Which?

[Suteinu]

Hi, there! I need help with a bit of edition conversion.

I'm trying to convert a 3.5/ Pathfinder Witch to 5e. Her specialties are weather, transmutation, and curses, and, thanks to a copy of Dragon Magazine (for you youngsters, magazines are like blogs, but made pf paper) her familiar is a swarm of bees.

You begin to see my difficulty.

I'm not interested in min-maxing, I just want to get as many of these abilities together ad I can without using the Witch flavor. I've considered the Warlock class mostly, but I haven't found a build yet that really hits the spot. Any ideas?

[PeteNutButter]

Definitely warlock. Consider pact of the chain, for an imp familiar. It can polymorph into various small animals, so it isn't a stretch for your DM to allow a cloud of bees.

Warlock is all about Hex and blast though with only a couple spells per short rest. You may find a wizard to be more your liking, or a combination. Sorcerer/Warlock is a popular strong combination. Either way, it sounds like arcane caster.

You could maybe refluff a regular owl familiar to be bees.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Warlock's probably the way to go. Ask your DM about just getting a stock swarm of bees as a Chain Pact familiar; I'd allow it. Their CR is lower than the imp and quasit options. The main issue is probably the lack of weather magic - almost none of that is on the warlock list. Clearly the best selection of 'weather' spells is on the druid list, so you could multiclass, but there's not a huge amount of synergy between druid and warlock (especially if you're not looking for Goodberry abuse or a build focussed on Eldritch Blast).

We do have a witch base class (http://mfov.magehandpress.com/2016/09/witch.html) at Middle Finger of Vecna, but from your OP it doesn't sound like it's what you're looking for. The Complete Witch book should be coming out in a few months and that *will* have a nature-themed subclass in it, but I doubt you can wait that long.

[Arcangel4774]

Storm sorcer/pact of chain Warlock. Not sure if the character will be good, but you got the curse and weather manipulation down. Added bonus of not being MAD.

[MrStabby]

Lore Bard is pretty good - it has an appropriate mix of charms and mind control effects alongside healing spells and debuff spells like bane.

Any other particular theme you want to overlay on top or to strengthen you can do with magical secrets.

[Honest Tiefling]

Storm sorcer/pact of chain Warlock. Not sure if the character will be good, but you got the curse and weather manipulation down. Added bonus of not being MAD.

I think a Warlock/Sorcerer build is definitely looking into, as the warlock imparts some of the witch flavor, and the storm sorcerer the weather stuff.

I haven't played a warlock, but perhaps the Raven Queen Sentinel Raven feature might do for the swarm of bees? Unlike a normal familiar, you're less likely to be sending the thing out into battle, just scouting. So I would say that refluffing it as a swarm of bees would be easier, since the combat statistics matter a lot less.

[Hrugner]

I'm not sure exactly what you want here, but I'll give it a shot. Making a theurgist wizard with the grave domain should get you some cursing, a familiar, and some weather magic I think. Druid would be a better spell list, but twilight druid is as close as we come to a curser sort. Shepard druid isn't too bad for debuffs, but you end up being a summoner.

[Zaq]

Trying to recreate interesting or unique characters from other editions (or from other media) in 5e is basically impossible. I advise you to give up.

That said, the Mystic has a bit more possibility than much of what's in the PHB. You could probably get the weather component out of that, at least. And maybe some of the disciplines could be fluffed as self-transformation, though nothing really works for transmutation of others.

[Mortis_Elrod]

Storm sorcer/pact of chain Warlock. Not sure if the character will be good, but you got the curse and weather manipulation down. Added bonus of not being MAD.

this is probably what you want, combined with the raven queen and refluffing the raven as bees. I'd still go chain but tome is just as cool. Storm sorcerer will get you that weather control feel and still grab your choice of transmutation magic. Grab that toll the dead spell from the spells ua, along with healing elixer and maybe even chaos bolt (seems cool enough even if its complicated and maybe not worth it). Besides this the druid options (twilight or swamp maybe) or wizard of some kind seems the best options.

[Malifice]

Hi, there! I need help with a bit of edition conversion.

I'm trying to convert a 3.5/ Pathfinder Witch to 5e. Her specialties are weather, transmutation, and curses, and, thanks to a copy of Dragon Magazine (for you youngsters, magazines are like blogs, but made pf paper) her familiar is a swarm of bees.

You begin to see my difficulty.

I'm not interested in min-maxing, I just want to get as many of these abilities together ad I can without using the Witch flavor. I've considered the Warlock class mostly, but I haven't found a build yet that really hits the spot. Any ideas?

Warlock (chain pact). Fluff your imp as a swarm of bees (maybe your DM will let you take one instead of the imp)