Help me make an artist antagonist.

[kanachi]

Hiya everyone, I was wondering if any of you fancied helping me make the crunch for an npc who will act as a semi-antagonist in my current campaign. I’ve got the fluff all pretty much covered but almost no crunch which worries me a bit. Please take a read and see if you can come up with an interesting idea!

The players are at the moment level 4 and the campaign will run to about level 10. They may encounter her at any point within that slide so she will have to remain a threat to them at those levels. While not invulnerable she will need to be able to solo the entire party if needs be. She is supposed to be a grave threat to them all.

She is known only to the players as The Artist. She works for a pirate king who has by methods the players don’t know, bound her in some way to do his will and basically act as his personal assassin and problem fixer. Her word is quite literally her bond and would refer to those who lie or go against their promises as “a breaker of words”. This way of being has led to her being under the pirate kings control.

She has marked the players with a bit for DM shenanigans which means she is able to track them at all times if needs be. She has been able to do this by drawing a perfect picture of each of them using the ink of their souls, she refers to this process as “capturing your image”.

She is a highly skilled artist in all form (music, dance, sculpture, canvas, writing, etc) and is basically supposed to embody an imprisoned manifestation of a great artistic spirit (lesser demigod of sorts). She has been perverted in a way to use her talents to murder and commit vial acts, turning such things essentially into an art form.

The players must fear her powers and the alien nature she represents to them and the rest of the world they know. I would like a fighting style which respects this. She has to pose a very unique type of challenge and fighting style.

I would like her to work alone so she will have no minions at her disposal, think of her as a bounty hunter.

She is human (or at least looks like one).

I don’t mind a resonable amount of home brew if it takes your fancy.

The PC party consists of:
A warmage
A Ranger
A psionic scout (basically the psionic rogue class adjusted to use skirmish and act a bit more like the scout class).

I would be grateful for any ideas you can come up with and would welcome any builds you can think of.

If you want any more information please let me know, but for the most part I want to give you guys the chance to have fun and render something creative.

Thanks in advance to anyone who even reads this, i know its a bit cheeky to ask you guys to do my job for me!

[true_shinken]

Bard with Divine Rank 0 works.
Max Charisma and get Versatile Performer. Take Craft Contingent Spell and fluff it as her art, writing runes that grant magical effects.
The rest is DM fiat that you have already used.

[Quietus]

I'd go sorcerer, with a summoning focus and refluffed spells. She doesn't pokeball her summons into existence; She draws them in the air, and they come to life. She doesn't curse a PC by speaking horrific words; She places a fell mark on his face in indelible ink. Her scrying/capturing the image thing? She has an Intimate connection to the players for the purpose of Scrying, giving them a big penalty to their save. Ranks in Craft and/or Perform to flavor, and I'd just handwave giving her Perform as a class skill. It's not going to break anything.

Outside of this, I'd just make sure to pick spells that can be reasonably given "drawing" fluff. Bestow Curse can, as above; Fireball, not so much.

[Thespianus]

Bard with Divine Rank 0 works.
Max Charisma and get Versatile Performer. Take Craft Contingent Spell and fluff it as her art, writing runes that grant magical effects.
The rest is DM fiat that you have already used.

Except the part of "Her word is law" goes against the grain of the "Bards can't be lawful"-thing. But as the DM, you can wave Bye-Bye to that rule. :)

Bard levels with some Chamelion or Master of Masks powers on top, maybe? She'd definitely be able to seem very odd to the PCs and versatility would definitely be possible with such a build.

However, with no minions, a Bard base might be bad. A Druid/Bard mix? Then again, there's even more Lawful problems.

EDIT: Just wanna say, it sounds like a great villain. Nice fluff! :)

[Seonor]

For equipment give her items like Marvelous Pigments (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#marvelousPigments) (there is some magic sand that fits too) and give the things she creates with it a better quality/finer details than normal.

[Tvtyrant]

Make a Dwarven Wizard/Geometer/Runesmith that draws spells on things (glyphs). Max out her int and get some ranks in Craft(painting).

[gomipile]

For the number of craft skills you imply she has, she'll need a high Int. Therefore I suggest you use a class that works well with high Int.

A simple medium power option is Factotum. You can do an awful lot with UMD and spell like abilities from the Sorc./Wiz. list.

For high power I'd go with a Wizard based Shadowcraft Mage. Use all feats for spell level boosts like Earth Spell, Sanctum Spell, etc. and their prerequisites.

For the second option, you can fluff the casting of Shadow Illusions as her using artist's tools to (as a standard action) brush or sculpt or sing or whatever the evocations and conjurations into existence. This gives you a hell of a lot of flexibility to scare the players and also not paint yourself into a corner that requires TPKing the party, since she'll never only have stuff that will TPK them left in her prepared spells.

[Lonely Tylenol]

I would suggest a Wizard type, but with a calligraphy brush or something of the sort as a focus for spells, and with the materials of individual spells being replaced by use of the focus (such as ignoring the bag and candle for Summon Monster I, and instead having her paint them into existence with calligraphy).

From there, I'd go into Shadowcraft Mage, as Gomipile suggested. The fluff actually supports the "shadow" concept incredibly well; the painter crafts monsters and evocations not unlike the "shadow" monsters and evocations, which are convincingly real; if you so desire, you can replace "shadow" with "paint" or "ink".

If you imagine her being the silent type, Silent Spell, though Shadowcraft Mage gives this at level 2.
Somatic components are a-go, mostly because they're so flavorful I can practically taste them.

I'd go for something like Wizard 7/Shadowcraft Mage 5, and to Hell with scaling it for difficulty; since she's a recurring character, you don't want her dying in a fight against a group of level 5s, and you don't want her fighting in the front anyway, since she's most decidedly a caster. You can actually scale her powers for the level of the characters easily, since the Shadowcraft Mage's Shadow Illusion ability allows you to replace spells of variable levels with Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Evocation, with varying effectiveness (meaning if she's fighting well below her level, you can have her use weaker forms of the Shadow Evocations and Shadow Conjurations that they'll be facing when they take her head-on). Having her fight in the open, which makes for an easy getaway, or simply summon hordes of monsters/firing off a blast from the rooftops before traipsing off means she doesn't die until you want her to.

Personally, as far as artist villains go, I've always been a fan of the "starving artist who goes mad and starts sculpting corpses and homunculi"--for which Dread Necromancer or something with Craft (Construct) may be more fitting--but this is very nicely done as a concept. Kudos.

[Telonius]

Some feats that might fit the concept:

Versatile Performer (skilled in all arts)
Words of Creation (Truename-ish stuff, helps in creation magic)

I don't see the "word as bond" thing as being totally 100% indicative of a Lawful outlook. If it's more about personal responsibility than following a tradition of oathkeeping, she could still be Chaotic or Neutral. (Though it would fit most comfortably into a Lawful character).