So uh...since it's ten days away, any thoughts on how to make the jolly old fat man? I'm thinking he is certainly without a doubt a spellcaster, More then likely Socerer then Wizard since he is alot more...personable. CG, but I also think he'd have to have Druid or maybe Ranger levels as well to get the reindeer companions. (And 9 of them if you count Rudolph) So...how to build him?
I'd build him as a powerful unique fey, or possibly as a template if you want to follow the notion that different people can become Santa.
The question you have to answer is whether his power comes from himself or from the day. Can he be basically omnipresent all the time, or only with children, or only on Christmas. One version makes him a demigod.
I am running a game for my kids, who are 9 and 6. Santa is going to be a vehicle for DM caveat, I'm going to run something along the lines of nightmare before Christmas, where Santa is kidnapped by villains, more like the winter queen from Narnia. A group of elves (halflings) has to suit up and track him down and save him, I'm guessing the will have flying reindeer companions, but I'll leave that up to them. My six year old is a big fan of yeti, especially the one from Rudolph, so that will come up somehow, maybe they will have to convince some yeti to fight against the queen.
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Many, many different ways to do this. I like Wizard (conjurer), but you can make arguments for almost any school, for for that matter, almost any full caster. These are some thoughts to make a Santa PC for a game; for an fully stated opponent, Santa would be an DC 30 or so Empyreal Lord.
St. Nicholas the Gift-Giver
Wizard (Conjurer/Creation sub-school, AGP p. 144; Divination or Transmuation also work)
Feats: Craft Woundrous Items, Spell Focus (Conjuration, Divination, Illusion), Leadership (ice gnomes as "elves")
Arcane Discovery(UM, p. 86), : Feral Speech, Immortality
Skills: Craft (toys), Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Ride, Sense Motive
Spells 9 - Time Stop, Wish, Summon Monster IX
8 - Discern Location, Greater Prying Eyes, Polymorph Any Object
7 - Instant Summons, Control Weather
6 - Legend Lore, True Seeing, Mislead, Control Weather
5 - Passwall, Major Creation, Teleport, Mirage Arcana
4 - Greater Invisibility, Dimension Door, Minor Creation, Scrying
3 - Fly, Shink Item, Gaseous Form, Deep Slumber, Tongues
2 - Alter Self, Detect Thoughts, Summon Monster II, Invisibility
1 - Sleep, Unseen Servant
0 - Light, Ghost Sound, Mage Hand
Opposition schools: Evocation, Necromancy
Equipment: Bags of Holding, Sleigh of Flight,
Alright, i've used a santa NPC often, the group loves the guy. His name is Father Noel( in quebec and other french places that would be Père Noël). Anyways I always made him a level 15 aasimar cleric, since i'am the Dm i would make him a saint and or half-celestial..my group never complained or rules lawyered it because he always gave them personal semi-magical toys/items of interest.
Contributor
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Alright, i've used a santa NPC often, the group loves the guy. His name is Father Noel( in quebec and other french places that would be Père Noël). Anyways I always made him a level 15 aasimar cleric, since i'am the Dm i would make him a saint and or half-celestial..my group never complained or rules lawyered it because he always gave them personal semi-magical toys/items of interest.
Oh my gosh, I am REALLY jealous of your group right now! That's awesome!
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3.5 D&D Santa Claus stats. Ripe for the murdering. No conversion required really, but I'm sure you could if you wanted to.
Outsider
Never had Santa himself in any games, but my party did once find a fat guy in red murdered by clockwork soldiers. They managed to loot his sack of holding (like a bag of holding,l only sackier), though!
On a related note, did anyone watch Big Bang Theory this week? Leonard ran a Christmas adventure! It was awesome! ^_^
I love what Sheldon done and Karma's Revenge on it.
But yeah Dudemeister has an excellent suggestion. I would at least use that as the basis of him.
I might make him a Level 20 Wizard with the Immortality Arcane Discovery or even an Alchemist with the Immortality Grand Discovery.
3.5 D&D Santa Claus stats. Ripe for the murdering. No conversion required really, but I'm sure you could if you wanted to.
Slight correction: those are 3.0 stats. Back when Intuit Direction was the poppinest skill you could sink your precious points in....wow, those were the days.
IMO, you can't go wrong with Bard. There may be an ideal archetype, but I don't know them all. If you like a (nearly) untouchable Santa, I would go Bard 20, Aasimar or human,and tier 10 Mythic (Trickster, although Archmage would be a good way to expand his magical abilities).
I do like the fluff in Sean's version. And I love that the reindeer are awakened Ranger 2s. I'd probably add a few levels.
I think he'd either be very, very high level, as in higher than 20, in order to gain whatever ability he requires to visit every house in the world in a single night. Either that, or he'd possess some kind of artifact with that ability. Regardless of what you'd consider a night to be in this case, I'm pretty sure it would be far too short an amount of time to visit all of the estimated 1.4 billion households in the world.
If you consider Santa Claus to, for the purposes of this exercise, literally be the historical St. Nicholas, some how granted immortality and various powers, he may in fact be a cleric or oracle. This is somewhat problematic, given that the saint's remains are supposed to be located in the Basilica di San Nicola. Of course this is not an insurmountable obstacle given the mystical nature of the figure in question.
On the other hand, Santa Claus is also considered to be influenced by the myths of the pagan deity Odin. Perhaps Santa Claus is just a guise of Odin, later conflated with the Christian saint. Again, this is just for the purposes of this exercise of determining how one might stat out Santa Claus. In this case, you may or may not be able to stat him at all, but that's a debate for another thread. If so there are already many different sets of stats available that you may choose to use.
It is possible that Santa Claus is truly neither figure, but a different man who due to similarities to the previous two got confused with them. Multiple stories, including L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and the 1970 Christmas special Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town present him as a mortal who was raised by and lived among fey. He has himself been described as an elf, however since D&D and Pathfinder have very specific depictions of creatures that have a wide variety of depictions in the original folklore, this probably does not mean that he is an elf as presented in the Core Rulebook. In either case his class is probably sorcerer, with a fey or perhaps boreal bloodline. He could be a regular human, a fey creature human, a half-elf, gnome, a type of fey creature or even dwarf.
Quite frankly, I believe that if one would use these stats so that they could play a Pathfinder session wherein the player characters endeavor to harm Santa Claus, I would say that the person in question at best possesses a very poor and foul sense of humor or is at worst deranged or just plain evil. However, I suppose it possible that I am taking this to seriously and that people that I have seen suggesting this are in fact doing so in a spirit of good fun.
For one special holiday session, I had the players help make toys, feed the reindeer,etc. on the Eve of Giftmas( a name my player called) Father Noel was attacked by the grinch..this shocking Near death experience caused one of the players who was a pacifist to kill the Grinch, But Noel's leading reindeer died..so the Another player with an wolf companion had it lead the Sleigh.
That session was a blast!
Broodmaster.
AM BARBARIAN
I laughed at this so hard.
---I think Santa Claus is most likely a wizard.
Broodmaster.
Nice...
Any class that doesn't make sense would be the funniest. Barbarian, Monk, Inquisitor...
Any class that doesn't make sense would be the funniest. Barbarian, Monk, Inquisitor...
Gunslinger.
Guns might not even exist but Santa will have Twin Pistols of the Infinite Sky and maybe a Musket (& Blunderbuss) of the Infinite Sky.
funny thing is "Nikoli", as i call him in my campaigns, is actually a deity of charity in my campaigns. in fact i have a player cleric devoted to him and had the animal domain with a reindeer... it was not christmas time.
This is how you tempt your party into turning evil and becoming the most despised people ever.
Fixed it. THERE IS GOING TO BE REPERCUSSIONS FOR OFFING THE JOLLY OLD MAN!!!! *CHILD RAGE*
He's definitely got to have levels of inquisitor.... why is santa so jolly? He knows where all the naughty girls are!
He's definitely got to have levels of inquisitor.... why is santa so jolly? He knows where all the naughty girls are!
Nice... Just Nice...
In my next campaign Saint Claus is a dwarven inquisitor who invented both the crossbow and inquisitors. In his old age he hung up his art of weapon craft for toy craft and started designing wonderous things for the children of the land. However, though functual his toys lacked a certain flair. Until a band of elven artist, inspired by his generosity, came to aid him by making his toys beautiful and supple so children could appreciate them better.
Sadly I'm at work and break's over. There is a lot more to this though.
EnWorld's Creature Catalog published this version a few years back, and it's still my go-to. I would prefer to run him as a fey, personally, but outsider (native) works just as well, and the special abilities have the right flavor for me. I might even go so far as to give him the Immortal ability from the Mythic Playtest as well - you can't kill Santa, and trying to do so just gets you on the Naughty List for LIFE. =]
I'm making stats for Krampus at the request of some friends, too, and will post them here later this week.
Also, those of you who are looking at running Christmas games should keep an eye out this Thursday for Jon Brazer Enterprises' Book of Beasts: War On Yule Tide - it will be chock full of new holiday-themed monsters for your Pathfinder game! (It's also my first author credit on a product! Woohoo!)
No offense but you just gotta love the shameless plug.
I beg to differ, sir - my plug is full of shame! =]
Mythic Winter Fey... hmmm... tempting to write that up...
-TimD
I beg to differ, sir - my plug is full of shame! =]
Sure what ever helps you sleep at night.
Ive got it! He's a white haired witch/ hexcrafter magus with the nails hex. Everyone just spells his name wrong....
It's Santa CLAWS you dolts!
This is how you tempt your party into killing Santa Claus.Any class that doesn't make sense would be the funniest. Barbarian, Monk, Inquisitor...Gunslinger.
Guns might not even exist but Santa will have Twin Pistols of the Infinite Sky and maybe a Musket (& Blunderbuss) of the Infinite Sky.
Several years ago I made a musket weilding Santa (I've detailed the story online before), and indeed what you say is true. Santa started as an ally who needed their help. Later, while two of the party members were trying to kill each other, two others tried to kill Santa (Seantu Negalas).
Wizard with lots of simulacruma.
Sandy Claws. All that is needed is Halloween Town and the Pumpkin King.
Thats it, thread over, it's decided. Santa Claws is a White Haired Witch/Hexcrafter.
He's a dwarven dual wielding monk/fighter/ranger
Love It!!!!!!
On another note I have "This Is Halloween" stuck in my head...
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Ive got it! He's a white haired witch/ hexcrafter magus with the nails hex. Everyone just spells his name wrong....
It's Santa CLAWS you dolts!
I'm going totally off topic here, but this reminds me of this hilarious movie my father-in-law showed me a few years ago at Christmas.
It's called Santa's Slay. Bill Goldberg is Santa and runs around killing people in really gory, creative ways. Apparently, Santa is the son of Satan but lost a curling match with an angel and was sentenced to deliver presents for 1,000 years. The movie is about, you guessed it, what happens when the sentence is up and Santa is free to kill again. It. is. awesome.
He's a dwarven dual wielding monk/fighter/ranger
WHO is that he has his BOOT on? my gosh!
He's a dwarven dual wielding monk/fighter/rangerWHO is that he has his BOOT on? my gosh!
Probably that annoying Travelocity Gnome.
20th+ level character: Arctic Druid+Pack Druid 18 (8-9 Elk) (18th for Timeless Body) Roofrunner Rogue 1 and rest of levels into Cleric (domain undecided)
Question is, is he a Human, a round-ears Half-Elf, a Human with Human Heritage feat (Elf) or human with Fey Creature template?
And is he Old or Venerable prior to Timeless Body?