I've played D&D in one form or another, off and on, for close to 40 years. My highest level character started in 1E, moved to 2E then has sat lurking in the shadows ever since the early 2000's. I'm wondering what suggestions the collective might have in converting him. He's a 17/21 Fighter/Mage. The obvious issue being that with 5E, 20th level is the max cap total. So would that cleave him in half and make him a maxed out measly 10/10.. or would there be some other solution? I look forward to your ideas and suggestions!
I think your best chance would be to rebuild him as a level 20 gish class.
Eldritch Knight (Fighter) or Bladesinger (Wizard) are probably the closest you can get (depending on your focus... EK for martial, Bladesinger for magic).
Hexblade/ Sorcerer could also make a good "arcane fighter" and thanks to "Quicken Spell" even allow you to combine weapon attacks and magic in the same turn.
The only thing stopping 5E from having a system for progression beyond 20 is its lack of a proficiency bonus progression past +6, multiclass spell slot progression past effective caster level 20, and lack of experience table to show when these later levels would ding. The fact that PB flatlines at 20 isn't even necessarily a problem, since when it caps at +6 your'e on power curve to now face all the published monsters. The limitation on spell slot count helps avoid trivializing high-level spell casts, and may not be relevant if you're not multiclassing more than one caster class. It's really just the lack of an XP table that's a pratical problem to finding a way to houserule this, and you could probably figure out something reasonable if you put your head to it.
The DMG kind of just hand-waves at adventuring beyond 20, throwing out the idea to keep handing out feats or some quite-unbalanced "epic boons" to give the illusion of progression... but letting players pick up new class levels following the usual multiclassing rules wouldn't be a big deal, and could arguably even be better balanced. It's completely straightforward what a Fighter 10/Wizard 10 looks like, and it shouldn't be hard to figure out what a Fighter 17/Wizard 20 would look like as well.
I would treat level 21 as level 20 + level 1, but I would set the max at 30. LeviRocks has a good chart for XP, but he’s doing level 10+ spells and I personally would not use them, but that’s just me.
The closest you could probably get in 5e is a character that is both a 17th level fighter and a 20th level wizard and give them an epic boon for the 21st level. 5e doesn't support characters like that but since both the class levels are mostly within the 20 level range you could probably just give them both. They are still limited in actions every turn - they mostly just have more options. Of course, you'd need a DM who wants to run at that sort of level.
There is an epic source book put out by 2CGaming https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?author=2CGaming. It took players up to 30th level, but they were still expecting people to take a single class up to 30th level. In order to start getting the epic levels you had to be 20th in a class. Under their rules you could go for a 21st level wizard and 9 fighter levels and be 30th level. Could also just run up fighter levels to 17th and just have a lot of XP and mythic adventures to go up to 22nd level in wizard though.
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I've played D&D in one form or another, off and on, for close to 40 years. My highest level character started in 1E, moved to 2E then has sat lurking in the shadows ever since the early 2000's. I'm wondering what suggestions the collective might have in converting him. He's a 17/21 Fighter/Mage. The obvious issue being that with 5E, 20th level is the max cap total. So would that cleave him in half and make him a maxed out measly 10/10.. or would there be some other solution? I look forward to your ideas and suggestions!
I think your best chance would be to rebuild him as a level 20 gish class.
Eldritch Knight (Fighter) or Bladesinger (Wizard) are probably the closest you can get (depending on your focus... EK for martial, Bladesinger for magic).
Hexblade/ Sorcerer could also make a good "arcane fighter" and thanks to "Quicken Spell" even allow you to combine weapon attacks and magic in the same turn.
The only thing stopping 5E from having a system for progression beyond 20 is its lack of a proficiency bonus progression past +6, multiclass spell slot progression past effective caster level 20, and lack of experience table to show when these later levels would ding. The fact that PB flatlines at 20 isn't even necessarily a problem, since when it caps at +6 your'e on power curve to now face all the published monsters. The limitation on spell slot count helps avoid trivializing high-level spell casts, and may not be relevant if you're not multiclassing more than one caster class. It's really just the lack of an XP table that's a pratical problem to finding a way to houserule this, and you could probably figure out something reasonable if you put your head to it.
The DMG kind of just hand-waves at adventuring beyond 20, throwing out the idea to keep handing out feats or some quite-unbalanced "epic boons" to give the illusion of progression... but letting players pick up new class levels following the usual multiclassing rules wouldn't be a big deal, and could arguably even be better balanced. It's completely straightforward what a Fighter 10/Wizard 10 looks like, and it shouldn't be hard to figure out what a Fighter 17/Wizard 20 would look like as well.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I would treat level 21 as level 20 + level 1, but I would set the max at 30. LeviRocks has a good chart for XP, but he’s doing level 10+ spells and I personally would not use them, but that’s just me.
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Wizards put this out a number of years ago. Not sure how helpful it will be though.
https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/DnD_Conversions_1.0.pdf
The closest you could probably get in 5e is a character that is both a 17th level fighter and a 20th level wizard and give them an epic boon for the 21st level. 5e doesn't support characters like that but since both the class levels are mostly within the 20 level range you could probably just give them both. They are still limited in actions every turn - they mostly just have more options. Of course, you'd need a DM who wants to run at that sort of level.
There is an epic source book put out by 2CGaming https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?author=2CGaming. It took players up to 30th level, but they were still expecting people to take a single class up to 30th level. In order to start getting the epic levels you had to be 20th in a class. Under their rules you could go for a 21st level wizard and 9 fighter levels and be 30th level. Could also just run up fighter levels to 17th and just have a lot of XP and mythic adventures to go up to 22nd level in wizard though.