Epic Mountebank?

[atemu1234]

I have a friend who plays a chaotic neutral mountebank who managed to (through magical prowess and deals with extradimensional beings) to avoid dying at level 20 as normal for the class. So what should the epic level progression be? Should we make him multiclass, as his patron no longer supports him, or is there an existing epic progression somewhere?

[VoxRationis]

I think an important part of the answer must come from the circumstances under which the mountebank gained his freedom. Did they undo their pact or slay their patron or something? Did they keep their pact intact, but discover some loophole that pledged themselves to another cause which superseded the original for some convoluted reason? What happened?

[atemu1234]

He killed his patron (a homebrewed CR 30 encounter, btw) or rather, his party did. Now I determined his time as an NPC gave him enough XP to stay on par with his group, but we're debating what levels he should take. He's human, by the way. I forgot to mention.

[VoxRationis]

Did you rule that killing his patron removed his mountebank powers? Doing so would be rough on the guy, but could make sense, and if you did, he'd have to multi-class.
However, I'm guessing that you didn't, so as to be nice to the player who invested 20 levels in the class. And since you didn't, he's clearly getting his current power from somewhere, and should probably be able to continue advancing.

[atemu1234]

Haven't ruled anything yet. Still waiting. This happened literally an hour ago.

[Anxe]

I'd use the Epic Bard progression as a guideline. Bonus Feat every 3 levels and Deceptive Attack continues to improve every 4 levels as before. Beguiling Stare's DC would also continue to increase. Plus, Half-Fiend template now! Woo!

[VoxRationis]

Okay, the "in-game" reasonable idea is that if he didn't cast some sort of power-siphoning spell or something as part of the combat that slew his patron, the patron's power should go away somewhere and the character should lose all his magical mountebank class abilities. Since you probably don't want to pull something like that, here's an "out-of-game reasonable idea":
When the patron was slain, his power ebbed through the extant links between him and any mountebanks or similarly bound people, granting them a finite amount of power (say, a number of level-ups in mountebank equal to the patron's HD divided by the number of beneficiaries). This power doesn't go away, but the character cannot gain more levels in mountebank without confronting the other beneficiaries and destroying them, which reduces the number of beneficiaries and thus divides the power among fewer individuals.

[Anxe]

That's pretty cool! So every other time he levels up he needs to go find one of his soul brothers and kill them. Super neat!

[Derpldorf]

If you do go the highlander route you should limit the number of times that he can take another level to the deceased patrons CR.

I'm just saying this I case your group is in one of the semi rare campaigns that go on past Lvl 30.