The Legend of Zelda: Forgotten Gates

(The original artwork on the right doesn't look quite as nice as the ones I've shown before because Mituni has started providing them in the size needed by RPG Maker 2003. This is a 4x enlarged version, so it's a bit blocky.)

Irina is an aspiring painter from the neighboring land of Calatia. While practicing to improve her skills and noteriety, she works as a barmaid at the Crimson Wolfos Inn. Well-known for her kind nature and gentle cheer, Irina contributes greatly to making the Inn a favorite hang-out for travelers of all types. Despite being hardly an eager combatant, Irina has partaken in a good share of adventures, in large part due to her close friendship with Hyrule's favorite Hero.

In Forgotten Gates, Irina is another Squishy Wizard type, strong with magic and swift but frail physically. Her element is Water, making her strong against Fire and Spirit, but weak against Light and Forest. She has several Water-based attack spells, a regenerative spell for the whole party, a spell to double her own magical power, and just for fun, a frying pan that can deliver a stunning whack. ;)

Irina's special ability, not surprisingly, is Paint. Originally I had figured on making it pretty much a straight copy of Relm's Sketch ability from Final Fantasy VI: pick an enemy, and you have a chance of imitating one of its skills. Of course, it always felt rather useless to me; if the skill was worth imitating, it would have a miserably low chance of success. I made a mental note to rectify this somehow, although it would be tricky to not fall into the opposite ditch of making it overpowered.

Later on, though, I came up with a more original and much easier idea for a Paint ability. Irina paints on the enemy itself, giving it the appearance of a random status condition and then magically making it real. To offset the disadvantage of being random, this ability costs no mana and has a higher success rate than ordinary status-inflicting skills.