Can we make Santa in 3.5/PF

[molten_dragon]

I got to thinking about this today while I was putting up my Christmas tree.

With all the crazy cheese that's seen on these boards, it should be possible to create a spellcaster by level 20 that can do Santa's job. Here's roughly what santa needs to be able to do:

- Visit ~500,000,000 children scattered across the globe in 24 hours.
- Carry enough toys with him to give at least one to every child.
- Enter locked houses with no signs of forced entry
- Be stealthy enough that no one ever catches him

The last 2 requirements should be trivial, the first 2 will be the tough ones.

Assume standard wealth by level. And to make things a bit more interesting, let's say he's only got whatever spells he prepared on the 24th to do it with (so no setting a ton of stuff up ahead of time), since before that he's busy managing the elves who build the toys. So how would you do it?

I'm thinking either being able to create duplicates of himself (which can create more duplicates) or using something like time stop could work.

[Benthesquid]

Offhand, the toys could be done with enough stacked bags of holding, although if he needs to bring specific toys to specific children, sorting them out could drastically increase his time.

[MeiLeTeng]

Wizards of the Coast did it back in 3.0 days, it's not a very good adaptation though. (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/santa.pdf)

[AstralFire]

If you can figure out some way to get a Metamind NI manifester level, temporal acceleration would work.

[Brookshw]

In a world where his leadership mass of elven craftsmen crank out millions of toys stuffed into various extradimensional bags, where infinite time stop cheese exists, flying horses are already a thing, yeah, santas good. And besides, what dm is going to say "no" to this and kill Xmas.

Merry Xmas.

[Skysaber]

Here is something I worked up a while ago. Enjoy.

Santa to D20 Conversion

Santa? Not only has he got an item of near-infinite Time Stop (poor thing must only work one day a year, though), but...

Well, what is he COLLECTING as he drops off all of those presents? I mean, what's in it for him?

It can't just be milk and cookies.

OBVIOUSLY the crafty old elf is using near-infinite Distill Joy spells from the Book of Exalted Deeds! It's all part of a whole scheme to create immense amounts of ambrosia to fuel item crafting!

Just think of it, near infinite amounts of free xp for churning out magic items, collected from all of those sleeping, joyful children! And he's doing the whole thing at the cost of mere Fabricates!

Fabricate up a bazillion presents, spew them around, creating joyful children... and then get INFINITE MAGIC ITEMS IN RETURN!

I have to respect that canny, old elf immensely for thinking up such a subtle and clever scheme. No wonder he has to live at the north pole. Nowhere else would he have even the slightest peace from all of those adventurers who'd like to loot his place, and given the prevalence of Endure Elements spells, that's probably not even his correct address. Oh, sure, set up a dungeon there, to weed out some of the weaker parties, and have it contain a few clues, because you've got to. It's in genre. But anyone clever enough to track you down? You recruit them! With the ability to offer that many magic items, who could resist?

So Santa secretly rules the world. Most people just don't know it.

[Emperor Tippy]

Yes.

Step 1: Whip up an Ice Assassin of a Psion 20/Ardent 1 with the magic mantle and that knows the power Soul Crystal, Genesis (the arcane version turned into a power via Spell to Power Erudite), Ice Assassin, Planar Bubble, Minute Form, Fabricate (arcane version turned into a power via StP Erudite), and Fusion.
Step 2: Have him give you a Soul Crystal of Genesis and use it as a standard action. This drop's the casting time of Genesis from one week to one standard action. Create a Demiplane where a hundred trillion years pass for every second on the Prime Material Plane.
Step 3: Shrink yourself down via Shapechange before traveling to your new demiplane and casting Animate Objects on a penny or something equally small.
Step 4: Return to the Prime Material and Polymorph Any Object your animated object into a human.
Step 5: Have your Ice Assassin Psion use give the Animated Object Human a Soul Crystal of Minute Form and have the AOH use it to shrink to fine size.
Step 7: Have your Ice Assassin do the same and all three of you travel back to your demiplane.
Step 8: Have your Ice Assassin and your AOH combined with Fusion.
Step 9: Have the Fusion hand you a Soul Crystal of Ice Assassin of the Fusion.
Step 10: Use the Soul Crystal.
Step 11: Have the Ice Assassin Fusion use Permanent Emanation: Planar Bubble that only covers one five foot square.
Step 12: Go back to the prime material plane with your IAF on your head.

The 12 step process to solving the time issue. Doable in under 9 hours of game time from a standing start with a level 20 Wizard.

Now just use Kissed by the Ages so that you don't die of old age.

Your little IAF can use Fabricate to make any non magical object of up to a cubic foot in size as a standard action so that is the gifts taken care of. Now just keep Shapechange up to cover the travel and breaking and entering and you should be golden.

There you go, Santa version 1.0

[AstralFire]

In all seriousness, though, epic magic seems like the best fit. Heck, Leadership spell slot mitigation actually makes sense even.

[Eurus]

Could you do it with a metamind infinite synchronicity loop? Infinite actions every round for a minute. There's very little you can't do with infinite actions.

[Slipperychicken]

Well, what is he COLLECTING as he drops off all of those presents? I mean, what's in it for him?


1. Very reasonable working hours (i.e. a lot of free time).
2. Near-universal adoration and celebrity status.
3. Knowledge of where all the naughty girls live.


Put those together, and it's easy to see why he's so jolly :smallbiggrin:

[Zonugal]

Within Pathfinder a casting of mythic, augmented Time Stop (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/mythicAdventures/mythicSpells/timeStop.html) should grant you 20 hours of frozen time to go about your deliveries.

After that it is just making a mythic 20th-level Wizard to match.

[molten_dragon]

Wizards of the Coast did it back in 3.0 days, it's not a very good adaptation though. (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/santa.pdf)

Yeah, I saw that actually, but it doesn't detail at all how Santa actually manages to do the delivery.

[HaikenEdge]

1. Very reasonable working hours (i.e. a lot of free time).
2. Near-universal adoration and celebrity status.
3. Knowledge of where all the naughty girls live.


Put those together, and it's easy to see why he's so jolly :smallbiggrin:

Plus, cookies and milk. Don't forget the cookies and milk.

[Amphetryon]

Rockdeworld had this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14384481&postcount=71) to say on the matter.

[Angelalex242]

It's trivial, but he should also have detect good, detect law, detect chaos, and detect evil as permanent emanations. Also detect animals (wouldn't do to have the dog bark and wake the kids) and detect thoughts (he knows if you're sleeping, he knows if you're awake) to make sure he goes unseen. That's how he knows if 'you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness's sake!' He's actually just detecting your alignment on the fly, so that's why kids always act saintly in December.

[Ruethgar]

Lucid Dreaming inception, Time Stop and Gate. With lucid dreaming just make the toys part of the buildings and native to the prime material so they exist outside. Also don't wast time casting Time Stop or Gate, just make spell traps part of your buildings. Similarly you could just have Transdimensional Spell Traps of True Creation to avoid the setting of planar qualities of dream items thing which is questionable at best.

I searched for my math on lucid dreaming inception, but I can't find it. I think it was something to the effect of 8 hours in 5 minutes. Drat, nvm, that was just for resting and regaining spells.

Still, dream up traps of persisted time stop. 14400 rounds in a day, take away a nice even 10 minutes for lucid dreaming sleep inception, you experience 143000 rounds while dreaming, persisted time stop on each round means 143000 days in one day. So you have 394 years every day to do whatever the hell you want. If you can manage to get persisted time stop on yourself in the prime material(such as sending traps through your dreams until one makes it in 394 years), then you now have a little more time on your hands.

14400 days in 24 hours *10 time quality -10 min sleep(negligible and not needed depending on race)= 144,000 days in dreams *14400 rounds of persisted time stop= 2073600000 days in dream land= 56773 centuries every day. Human factotum with two flaws for Unlocked Potential x4 on lucid dreaming and 18 wisdom puts us at +20 on lucid dreaming at level 1. Congratulations Santa is a level one human Factotum. If you don't want to use Unlocked Potential because it is third party, use a custom continuous item of Guidance of the Avatar and Skill Focus for a +31 at level one. Or combine the two and throw in a masterwork tool for +45.

[Trilby]

You could also build the santas from that finnish film, Rare Exports (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Exports:_A_Christmas_Tale). That'd be a cool christmas themed monster!:smallcool:

For those who don't know the flick, in this film Santas are captured in the wild in Finland. After that, they need to be trained not to attack everyone and their grandmother before they can be distributed to the rest of the world to populate malls and be around small children. It's disturbingly funny.

[Dr. Cliché]

I have a good model for Santa...

A while back I got a box of random figures off ebay, one of which being a fat dwarf model. The previous owner had outdone himself with the paint scheme - painting the body entirely red, and the beard white.

Rather unsurprisingly, he quickly earned the nickname Santa-Dwarf.

[Ansem]

Halfling Artificer in a red fluffy suit, hat and a beard.
Job done.

[Slipperychicken]

Halfling Artificer in a red fluffy suit, hat and a beard.
Job done.

The elves working for him are the artificers. He's just the face.

[Talionis]

Wu Jen into Archmage to make Body Outside Body a spell like ability the clones can use your spell like ability to make even more clones. Getting into houses can just be teleport, which could also be changed to a spell like ability with Achmage.

[Ruethgar]

Even as a cross class skill, the chances of you failing at Lucid Dreaming with that much time on your hands is phenomenally low.