[3e to 5e] A 5e Mystic Theurge

[Karma_geddon]

Hi all,

I'm Paolo, this is my first time on the D&D 5e crunchy board (I've been dwelling only on the Spelljammer board, until now).

Actually, it's my first time writing about 5e at all. Fingers crossed, soon I should be in the process of converting my long time 3.x campaign to 5e, if I can manage to convince my players of the benefits of this.

Part of this "convincing" process, is gonna be about giving to everybody a chance to make a decent convertion of their build (I don't want to convert everything at a one-on-one rate, but at least I want to enable everybody to keep their character concept).
I've been happy to notice that there should be solutions for basically every PC of my party, even the Swordsage (I found many homebrew versions on the internet and so I feel like I can find a convincing one)... But another PC, apparently, will require some solid HRling up-front, and given the fact that I'm new to this system, I absolutely feel like I will need some feedback.

The character in question, is a (3.5) 17th level grey elf wizard(conjurer)/druid/arcane hierophant, very much specialized in summons and field controls through teleport spells.
As I mentioned earlier, I haven't been able to find basically anything online to convert this, especially about advancing both as an arcane and a divine spellcaster. I read the multiclass option for 5e, I understand how it works for multiclass spellcasters, but it feels very unsatisfying for our needs (basically, in endgame, a wizard10/druid10 would have access to only 5th level spells...).

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Here's what I want to achieve:

a) to enable the character to eventually gain access to 9th level spells (at some point until level 20, included), because I strongly believe that that's part of the reward of reaching the high levels and I don't want to take this away from my player;

b) to give him all of the arcane hierophant "goodies": merging the familiar and the animal companion, enabling him use an animal or a tree as an origin for the line of effects of spells;

Here's my plan to achieve that:

b) following 5e's grand tradition of turning prestige classes into subclasses, I want to turn the Arcane hierophant into a druidic circle: the circle of the Arcane hierophant. So, the "goodies" of the former prestige class will become abilities that the druid gets at 2nd, 6th, 10th and 14th level. I'll probably invent something new to add to it, too. For now though, I'm focusing my design efforts on a), because it's the one that worries me the most and feels the most like uncharted territory in 5e.

a) So, here's my main concern. I thought of making a Feat, called Mystic theurge, that mimics what the prestige class of the same name was doing in 3.x. Like this, I can recycle this solution for other builds too.

This is what I came up with:

Mystic theurge

Prerequisite: The ability to cast arcane spells and divine spells from two different classes.

You walk the blurring line between the arcane and the divine, trying to master both. You choose two classes that granted you the prerequisite: until you have them at the same level, or at one level of difference at most, you can learn and preparare spells from them as your level is: the sum of the levels of both classes, minus 2.
For example, a sorcerer3/cleric4 knows the spells of a 5th level sorcerer, and can prepare the spells of a 6th level cleric.

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That's it.
Some thoughts and concerns that I have about the Feat:

1) is it too powerful, for some reason that I cannot know at my current level of knowledge of 5e? If so, would it fix it to turn the "minus 2" to a "minus 3", thus having the PC to reach a new level of spells 3 level behind is collegues, and eventually giving him 9th level spells only at 20th level?

2) is it two weak, instead? Considering that in 5e a character only gets feats at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th and 19th level, and he has to choose them instead of an ability increase? If so, would it fix it to add the "Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma score by 1, to a maximun of 20" that I found in many other Feats?

3) same as above; in that case, would it fix it to give him some extra spell slots, or would it be too much?

4) what about doing both option 1) and option 2) and or 3)? Going for "minus 3", but adding the +1 to a mental ability and/or some extra spell slots?

Ultimately, is it a Feat that you would consider picking for your character?

Any feedback will be appreciated. I'm very much likely gonna propose the conversion to 5e this saturday, so I want to have this figured out for that time. For now I would like to focus on my a) point, other then the b), for which I could open a new thread in the future.

Thank you all in advance guys

[Seethyr]

I’m not fully understanding the desire here because I don’t remember much about the mystic theurge tbh. However, I’ve allowed my players to access additional spells from other class spell lists in the past and did not notice a significant unbalancing effect for the game. If your goal is just to give them access, but not increase spell slots or number of times casting each day there’s not so much harm in allowing it for the sake of role playing and character building. The feat is a good idea but I’d give even more in it, perhaps a +1 to Intelligence or Wisdom and maybe even the familiar/companion merge as a bonus. Feats are pretty powerful in 5e, much more so than 3

[paladinn]

WotC did release an Unearthed Arcana featuring Theurgy as a wizard tradition:

https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/down ... %20SFG.pdf

Not sure if that scratches the itch or not. I kinda liked it.

[Seethyr]

Oh yes, on another note - I don’t believe spells are as clearly delineated on the “arcane vs divine” distinction any longer (I could be wrong, I just haven’t had need to use it). If I’m correct the wording of the feat could lead to some confusion.

Perhaps instead “You add all of the spells on the Druid spell list to your spell list” could work instead? You could expand this to a whole collection of new feats that mirror the old Prestige classes this way by adding wizard spells, sorcerer spells, etc. one each with a +1 bonus to a stat doesn’t seem OP to me tbh.

[pawsplay]

The first thing I thought of was Divine Soul Sorcerer. Looking at the specifics, I think a bigger sticking point is that druids in 5e don't have animal companions. I think conceptually you could rebuild the character as a straight up druid, with a nice selection of summoning spells.

[Big Mac]

I’m not fully understanding the desire here because I don’t remember much about the mystic theurge tbh.

The 3e version of the Mystic Theurge was in the SRD and the Hypertext d20 SRD has a page for the Mystic Theurge stats.

[Karma_geddon]

Thank you guys for the useful hints and feedback. I'm gonna do my homeworks by reading the material that you suggested, then I'm gonna come back.
Cheers!
Paolo