Good Tidings

As noted in this blog post, The Dread Gazebo has statistics for a 4e Krampus in Kobold Quarterly.

Similarly, my associate David Philips has a 4e mini-adventure also featuring the krampus at Nevermet Press.

And just so I'm not reporting other people's stuff, here's a chart to add a little Christmas cheer to your game session:

Have You Been Naughty or Nice?

For the last year, consider your character's actions.  Think hard.

For every good deed performed, give yourself a point of Good Karma.  For every evil deed performed, give yourself two points of Bad Karma.  If, for whatever reason, your game system already has something like that, just go ahead and use those.

Be honest with yourself.  Misreporting your evil deeds automatically earns a place on the Naughty List.

Tally up your Karma.  If you have more Good Karma, roll on the Nice Table for your Christmas gift.  If you have more Bad Karma, roll on the Naughty Table instead.

Nice Table (roll 1d10):

1 - You don't get anything, but you are present for a talking animal at midnight.  This animal tells you an important secret — the location of a treasure, the solution to a puzzle, the method of defeating a difficult enemy, or some similarly important piece of information.

2-4 - You get an item, but not something you particularly wanted.  Note that this doesn't mean a useless item; you just don't get something you asked for.  In some cases, this can work to your advantage: if you just wanted a +2 longsword and get a Synchronocitor, well, perhaps that works in your favor.

5-9 - You get exactly what you wanted.  And for any devious GMs who are used to corrupting wishes, we mean the spirit rather than the letter.  You ass.

10 - You get exactly what you wanted, and you can roll again to get a new item.  Yes, if you roll another 10, that means you get something else you want, and another thing.  Yes, if you're lucky enough, you can walk away with eighty Christmas presents.

Naughty Table (roll 1d10):

1 - You don't get anything, but you are present for a talking animal at midnight.  This animal speaks blasphemies that wreck your resolve — save vs. spell or take an appropriate penalty as decreed by the GM (possibilities include insanity, fatalism, feeblemind, confusion, etc.).

2-7 - You get a lump of coal.  If the shame of being naughty isn't enough, maybe the coal is a cursed item of some sort — maybe you incur a penalty to your actions, or it encumbers you automatically, or the coal is actually a swarm of nanobots that foul your tech.

8-9 - You are visited by Black Peter, an angry Moor who arrives to give you a thrashing.  Black Peter is a Lawful 10th-level Fighter (or system equivalent), and if he reduces his quarry to 0 hit points, he attempts to abduct the person to take him to the Big Guy.

10 - You are visited by the Krampus, a former devil who arrives to give you a thrashing.  The Krampus is a Lawful 15 HD creature (or system equivalent) who can only be harmed by magic weapons and regenerates 1 HD per round.  If he reduces his quarry to 0 hit points, he attempts to abduct the person to take him to the Big Guy.

Variant: If your character has done something really good in the past year — we're talking about saving villages, continents, or the gods themselves from certain doom — add a +1 to the Nice Table and a -1 to the Naughty Table for each superlative act.  If you've done bad things on a similar scale, add a +1 to the Naughty Table and a -1 to the Nice Table for each superlative act.