Mooses Bear Blog

Holiday 2025 Collab: Santa Themed DnD Character

pixel art image of a d20 and behind it a person with a santa hat and red eye

Image Provided by Xaya Emeris

For this post, I wanted to talk to you about how thinking about Santa led to a DnD enemy, and how that process went. Please note, some of the formatting is off from posting this on bearblog. To see it properly, check out the post on my website here

Backstory

I was in a Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) campaign with some friends where we all rotated who was the DM. My turn was coming up around the holidays, and so I wanted to do something holiday themed. I've always liked the Christmas season, and so doing something Santa themed seemed interesting to me, but I didn't want to quite straight up use Santa.

On Santa

This had me thinking about what powers / traits made Santa, well, Santa. Off the top of my head, the general traits that came to mind were:

There are obviously more qualities (red cheeks, jolly laugh, big belly, etc.) but I figured this person was going to be an antagonist, and so figured I wouldn't be using the nicer qualities.

From here I started to think about how to take some of these qualities, and make them an interesting DnD fight. What I ended up coming up with I don't think anyone would recognize as Santa, but I was pretty happy with it.

Rhek'olgs Plateau

You approach the woman at the mission desk. She turns to you, seeing the quest poster in your hand.

"Welcome GUILD adventurers! I see you've come with the flyer for Sir Talius' mission - he will sure be pleased you're willing to do this! From what I've heard, he's been waiting for a while now for the part you're going to be retrieving. He's been saying something about new technology coming for the GUILD, very exciting!"

She turns away from you, rummaging around in the shelves behind her

"Ah, here they are! These were provided to help you prepare for your quest. If you end up needing anything else, please feel free to let us know!"

She hands you a few pieces of parchment, a metalic canister, a metalic device, and some thick gloves, which you take over to a nearby table where the rest of your party waits. You take a look at the first piece of parchment:

Image of writing on a piece of parchment. It says 'Hello adventurers, Im sending you to Rhek'olgs plateau. I need you to retrieve a special rock that's believed to be up there. If my calculations are correct, I've included a device that should be able to help you locate the rock. When nearby, it will start floating, and oncec you're really close it will fly towards the rock I need you to retrieve. I've also included gloves for you to pick up the rock with, and a canister for you to put it in. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TOUCH THE ROCK WITHOUT THE GLOVES. Good luck, Sir Talius

The remaining documents seem to be scouting reports, the most recent one from but only a few months prior.

Image of a scouting report stating it was made on the Fourth Day of the 2nd month of year 186. The scout writing the report was Bayor, with a target of Rhek'olgs Plateau. The mission status is reported as a failure, with the report stating conditions were too dangerous to conduct operations. Strong winds and lightning made it too difficult to approach. Storm clouds too thick to see anything. Possible movement in the clouds. The report also states the recommended insertion strategy is to avoid the area at all costs

Hmm, you recognize the name Bayor. He's usually seen talking to himself, and has a bit of a reputation of being a scaredy cat. That said, he's also considered one of the GUILD's best fliers.

Image of a scouting report made on the 20th day of the 5th month in the year 176. The reporting scout is Aria, with the target of Rhek'olgs plateau. The mission is listed as a success, with the report stating there was nothing of note to report. Suggested inserstion strategy is to walk across a bridge from a nearby plateau

Did Bayor happen to just go on a bad day? Why hadn't he mentioned the bridge in his report? Surely the scouting division would've waited a few days to see if the weather changed or not before making the report?

Without much else to go on, you decide to head out with your team, and pray whatever storm was on the plateau when Bayor was there has passed, and that there's still a bridge to cross.

The Plateau

Above was the setup for the mission my players went on. Once they eventually did get to the plateau, they found the bridge still there, however a storm was still raging. There were a couple of home brew environmental effects going on on the plateau:

Hazard Effect Roll
Strong Winds Flying characters move at 1/2 speed in the air. Walking characters move at 3/4 movement rounded down N/A
Howling Winds Characters must succeed on a dc 16 perception check to hear anything other than wind if they are more than 5 ft from each other dc16 perception
Turbulence Every round, flying characters must make a dc 15 athletics or acrobatics check to not get either blown backwards or forced to land.

on a 1-5 roll, character is forced to land, taking 1d8 bludgeoning damage and is pushed 20 feet backwards

On a 6-14 roll, character is just pushed back 10 feet		 dc 15 athletics or acrobatics
Wall of Wind Ranged attacks that require a projectile are at disadvantage. Ranged attacks such as Eldritch Blast are unaffected. N/A
Lightning Each round of combat (or 3 minutes outside of combat), roll 1d10 for how many lightning strikes hit the plateau.

Roll a d20 per lightning strike. If the number lands on the number a player chose, the lightning hits the player

Each strike of lightning deals 6d10 lightning damage. Players may spend a reaction to make a dc17 athletics or acrobatics saving throw to take half damage. On success, they move to an adjacent square.

Each player can only be hit by 1 lightning per dice roll		 1d10 for how many lighting strikes

xd20 based on how many lightning strikes to see which hit

6d10 per lightning strike that hits

dc17 athletics or acrobatics check to take half damage

To help with the Lightning mechanic, I made a bat file to quickly make those rolls. If you don't know, a bat file lets a Windows computer (not sure about others) run a command in command prompt. So, as I wrote it, you launch the bat file and it rolls for an amount of lightning, who was hit, and how much damage the lightning did. You need to assign each of your players a number on the d20 ahead of time for the bat file to work. Code below:

@echo off :start set /A lightning=%RANDOM% * 10 / 32768 + 1 echo Amount of lighting: %lightning% set /A Damage=((%RANDOM% * 10 / 32768 + 1)+(%RANDOM% * 10 / 32768 + 1)+(%RANDOM% * 10 / 32768 + 1)+(%RANDOM% * 10 / 32768 + 1)+(%RANDOM% * 10 / 32768 + 1)+(%RANDOM% * 10 / 32768 + 1)) echo Damage: %Damage% set loop=0 Echo Person Hit: :loop set /A dice=%RANDOM% * 20 / 32768 + 1 if '%dice%''1' echo Blue Dragon if '%dice%''2' echo No one if '%dice%''3' echo No one if '%dice%''4' echo No one if '%dice%''5' echo No one if '%dice%''6' echo No one if '%dice%''7' echo No one if '%dice%''8' echo No one if '%dice%''9' echo No one if '%dice%''10' echo Wizard if '%dice%''11' echo No one if '%dice%''12' echo No one if '%dice%''13' echo No one if '%dice%''14' echo No one if '%dice%''15' echo No one if '%dice%''16' echo No one if '%dice%''17' echo No one if '%dice%''18' echo No one if '%dice%''19' echo No one if '%dice%''20' echo No one set /a loop=%loop%+1 if "%loop%""%lightning%" goto next goto loop :next set /p choice="Roll again? Press 'y' for yes, or "n" for no: " if '%choice%''y' goto start if '%choice%'=='n' echo Goodbye pause

You would change "No One" to whatever number your players are assigned to. If their number is rolled, they get hit. If you're unfamiliar on how to create a bat file, you can open notepad (on windows), copy the code above, paste it into notepad, change what you need to (names), and then save the file as name.bat . Name can be whatever you want, but make sure to include the .bat in the file name. And then that should just work when you double click on the icon wherever you saved it.

Recently, I've actually remade it as part of a mass dice roller I made using Java. You can find that here if you're interested. When running it, you just choose the 3rd option, and answer the questions.

The Wizard

After all of that, let me tell you about the Wizard of the Plateau. I wish I had a character sheet for them, but alas. The plateau itself the Wizard had cast the Private Sanctum spell on for a year, making its effect permanent. This gave the Wizard a limited area he was strong in, as well as the inclimate weather effect.

The wizard started the battle invisible, targeting one of the characters with a charm person spell. This fits with the "unseen" element of Santa.

The wizard would then immediately get inside a protective rune area, and use the Summon Greater Demon spell to summon a Tanarukk. After a round of fighting, a Blue Dragon also enters the fight. These fit the helpers theme of Santa.

The Fight

You finally make it atop this cursed plateau, after meeting a weird man and some harpies, only to find that the storm is unrelenting. The dangers are great, so you must move fast to secure what you came here for.

What's that? You catch something out of the corner of your eye. Lin, your team's dragon rider, seems to be shaking his head. Just past him, a fox like humanoid seems to be standing in some runes, chanting something.

A moment later, you see something rise up, out of the plateau. Another humanoid, this one larger, much bigger than the caster. What's this though? It seems to have started attacking the humanoid that was just chanting.

Before you can figure out exactly what's happening there you see it - movement in the clouds. Closing in on you, fast, is a blue dragon. A full, fledged, DRAGON. How are you going to be able to stop that? You've heard stories of them, but seeing one this large in person is something different. Sure you had a dragon rider with you, but the dragons the military used were only horse sized. This... this was the real thing.

You look over at your party. Lin seems to have shaken off whatever had been getting to him. You see him look over at the dragon, and he seems more excited than you've ever seen him before. He runs over, and begins shouting to the dragon. Through some miracle, he's able to convince the dragon to let you and your party exist in peace. He explains you're just looking for a certain rock, and will leave immediately after. The dragon seems to accept that, and lets your team find what you were looking for. It keeps its eyes on you the entire time, but it does stay true to its word.

Finding a sort of electrified rock looking thing, you look back over to where you saw the humanoid before, and it seems like whatever it summoned was continually trying to get to the summoner, but unable to. Your party member, Kendrick, lobs a few spears at the summoner to knock him out, while you and Lin work on killing the demon looking creature that was summoned. Successful, you bound and gag the summoner, and head back to the GUILD.

Wrap up

Yup.... after all that planning, the Wizard failed a roll to control the demon, and because he was the closest thing to the demon, it attacked him for the entire fight (or, tried to). One of my players could speak draconic, rolled an insanely high charisma check, and managed to convince the dragon the team meant it (and its children) no harm. The dragon, sort of in partnership with the Wizard, but not actually caring for him that much, felt better to not fight, and just let the humanoids grab a few rocks and leave.

Overall though, I always thought this was a sort of fun exercise - take something like Santa, take some qualities he has, and place it on some other character, in another element. I don't think I did the best job explaining my thought process, but it's been about 2.5 years since I originally came up with the character, and so my memory is a bit foggy.

About this blog post

This post is for the Grizzly Gazette Advent Calendar. There's a different post everyday for the month of December, written by different folks who are apart of the Bear Blog Carnival discord.

Where to find me:

The best place to find me is on my website. You can see other posts I've made, some tech tutorials, and a bunch of other stuff!

Thanks for reading,
- Moose