The Gathering

So lately I've gotten into the horrible addictive wallet-cancer that is Magic the Gathering.

But, as with many things, this was one I was able to drag back to DnD and find: maybe Wizards has finally contributed something I could stand to use in my games.

So here's the rough draft:

The Summoner
The summoner is a special class of magic-user whose energies extend through the many planes, and whose magic-tendrily-things can call creatures from unknown worlds to assist them in combat and such.
Mechanically:

Picture from here: http://www.untoldindy.com/images/cardAnatomy.png

So the creature is roughly whatever it is, so here you get a mounted knight. Things like this with a separate mount and knight will be treated as a single creature, like they are bound by the energy which transported them or whatever, same with swarms and such.
The converted mana cost of a card is what level spell it is. At this stage I assume the Summoner uses MU spell tables.
Toughness is the number of hit dice a card has, probably in d6s, but up to DM discretion and dependent on what is reasonable in the rule set.
For power:

1. Summoned creature can hit for 1d4 of damage
2. 1d6 of damage
3. 1d8
4. 1d10
5. 1d12
6. 2d6
7. 3d4 or 2d8 or 3d6 or whatever you want, you get the idea

Abilities work like they seem like they would. First Strike creatures win initiative, Double Strike hits twice, Flyers fly,  Lifelink gains health for damage dealt, Defenders can't attack but maybe do some damage when hit if they still have power, and maybe Trample can knock people down. The DM needs to either write these out or improvise well. Not everything will convert.


This could be a new caster class, or you could replace your book's summon spell with this, and it might even scale better: you can slot the spell at any level and then you can summon a creature of appropriate level.

The DM could either have some cards set aside sorted by level for selection or random draw, or you could have players roll randomly for what creatures they are able to summon, or you could let a player use his/her own cards. My group often brings cards anyway, to play while waiting for players to show up, or in case a few characters die and can't come in for a few minutes, so this could be interesting, to have people see their own deck in a different light, and it makes each summoner different.

Obviously this is in the early stages, I just wanted to get the idea out there. It would be great to hear any suggestions, I'm sure other people have thought about this before.