Abstract: Exploring the link between the five (5) colors of mana in Magic: The Gathering and the eight (8) schools of magic in Dungeons and Dragons, through specific names shared by both spells and cards.
Methodology: Using a proprietary database I made of D&D spells from various Player's Handbooks, and a lot of copy-pasting into
Scryfall, I determined that nearly 200 spells had names that were the same as, or extremely similar to, Magic cards. By adding the colors of those cards into my database, I was able to sort by both color identity (which all cards have) and school of magic (to which all spells belong) to determine any correlations between the two.
I am also aware that in the flavor of Magic, cards are also technically "spells," but I'm using CARD to refer only to the strategy game side of the equation, while reserving the term SPELL only for the role-playing game side. For reference, the players handbookses I used for my database are from Advanced D&D (printed in 1980, hereafter referred to as 2nd edition), Third Edition (printed 2000, 3rd), and Fifth Edition (printed 2014, 5th).
Findings (listed alphabetically):
Abjuration (protection, disruption) is the least well represented school among Magic cards, with just three spells sharing exact names, and three more sharing partial names (or similar ideas). Only one of the top three spells appear in multiple editions: Death Ward was in 3rd and 5th, but was only in the Abjuration school in its latest version - it started out in Necromancy (see below). Meanwhile, the card
Death Ward is a White instant from Magic's very first set (Limited Edition Alpha and Beta), that basically mirrors the effects of the 5e spell. If that doesn't cover the "protection" aspect of abjuration enough, consider that White also has a cycle of cards all titled
Circle of Protection, and the majority of the cards in the game that refer to the static ability Protection (cf. rule 702.16) are White.
As for the disruption side of ABJ, let's look at the phenomena of countermagic and bounce.
Counterspell, also from Limited Edition, is an exact match for the spell in 5th of the same name (countering spells was a much more complicated process in 2nd and 3rd). Then there's the spell from all three D&D editions Dispel Magic, the effect of which is actually more similar to the White Magic card
Disenchant than it is to the Blue
Dispel, which is just a conditional counterspell. In another strange yet appropriate disconnect, the 3rd edition spell Dismissal is basically as close as you can get to a D&D phrasing of "return target creature to its owner's hand," which is an effect commonly found in Blue mana (e.g.
Unsummon). Incidentally, there are
four cards with dismissal in the name, three of which are Blue and contain either counter of bounce effects. In terms of utility spells, the card
Intruder Alarm shares some important similarities with the 3rd and 5th edition spell Alarm.
Conclusion: White and Blue pretty accurately sum up Abjuration, full stop. This one was like the tutorial level of a video game.
Conjuration (creation, summoning) has one of the clearest connections to Magic of the schools, but somewhat of a disconnect between specific card names. On the one hand, Summoning is a subtype of Conjuration in 2nd and 3rd editions (not just a descriptor, like the two words next to Abjuration), and Magic's oldest Creature cards all have "Summon" printed on them. So technically, the relative majority of all Magic cards correspond to the Conjuration school. While all colors of mana obviously have access to Creature cards, the one that immediately comes to mind is Green, since the relative majority of all creature spells are Green. Although it's worth noting that five 2nd edition spells outline the type of creature being summoned, which line up with Creature cards that are either Red (Conjure
Fire Elemental and Conjure
Earth Elemental), Blue (Aerial
[Air] Servant and
Invisible Stalker), or Black ([Dread]
Cacodemon).
On the other hand, there are ten other Conjuration spells with Magic card names, out of which all five colors of mana are represented. But the most puzzling part of this school is that nine of these spells appear in all three D&D editions, but NONE of them are part of the Conjuration school more than twice. Fog Cloud (originally Alteration) and
Web (originally Evocation) are the only two-fer's, as they are CONJ spells in both 3rd and 5th, but the former of these is a bit of a stretch, since Fog is an effect in Magic that's most associated with
Green, but the summoning (i.e. creature focused) element also points to a
Blue element. The only one-for-three I think really belongs here is
Teleport, which was originally in the Alteration/Transmutation school in 2nd/3rd (see below for details on the name change), and then made the switch to Conjuration in the latest edition. I guess they thought that when one teleports, they effectively summon themselves to a different location, rather than altering their position in space/time? Makes sense to me. I'll be sure to cover the other eight of these spells in the ensuing schools where they're more appropriate.
Conclusion: While all colors use Conjuration for casting Creature cards, Green is clearly at the top, not just because of the abundance of Green creatures, but also for effects that focus on finding creatures and bringing them into play (e.g.
Summoner's Pact,
Savage Summoning,
Lurking Predators).
Divination (information, prediction) is not only the name of a spell in the Divination school in all three D&D editions (I know, very meta), it's ALSO the name of
a Magic card... I mean, what more do you need? And that card lets you draw cards, which IS exactly Magic's version of information. Well, it's technically information AND resources; scrying (rule 701.18) is closest to Magic's approximation of pure information, and most of the cards that involve scrying are Blue. Another Blue card that has to do with information is
Clairvoyance - the DIV spell version was paired with Clairaudience in 3rd, but in 2nd the aural version was its own spell.
Looking at the other aspect of this school, we see that
Foresight is about as perfect a Magic synonym for "predication" as possible, even though the spell only showed up in 3rd and 5th. As a notable exception, we should look at another so called three-for-three spell,
Commune with Nature, which is, predictably, a Green Magic card. Green has a lot of "look at the top X cards of your library" type cards (not as many as Blue), but they generally only allow you to pick a creature or a land from them, showcasing a form of selective, nature-based Divination.
Conclusion: Divination is Blue -- it works for the card and the school. Also maybe with a small Green splash.
Enchantment (mind-affecting, compulsion) has by far the largest disconnect between D&D and Magic, since Enchantment is also the name of a card type, which encompasses many various strategies, only some of which are covered in the Enchantment school. In fact, some of the top Enchantment spells correspond to cards that aren't even Enchantments, such as [Ray of]
Command. I stretched a little bit with the name because the effects are so similar - gaining control of a creature's actions for a limited time. While Ray of Command is of course a Blue spell, it's notable that this effect shows up a lot more in Red (e.g.
Threaten,
Act of Treason,
Enthralling Victor - Enthrall is also an Enchantment spell in 3rd and 5th). However the more permanent control effects (e.g.
Control Magic,
Mind Control, which are actually more akin to charm spells in D&D) are mostly Blue.
That takes care of the mind-affecting subtype, but the
compulsion aspect also has roots in Blue mana (beyond it being the name of both a card and a 5th edition spell). The only true exact-name card/spell combo to appear as an ENCH spell in all three editions is
Sleep, the Magic version of which taps creatures, effectively removing them from usefulness in the most Blue way possible. Going back to Red, the most on-color way to compel creatures out of the way is to make them confused, such as the 2nd edition spell Chaos and the
Apocalypse split card with half of the same name. Adding a new color into the mix, Black has an even nastier way to get into the minds of creatures with a spell like [Tasha's]
Hideous Laughter, the Magic card version of which is significantly more deadly than the 3rd/5th edition spell.
Hey, remember all those Conjuration spells that became associated with different schools? The first one that's coming back is
Bless[ing] (moved to ENCH for 3rd and 5th), which increases the blessed (i.e. enchanted) creature's ability to fight, and thus I don't see how it ever really made sense in CONJ to begin with.
Conclusion: Enchantment is mostly Blue (even though most Enchantment cards are White, but by a slim margin), with a sprinkling of Red and Black in there. In Magic, this combination is also the color identity of the story mode's main antagonist,
Nicol Bolas.
Evocation (energy - both damaging and healing) has perhaps the strongest connection between spells and cards, since the strategy of energy manipulation is ubiquitous and effective in both competitive-strategy and role-playing environments. One need only look at the iconic spells/cards
Fireball and
Lightning Bolt to see both that Evocation is primarily Red, and the immediate link between color and school. But the similarities don't stop there: Fire Storm (i.e.
Firestorm) is the only other Red card that's 3-for-3 in terms of editions, but
Shatter and
Earthquake are classified as Evocation in both 3rd and 5th (they were Alteration in 2nd - see below), and
Chain Lightning is 2-for-2 in the same editions, having not been added to the PHB spell list until 3rd.
But while Red has the most cards that are also EVOC spells, the school is actually represented by spells in all five colors of mana. White is easy to explain because all healing spells as a group moved from Conjuration to Evocation in 5th edition, such as
Heal - which actually started as Necromancy in 2nd (see below), then later moved to Conjuration in 3rd (see above). There's also the more general mostly-White-aligned practice of life gain (such as in the card
Hallow) and some damage buffs that are also associated with the Enchantment school (i.e.
Divine Favor), both of which appear as spells in 3rd and 5th. But White also has some holy-themed damage dealing of its own, such as the 3rd edition spell
Searing Light (and also generally any D&D spell that deals radiant damage). Across the color wheel, the only Black Evocation spell is
Darkness, but just in 3rd and 5th, as it too was listed under Alteration in 2nd.
A particular disconnect between some Red and Green EVOC spells and cards can be chalked up to a quirk in the Magic rules. Three different spells refer to walls -
Wall of Fire,
Wall of Ice, and
Wall of Stone (the latter of which was actually originally in Evocation in 2nd, then jumped to Conjuration in 3rd, then back to Evocation in 5th). Wall is of course a unique Creature types in Magic, and thus subject to the Conjuration school. However, when you put Red and Green together, as in the card
Meteor Storm (which I've linked to the spell Meteor Swarm, for obvious reasons), the distinct Evocation feel is on point. The same is true for the Green card
Ice Storm, although it's strange to me that both the above cards involving ice aren't identified with Blue mana. Speaking of Blue, the only Evocation cards in that color are
Telepathy and
Contingency [Plan], although for me both of those spells seem like they should surely be in the Divination school.
Conclusion: Due to its damage dealing element, Evocation is Red
first and foremost, then White for healing... and I honestly don't see a great thematic reason to branch too much into Green or Black. Blue is right out.
Illusion (deception, perception) as a school is all about tricking creatures into seeing/believing things that aren't there. On the contrary, the term Illusion in Magic describes a Creature type, one that is generally either
hard to block or
easy to remove. There are a couple of card/spell combinations that combines these two aspects: the first core set's
Phantasmal Force[s] (which appears as a spell in 2nd and then again in 5th, after skipping 3rd for some reason) and the most recent core set's
Mirror Image (from all three editions). But if we're looking for cards that more closely mirror Illusion spells, look no further than
Invisibility,
Misdirection, and
Simulacrum, which are Blue, Blue, and Black, respectively. Speaking of Black mana, one card that is sort of an inverse of the spell of the same name is
Fear: the spell makes its target afraid, whereas the card makes its target fearsome to creatures trying to block it. Incidentally, the spell Fear is only in the Illusion school in 2nd and 5th, as it took a brief trip to Necromancy (see immediately below) in 3rd. The only White ILLUS spell is
Silence, at least two-thirds of the time, as it began its tenure in the Alteration school (see farther below).
Conclusion: Even not taking into account the fact that most Creature cards of the Illusion subtype are Blue, it's pretty clear that messing with perception and reality is a Blue mechanic. Black is a strong secondary color here.
Necromancy (death, rebirth), as with Divination, has
a Magic card with exactly the same name, which pretty clearly sums up what color the school is associated with. Furthermore, there are eleven Magic cards with
Necromancer in the name, and all but one of them are mono-Black. What's more, is we have one of the most iconic spells AND cards in
Animate Dead, from Limited in Magic and in all three D&D editions. Other Black cards that are Necromancy spells in two of the three editions are the more straightforward
Raise Dead (this spell is a 3-for-3 overall, but for some reason found itself in the Conjuration school in 3rd), [Ray of]
Enfeeblement (which started out in Enchantment in 2nd, but quickly migrated to Necromancy),
Contagion, and
Vampiric Touch (both of which appeared only in 3rd and 5th).
The one Necromancer-titled card that wasn't mono-Black has White as its second color, which makes sense when we consider the flip side of Necromancy's focus on death. In Magic, this is only seen in the card
Resurrection, which represents another one of those Conjuration-in-3rd-edition-only spells. But believe it or not, there's also a Blue and Green element to NECRO. In Blue we have
Clone, which is more battlefield-focused than graveyard-focused in Magic. Green actually has two cards that share names with Necromancy spells, but both are only in that school in 2nd edition: Reincarnate (i.e.
Reincarnation), which moved to Transmutation in 3rd and 5th, and
Regenerate, which has been all over the map, starting in Necromancy (or Necromantic as it was known in 2nd), then moving to Conjuration (the final one of those eight spells I mentioned earlier), and finally settling in Transmutation in 5th. However I'm listing them here, because I feel like they both have a distinct Necromantic feel.
Conclusion: Given all the graveyard/reanimation shenanigans going on in Black, it's clearly the primary color of Necromancy. White is a strong secondary, though, with Green's involvement a little questionable due to the above-mentioned changes in schools.
Transmutation (Alteration, transformation) might not have the widest representation in the color wheel (it's lacking a compelling Black option), but it is for sure the most prolific school in terms of D&D spells. Considering that this school was formerly known as Alteration in 2nd edition, there are 302 combined TRANS and ALT spells, compared to 196 spells on the Conjuration list, the second-most common. (Necromancy is in last place with just 81 spells across all three editions.) The best example of spell(s) to epitomize the top colors of Transmutation is (are) Enlarge/Reduce, which were encompassed by the same spell in 2nd and 5th, but broken up in 3rd. In Magic terms,
Enlarge is a Green spell that gives a creature a huge bonus to power and toughness, while the Blue
Reduce is actually a class of counterspell (which as we've seen is clearly in Abjuration territory), but as one half of a split card, wordplay was perhaps more important than content. These colors largely make sense: buff cards like Enlarge have been ubiquitous in Green mana since Magic's very beginning - starting with one of the "boon" cycle
Giant Growth - and the converse "de-buff" style cards are a staple of Blue - one that comes to mind is the Core Set 2019 card
Dwindle.
The only other Green card that corresponds to a Transmutation spell from all three editions is
Spider Climb, which is a pretty specific example of changing the properties of something in a beneficial way that's not just "better at fighting." But there are five Blue spells that link up sickeningly well to iconic 3-for-3 Transmutation spells. The first is not a perfect match, at least name-wise, but the effects are exactly the same: the spell Fly and the card
Flight. The card
Jump is basically a short-term Flight, while it's a bit more literal in D&D.
Telekinesis is strictly defensive in Magic, but it has a wider application in D&D.
Time Stop is a game-breaking spell in D&D, while the Magic version combos nicely with the upcoming Guilds of Ravnica card
Chance for Glory. And perhaps the biggest stretch is from Animate Object(s) to
Animate Artifact, but it's basically the same in spirit, right? To further Blue's case, we have two spells from 3rd and 5th only,
Gaseous Form and
Fabricate. To round things out,
Polymorph and the various spells with Polymorph in the name are some of the most powerful spells in all of D&D, while it's considerably more chaotic in Magic.
The Red element of Transmutation is a bit muddied, since while you definitely change the properties of something if you
Disintegrate it, and while
Pyrotechnics requires a fire to transmute in D&D, those cards in Magic each deal direct damage, which is the foray of Evocation. There's only one White card with a name that corresponds directly to a Transmutation spell:
Erase from 2nd and 3rd, which is spot on flavor-wise. But the 3-for-3 spell Blink recalls the mostly White-aligned mechanic known as
Flicker, and which appears on the similarly named card
Momentary Blink. The only mono-Black Transmutation spell is the 2nd edition version of Darkness (see Illusion, above), which also specified that it covered a 15-foot radius in its full name. But the upcoming set Guilds of Ravnica has a multicolored Black/Green half of a split card called
Statue, which is fairly similar to the 2nd and 3rd edition spells of the same name. (The other half of that card, Status, actually corresponds to a 3rd edition Divination spell, but they have wildly different effects, so I'm just going to ignore it for now.)
Conclusion: Green and Blue cards dominate the effects generally seen on Transmutation spells, but there is a good case to be made that all colors make use of some Transmutation magic, with White, Red, and Black bringing up the rear, probably in that order.
Final Tally:
It's no surprise that Blue shows up in the most schools of any color (five by my count) since Blue is the color of most Wizards (in Magic) and Wizards are the class that's most concerned with the schools of magic (in D&D... confusing terminology, I know). White is next, with three schools as either the clear primary or secondary color - Green and Black feature prominently in three schools total, but one school for each of those colors could be described as a splash. And Red only really features prominently in one school (with one more as a splash), but it's such a powerhouse in that one school that it almost makes up for what it lacks in diversity.
Of course, by focusing only on names shared between D&D spells and Magic cards, I'm really only scratching the surface of this subject. I'm sure there are dozens of cards that have similar effects as some spells, but with completely (or just slightly) different names. And of the ones I did cover, I didn't even get into what classes can cast those spells (and at what level) or how many times (and when) those cards were printed in Magic's history. But as far as I'm concerned, I think we've drawn some pretty solid conclusions here today, and this whole exercise will surely make me think of both casting spells and playing cards in a new light.
