice, to a Red Dragon (whether or not it has blue eyes is up to you). While these creatures can’t do any real, actual harm, they will make Kaiba regret the day he played only for power, instead of trusting the Heart of the Cards.
Deck of Dimensions
This deck of magic cards lets you mess around with planar travel. Unlike every other magical deck of cards, this one doesn’t care about drawing a card at random. Instead, it comes with six charges, which you can spend in various quantities to use the following properties:
- As a bonus action, you can draw a Marked Card, allowing you to set a place to teleport to as an action in the future, no spellcasting required (1 charge)
- As an action, you can cast the Arcane Gate spell, opening a portal to another dimension/world/reality (3 charges)
- Teleport within 60 feet as a bonus action (1 charge)
That last one is probably the one you’ll use most, since it’s basically better Misty Step, up to six times per day. But the other ones can come in handy.
Deck of Many Things
Finally, this wouldn’t be a list of the best magic cards in D&D without including the campaign ender itself, the Deck of Many Things.
This deck of magic cards has a well-earned reputation steeped in infamy. Draw from its confines at your own peril. You might end up gaining a level or 50,000 gold pieces, or a magical item that you’ve been lusting after.
Or you could be entombed forever in an extradimensional sphere, or lose all forms of wealth you possess, or your soul could be trapped outside of your body, or every magic item you wear or carry could disintegrate, or you could permanently lose 1d4 + 1 points of Intelligence. The list goes on.
It’s probably a bad idea to draw from the Deck of Many Things. Unless…
