Request: The Evil Villian's Contractor.

[Rakaydos]

You blow up a vilian;s lair one week, the next he has a whole new complex built, full of level appropriate traps and monsters. How does he do it? Expecially given that his build cant even make a magic item, let alone a trapped dungeon?

I'm looking for a good build for a magic dungeon builder, the contractor the villian keeps hiring to build death complexes. Combat skills (beyond those necessary to enchant or trap) are irrelevant- he's just the shmuck who has to fix what the heros break.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

It could be someone is building McLairs and happens to always have a shiny new one for sale right when the BBEG needs it.

For a fast builder of lairs, I'd probably go with a Wizard or Sorcerer. Wall of Stone/Iron plus Fabricate and Stone Shape, Transmute Rock to Mud plus Move Earth, and he could have simulacrums constantly churning out premade magical traps to be installed where needed. An Artificer could also do it with staffs/wands of the above spells, and would probably be a more fitting choice.

[avr]

To some extent your BBEG might be better to take over something already built and trapped. A bunker built by a lost empire, that sort of thing. The contractor needs knowledge skills and diplomancy more than anything; sounds like a bard.

Alternately, fresh construction can be provided by a bard with a lyre of building (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#lyreofBuilding), and traps built by experts or magewrights. There's no reason to assume one contractor with no subcontractors, is there?

[Rakaydos]

While I dont have an immidiate use planned, I'm thinking a comic relief- type, the guy who realizes he doesnt have a name tape.

[AntiTrust]

Undead bard with a lyre of building, never have to worry about exhaustion, just build build build.

[Gemini476]

Well, the important thing to note is that he wouldn't be building it alone, or even necessarily participate himself. Lyres of building, hundreds of Kobold miners, a sweatshop of pasty wizards crafting traps (remember, someone else can provide the spells,) Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion to test out layouts and see how viable the whole balcony-over-arena thing is (needs bulletproof glass.)

Actually, I'd make the contractor a dragon(wrought) leader of a kobold tribe. Assuming that a Kobold Miner is an Expert with Skill Focus(Proffession(Miner)) with a masterwork pickaxe (+3 circumstance), they should have a solid +9 boost to the skill at level one. An average roll of 10 leads to the Kobold digging out one 5ft cube each eight hours, although even an additional +1 leads to digging out two cubes. So if you have the maximum amount of kobold from leadership (135 1st level, 13 2nd, etc.) you are digging out an average of 191 cubes per eight hours - that's one 69ft-by-69ft-by-5ft room every day, and more than enough to dig out a dungeon every week.

So while you have your personal army endlessly dig out dungeon complexes, you go and do the important things. Like making traps to your clients specifications (although you may want your cohort and higher-leveled kobold doing that) or breeding forth Dungeonbred monsters that fit within your clients specifications.

[Erik Vale]

Warlock 12, with The Dead Walk [tireless workers] and Leadership [undead or living if not both, either's good] and a ton of crafting feats with some ranks in various crafting skills as well as profession [Architect] or some such.

Pump up his UMD high enough, he can produce all non-epic items without too much trouble, specially if he has a Thought bottle or other source of unlimited XP.
Should he have no source, add levels for appropriate feats to reduce XP cost, and to make room for Leadership.

The Dead Walk can be substituted with lots of constructs or scrolls he's made. For extra feats, I would suggest Flaws such as Non-combatent/Shaky, Vulnrable, Weak Will, and the Trait Cautious, all to tell everyone exactly why he doesn't try and take over the world on his own.

[Zaq]

If you want to have some fun poking at meta-concepts, make this fellow a guild. They have very strict union rules about making sure that no puzzle they put in is unsolvable, no death trap is inescapable, and no lair is unreachable. (They don't publicize these rules or make a show of announcing them, but if they're ever challenged, they'll defend them ferociously.) Why, you ask? Out-of-game, it's a light-hearted way of explaining why there's always enough wiggle room for the adventurers to get their hero on. In-game, the union knows that a villain who has a perfect lair is a villain who's not going to need a new dungeon next year, and they want to ensure that they have plenty of repeat business, kind of like planned obsolescence. They're still the absolute best in the business (and probably the only game in town if you want it done quick and otherwise right), so they can get away with it. It can be fun to play around with the idea, especially if you have some villains aware of this and some not.

You could possibly have some fun world-building playing around with how the Dungeon Crafters' Guild interacts with (or overlaps with?) the Githyanki Magic Item Crafters' Guild, which is the idea that all the bizarre and less-useful magic items out there ("What mage spent time, money, and XP making a Trident of Fish Command?!" "Who the hell actually put resources into creating a +4 sai?!") are made by githyanki desperately burning XP trying not to hit the level (17?) where the Lich-Queen devours their souls. Githyanki aren't dumb, and they're also not going to just hang up their silver swords and retire at level 16 (or whatever the cutoff is), so that XP's gotta go somewhere. If the XP's gotta go somewhere, and the junk items adventurers find on random loot tables have to come from somewhere, then the GMICG nicely explains the whole thing. (They're also a useful deterrent to PCs who think they can intimidate or pull one over on magic item shop owners. They're fiercely defensive of their distribution channels, since without them, they can't afford the gold cost to keep crafting, and you do NOT want a whole bunch of high-level pissed-off githyanki whose souls are on the line hunting your asses down.)

Hey, put in one tongue-in-cheek explanation of a kind of stupid trope, and you may as well put in two and make 'em bounce off of each other, right?

[Gemini476]

You could possibly have some fun world-building playing around with how the Dungeon Crafters' Guild interacts with (or overlaps with?) the Githyanki Magic Item Crafters' Guild, which is the idea that all the bizarre and less-useful magic items out there ("What mage spent time, money, and XP making a Trident of Fish Command?!" "Who the hell actually put resources into creating a +4 sai?!") are made by githyanki desperately burning XP trying not to hit the level (17?) where the Lich-Queen devours their souls. Githyanki aren't dumb, and they're also not going to just hang up their silver swords and retire at level 16 (or whatever the cutoff is)


The githyanki have no deity but instead
pay homage to a lich-queen. A jealous and
paranoid overlord, she devours the
essence of any githyanki that rises above
16th level. In addition to eliminating a
potential rival, the lich-queen enhances her power with the stolen life
essence
Wait, this means that there aren't any Githyanki with 9th level spells.
Wow.
Was the lich-queen ever statted up somewhere?
EDIT:A-yup. Dungeon #100, page 133. Also of note for being the first Dungeon issue for 3.5, but yeah.
She's a level 25 Wizard. She has Epic Craft Wondrous Item but not Epic Spellcasting for some reason. Maybe they just didn't want to bog down the combat? She has Empowered Time Stop as a prepared spell, though. And yet she's still somehow a CR28 monster. I don't even know anymore.

[Karnith]

Wait, this means that there aren't any Githyanki with 9th level spells.Well, Vlaakith CLVII (the Lich Queen) can, but she kills or tries to kill all the others.

Was the lich-queen ever statted up somewhere?She is a Githyanki Lich Wizard 25. You can find stats for her in Dungeon Magazine #100.

[Rakaydos]

A Kobold Sorcerer with leadership and a Lyre of Building or two (dozen) seems like the best route for this, then.

The guild seems an interesting approach- Low level adventurers hear about a dungeon or dragonlair under construction and try to clear it out before it goes fully operational, fighting a bunch of Kobold Experts who are just trying to get paid. :/

If I understand leadership right (I dont have the book handy), this character would get a certian number of Level 2 followers, and a single Cohort of higher level?

Assuming the level 1s are all experts for digging, what's the best way of building the Trapmaker Division and the Monster Breeder Division followers, and how much of it should the character itself get involved in?

[Sheogoroth]

You could make it a contractor's association that specializes in evil lairs!
The Associated General Contractors of Doom, or the AGCD- a cruel organization ruled by a ruthless bureaucracy and fueled by merciless capitalistic fervor. (But they do same-day installation on utilities!)


That could make for a hilarious twist where the villain, broke from losing is cache to adventurers, decides he wants to screw over his contractors and they pull the rug out from underneath him Iron Bank of Bravos style and the PC's show up on the day of battle with a mercenary army by their side.
They do battle and the PC's slip into his lair(wise of all his secrets) and then proceed to take him apart.