Item Specialist Prestige

[xigbar]

I'm currently playing in a 5 man group, where all players are experienced enough to play and DM. I'm looking ahead to the boss of one of my future dungeons, everyone is level 6 right now, but aiming for a level 13 boss. I've planned everything about him, except for him; Thus far, he's a sentient undead, whose long "life" span have given vast magic item crafting knowledge, and a criminal organization with global underground influence is having him some special item as part of their cliche sinister plan. He's being guarded by a Level 12 Fighter 9, Death's Chosen 3. My friend says just to make a wizard with item creation feats, which, to start off, is obvious, but I'm looking for a pretige class that really adds a sort of ancient mad scientist sort of feel to it, and he may have to battle the adventurers as well. Any ideas?

 

[Dandu]

Use the Artificer base class.

 

[xigbar]

I've heard alot about that Artificer class, butI don't have it's book, and can't find detailed information about it. Do you have a link?

 

[Rakusia]

have him make a death laser on the moon

 

[Light Knight]

Do a google search on articifer, there are sevaral variants and at least one is fully documented.

 

[Roadie]

I've heard alot about that Artificer class, butI don't have it's book, and can't find detailed information about it. Do you have a link?

The short version is that it's a 3/4 BAB, d6 hit dice class that gets a lot of bonus magic item crafting feats, can use Use Magic Device instead of actually having spells to craft with (and gets UMD bonuses to go with its crafting feats), gets bonus XP each level to spend on crafting projects, and gets up to 6th-level "infusions" that all target objects and either act as equipment buffs (your sword or armor bonus improves, a temporary upgrade to your cloak of resistance, etc), give fairly flexible quick spell effects via turning things into one-shot magic items, or directly buff or attack constructs.

It's considered to be one of the more powerful classes around optimization-wise, since it's easy to get a very broad selection of spells and magic items, plus it can get extra uses and bonuses to spells in a short amount of time by spending extra (eg. burning multiple wand charges at once to add metamagic effects, using multiple wands at once, and so on—pricey, but very effective if done well).

Edit: Also, a BBEG-style artificer could easily pick up a graft feat or two and have mad-science-surgery enhanced minions, or have Craft Construct and a bunch of low-level golem servants, or so on. One of the class features of the artificer is the ability to make homunculi, which act like specialized and minor (but intelligent) golems—ones given in the books include self-propelled magic crossbows, magic chests that can act as alchemical artillery, flying messengers, spike-covered sneak-attacking rogue-alikes, and so on.