Abandoned by her neglectful parents at the age of 5, she lived on the streets of the capitol, alone, cold, and hungry. She would have died there if it weren't for the stray animals of her district. These abandoned pets would forage for food and give her affection, and she would secure shelter and care for them. Over time, these strays came to be just as healthy and hale as normal pets, and often more intelligent, while she stayed healthy and happy, if perpetually covered in animal hair and feathers. As an adult, she converted an abandoned building into an orphanage/animal shelter hybrid.
The PC's arrive in the middle of a wave of dissappearing children. As it turns out, these kids were being ostricized, abused, and neglected by their families for most of their childhood. At the same time, she has what seems to be more animals than there should be in the capitol, though everyone just excuse the fact as her picking up strays in neighboring cities. However, she is sometimes seen giving human classes to some of the animals. The truth is that she kidnapped the children when their parents refuse to let them go to the orphanage, then baleful polymorphed them, electing to let them keep their personalities, and giving them the same affection as any other animal in her shelter. At the same time, she offers an explanation for the disappearances, suggesting that the children ran away from home to escape abusive and loveless relationships with their families, which the public accepted as fact, in turn scorning those families.
Help would be great. Also, any suggestions for villians trying to do good or villians who have a good point to justify their misdeeds?
I could see her being testy and judgemental towards parents, maybe even seeking the utter ruin of those abusive families. I also think that he referred to her as an adversary, meaning she could be a good character that the player nevertheless wants to bring to justice or reveal the truth.
I'm looking for builds and personality stuff (thanks, Lazaryus). As for consent, she doesn't seek it out before, though the children typically view their situation in favor, and those who don't come around after a few days in her care.
Maybe, to make her more villainous, after the children are polymorphed, she uses charm animal to have them attack and kill the parents.
Or she could be villainous, sans child endangerment, by tormenting parents with fear or curse spells, or use more baleful polymorph and reduce the parents to simple animals. She could also spam summon monster or summon nature's ally for maulings.
To get baleful polymorph, I'd suggest either build her as a Sorcerer (5th level spell, needs to be at least 10th level), A Summoner with an animalistic eidolon (4th level spell, needs to be at least 10th level), or a Rogue and buy a few wands of baleful polymorph from a Summoner (30,000 gp per wand with 50 charges, as Summoners are equivalent in spellcasting to Bards).
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Alright, I'm going to give this a try. Incoming wall of text.
Considering the fact that this person needs to be able to have liberal access to Baleful Polymorph, we are already looking at lvl 9 a 10 character, or someone who has a big pocket of gold. Seeing as she is a street urchin who set up an orphanage, I assume she is not a rich person. Which means this person either casts it herself, or has tripped over a Magic Item solution and decided to keep it. I myself prefer her to be able of casting it, to prevent unnecessary loot and to keep her poor upbringing roots.
The other theme is a link to stray animals, getting food from them and affection. Either being able to train or speak to such beings might make this more plausible.
And we need to stay a Villain, someone the PC's wish to put a halt to. Now running an orphanage is (generally) not evil, kidnapping children is. She doesn't ask for their consent, and the children eventually develop Stockholm Syndrome. THAT is the problem... Our antagonist has good intention (giving the children a better life), but what kind of future do these children have? How long do these "children" stay with her? Do they die as satisfied, old animals at the orphanage (hamsters don't live long...)? If the parents show great remorse, are the children allowed to return? We can't be goody-two-shoes, we need to be an Antagonist.
Or maybe she terrorizes the families these children came from. Being able to cast Baleful Polymorph, means that she also has a lot of other things she should be able to cast. Curses, Enchantments, Illusions, she could be using these to punish the parents until they are driven to true despair. The PC's need a reason to start looking into it, without the mere rumor that the children ran away from abusive parents (which is a very likely event, and might not lead towards the antagonist at all). I mean, depending on the size of the city, the amount of missing children might bleak when compared to the entire population of said city. And missus crazy cat lady having even more cats is also not something that people would easily associate with those missing children, unless there are at least 10-20 of them missing in a very short time. So you need more plot-hooks, and terrorizing the parents would be a good extra incentive to show something more is going on. Not necessarily murder them, but make their lives miserable.
Now for a suggested build: I recommend a lvl 10 Tatterdemalion Witch, with the following hexes (with the general hexes found here): Dancing Strings, Moth Eaten and Lace Weaver from the archetype, and Beast Speaker, Blight and Beast Eye (Major) from class choice. Beast Speaker allows her to communicate with her animal friends, and might explain how she survived at her age. Blight to punish parents by cursing their land/garden (if they are particularly vain, they will waste a lot of money on a hopeless situation). And the Beast Eye major hex to explain her knowing of which children are being abused (and thus which parents to confront or which children to abduct). You could add to these with the Extra Hex feat to take things like Discord, Unnerve Beasts, Nightmares (major) or Waxen Image (major) to stay in theme of punishing the parents. Or add some offensive hexes, if you want her to have more of a punch.
As for spells, there are a couple of nasty ones that allow you to punish parents. If the city experiences a regular mist, Barrow Haze might allow her to get Moth Eaten off. Hex Glyph allows her to place her hexes in close proximity of her victims; Dark Whispers to mess with them; Compulsive Liar, Paranoia or Unnatural Lust to make their social lives a disaster at prime moments; Covetous Urge to get them arrested; Kalistocrat's Nightmare, Crafter's Nightmare or Curse of Keeping to ruin them; Feast of Ashes or Violent Accident if she wants to kill them.
Most of these spells are merely 2nd level spells, so there are a lot of ways to punish neglectful parents.
So this is how I see a character like this. Feats are still open, and most other choices made were what I thought would be in character for someone like that (based on your backstory).
She'll turn the children back to normal after one of two things happen: the parents show true remorse, at which time she lets the child choose whether or not they go back to their parents, or the parents commit suicide, or otherwise die, and the child moves into the orphanage. She'd rather not directly kill the parents, but having her actions lead to the parents killing themselves is not an issue. Also, wouldn't it be very odd, borderline suspicious, that she's teaching letters and science to "animals"?
EDIT: I like good characters that PCs are justified in stomping.
I agree with Pizza Lord. Unless you are running an evil campaign where your PCs don't care that they would be returning the children to neglectful houses, I cannot see many circumstances where good PCs would be inclined to "stomp" this NPC. Maybe a lawful PC would want to force her to go about it the lawful way (proving neglect so she can take the children in).
Honestly, my current CG character would have no problem with this. She is helping the children and they seem to like being animals, so why would my character care?
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Also, wouldn't it be very odd, borderline suspicious, that she's teaching letters and science to "animals"?
This would certainly be odd, but then again, she is a crazy cat lady. So it is to be expected from her, and not really evil. In other words, no, I would not call it suspicious considering her reputation. Merely amusing.
She'll turn the children back to normal after one of two things happen: the parents show true remorse, at which time she lets the child choose whether or not they go back to their parents, or the parents commit suicide, or otherwise die, and the child moves into the orphanage. She'd rather not directly kill the parents, but having her actions lead to the parents killing themselves is not an issue.
So the children only return after their parents either turn their lives around, or they die. On that last thing, people might get suspicious about children suddenly reappearing after the parents have died. I mean, once is a coincidence, 3 times is a pattern. This behavior tells us that she indeed does not kill the parents, but does terrorize them without truly hurting them.
But this still gives us the problem that your players might not be interested in defeating her. Maybe they just steer her away from dealing out harassment and (as already mentioned) get the law at her side about the neglect. As far as I understand, you want your players to find out, AND want them to deal with her by taking her out. This requires more villainy in her character, otherwise she is just a misguided person ready to be redeemed.
So maybe we need something that indeed is a bit more problematic or sinister. I like Pizza Lord's suggestion about Polymorphing the parents and then take the children in (sounds like a win-win for her), but you could also make her more needy. Maybe she doesn't want the children to leave the orphanage. A child is never adopted from that place, because she doesn't want them to be. And any child that tries to leave (or reaches the age that it wouldn't be allowed to stay anymore), is then Baleful Polymorphed into a small animal, for her to take care of forever. Now you have a problem for your players that they would want to solve. Because no matter how good her intentions or her care, she basically is kidnapping and imprisoning them while terrorizing the parents.
Maybe he has a PC who blindly enforces the law...
Even good guys mess up royally sometimes.
I like the concept. Also I don't see why she needs to be more villainous. Some of my greatest villains have been the ones that were in the grey area. I would make her a brown fur transmuter arcanist and have her polymorph the children into combat forms as her fighting style
Would a paladin fall if they were cursed to hallucinate people as evil outsiders, leading to him killing everyone? It would be a good concept for this thread either way.
Does killing someone by attacking an illusionary demon count as an evil act? I was thinking something similar to phantasmal killer (illusion spell, only in victim's mind) for the paladin's affliction.
Bump