What classes/spells/abilities would be appropriate for a villain that wants to create monsters (i.e. new species from scratch)?
Or would this be out of range for a non-epic villain?
Now "new" would these new monsters have to be? I don't think you could create a whole new race of creatures, short of some serious home-brewing. But you might look into altering corpses before reanimating them. Or designing fanciful Intelligent Items with some form of autonomous mobility. Or go for a Dr. Moreau-style villain with the Anthropomorphic Animal spell.
What I was going for was a villain that created a parasite would allow her to use "Charm Person" on a person with a bonus to DC. Repurposing a tick or leech would be good enough for what I want to do.
a parasite would allow her to use "Charm Person" on a person with a bonus to DC.
How 'bout infecting cute, fuzzy creatures with a Wisdom-draining disease? That would do the trick.
A summoner would get you a single new creature.
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If you can find or have a copy of The Crimson Throne adventure I believe the second or third book has a great deal of information about supernatural and real plagues.
In this case I would say it's less like the villain is creating a "monster" and more that they are creating a magical disease or virus.
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What I was going for was a villain that created a parasite would allow her to use "Charm Person" on a person with a bonus to DC. Repurposing a tick or leech would be good enough for what I want to do.
A wizard or alchemist or mad druid would seem the most thematically appropriate, although a summoner, witch, cleric or sorcerer could work as well (bonus points if it's someone who could have access to whatever spell is being duplicated, in this case, charm person). The exact mechanism for how it is done should remain something outside of PC hands, unless you want them to have the potential to create custom monsters...
The NPC would likely be using a special process, similar to how magic items are crafted, and some magic, to mutate the base creature into the sort of creature he's looking for, and his lair/laboratory/whatever should be crawling with failures, suggesting that it wasn't as easy as it sounds (and perhaps they'll later discover that it's very hit and miss and he stumbled upon the exactly procedure for making these mind-control-leeches or whatever they are). Something in the local area, or some property of the local creatures (perhaps the creatures from this area of swampland are more susceptible to magical mutation, due to the sunken ruins of a long-ago culture's magic academy or spell-warded vault, which is falling apart and 'leaking toxic magical radiation' into the bayou). That limits the area, and limits it to people with specialized training (represented by a feat and / or a unique spell or two), or even people who have been in the swamp, eating tainted swamp critters long enough, to be suffering some magical mutations of their own (unique template, or some sort of long-term affliction that might reduce an attribute or two, like the effects of some drugs).
I picked swamp just because it fit the 'leech' theme, but if the monster-maker's lair is at the bottom of a lake, perhaps *in* the sunken magically-radioactive ruins of some long-ago species, that will change both the nature of the encounter (mostly underwater combat, until within the magically air-filled inner structures) and the nature of the encounters (mutated fish, frogs, etc.) If it's in the plains, in spirallying labyrinthine warrens beneath some tribal mound to unknown and monstrous looking 'gods,' mutated ticks could be used to control thralls, and grossly mutated (and unnaturally aggressive and persistant!) buffalo could safeguarrd the area, and make for a *very* different sort of encounter! If it's deep in the woods, still with the ticks, but mutated wolf packs, a mutated bear or even some mutated *trees* could instead be part of the encounter.