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Divine your destiny with the Deluxe Harrow Deck, the legendary fortune-telling deck of the Pathfinder RPG world! With this 54-card, full-color set of fortune-telling cards, you’ll learn how to include the Harrow in any Pathfinder RPG game, and enhance play with rule cards detailing spells, fortune-telling methods, and other insights. Pathfinder RPG OGL - 101 Hazards and Disasters.pdf PDF 23.00M torrent Latest Torrents First cams torrents Dvd torrents Tv show torrents hotest torrents 1080p Movies 2015 Movies Movies and TvShows Subtitles Free Download Apple HowTo Funny Online Games YTS Movies.
Every kitchen sink fantasy world needs an analogue of the “gypsies” of legend. And every band of wandering mystics needs a fortune-telling tradition to call their own.
Enter the tarot card, which somehow has taken over this role in the D&D tradition (never mind that the mystical side of tarot is a fairly recent invention that came from the upper classes in Europe, see here). The Harrow Deck is the equivalent in Paizo’s Golarion campaign world, invented very shortly after the world itself.
The idea of fortune-telling is compelling enough to generate a lot of interest in fantasy games – as I’ll discuss below, this deck is useful in a number of Pathfinder products. How does it work, and will it work for you?
Note: Although the deck carries the Pathfinder logo, and draws upon the traditions of their setting, Golarion, it is very easy to port to other D&D-ish games: all you need are the six iconic stats and the nine basic alignments (and even the latter are optional; you could certainly use these in BECMI, for example).
![Pathfinder harrow deck Pathfinder harrow deck](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125855858/981149123.jpg)
The Harrow Deck is not part of the Pathfinder Cards series, unlike all of Paizo’s other card decks. Instead, it was released under the Pathfinder Campaign Setting line. The good news is that allowed a more “deluxe” presentation, inside of a double-sized card box. The contents are shown at left and include:
The 54-card Harrow deck itself
Three blank “chronicle” cards to record divinations (and one example); you can also download a pdf version from the product page.
A quick reference card for the symbols and divination layout
A 32-page black and white rulebook (4.5x3.25 inches, or about 11x8 cm). Note that this is available as a free download at the product page.
A copy of the OGL on one card (omitted from early printings, tsk tsk Paizo!)
Unboxing! Image credit: Samort7
A sample card front is shown below. Each has:
The card back: a cartoonish picture of a fortune-teller, and the name “Harrow.” Nobody likes the card backs.
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An illustration – again, slightly cartoonish, but I think that fits. Again, this is unique to each card.
A symbol, representing the ability (Strength, Dexterity, etc.) to which the card corresponds; there are nine cards per ability.
The location of the symbol varies between cards to represent the alignment of the card (Lawful Good, Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc.).
Harrow, Harrow on the table…
The basic use of the deck is for prophecy, of course, and 80% of the rulebook covers that purpose (with most of that devoted to interpretations of the cards). Very briefly:
The character or group seeking the prophecy poses a question. The harrower associates that question with an ability (Charisma, etc.).
The harrower pulls out the nine cards corresponding to that ability. Each subject of the reading draws one; this is their role.
Collecting all the cards again, the harrower lays nine out on the table in a square. The first column represents the past and is examined first. The top card is “Good”, the middle card “Neutral,” and the bottom card “Evil.”
To read the fortune, the harrower looks for cards whose alignments match their location in this square (reading left to right, top to bottom). So the top card in the first (past) column is Lawful Good.
There are four elements to interpreting the past.
If a role card shows up, it should be interpreted no matter what.
If one of the three cards is a “true match” – meaning both components of its alignment match its location, the harrower makes a prediction based on the card. So if The Queen Mother (LN) is in the leftmost column, middle row, the reading would involve the Queen Mother (depicted as an ant queen) in some way (possibly symbolic, in the case of the Queen Mother representing a desire to be part of a collective).
If any of the cards are “opposite matches” – meaning sitting in the exact wrong location, they also represent important parts of the prophecy.
If there are no true or opposite matches, the harrower can use “partial matches” in their place. These are interesting because they could be misaligned – meaning a Good card in an Evil location, or vice versa, in which case their location determines the prophecy, not the card’s own alignment.
The above is repeated for the middle column (representing the present) and the right column (representing the future).
That sounds somewhat complicated, because it relies on building a spread of cards in which their locations mean something, which is hard to explain in words. But if it sounds appealing, download the rulebook, which has diagrams!
I quite like this approach; it’s complex enough to offer a lot of variation, and open-ended enough to give the harrower room to make things meaningful. And, even better, it is very well-suited to the D&D/Pathfinder experience:
The explicit use of alignment and abilities is brilliant; these are, after all, iconic parts of the game, and they feel natural here.
The ability to harrow an entire group at once is what really makes this sing, though: the adventuring party fits perfectly into the system. Each gets a role and then the reading applies to the group together.
There’s even a recommended system for applying the harrowing to an adventure: basically, the GM picks out encounters that correspond to each of the important cards. There’s a handy chart for it and everything!
An example card .Image credit: TheEbonyTurtle
Pathfinder can be harrowing!
There is one element of rules in the booklet: the harrowing spell, which allows a reading to grant actual mechanical bonuses or penalties. I would much prefer not reduce this kind of mystical thing to a simple spell, but I suppose it is inevitable.
There are, however, several uses for your Harrow deck in other Pathfinder products:
The The Inner Sea World Guide offers a number of character options centered around the deck, from the Harrowed feat to the rather unwieldy Harrower prestige class.
The Harrow deck is integral to the story of the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path, where the PCs undergo several readings and each adventure is linked to a suit in the deck. The first volume, Pathfinder #007: Edge of Anarchy, even has an article describing the decks’ rules and offering alternatives for those who don’t own the product.
The Carrion Crown Player's Guide presents alternate rules for using the deck. Each PC gets to draw a card for each adventure, and at certain plot points along the way. These cards can be cashed in for thematic bonuses based on either their alignment or suit. (This is a free supplement, so you can easily steal the rules for another situation.)
Finally, The Harrowing is an adventure in which the PCs journey inside a deck, encountering many of its figures.
A Bonus Game!
To round out the rulebook, there’s a quick gambling game called Towers that uses the Harrow deck (see the BGG entry here: Harrow). I haven’t played it so won’t say much about it, except that:
The cool part is that the game uses the cards as physical objects, not as symbols – you are basically building a board with them as the game progresses. The varying positions of the symbols (thanks to alignment) are crucial for this; and
The rules are very difficult to follow, largely because the game relies so heavily on the spatial construction, and there’s only one diagram.
I’m not about to convince someone to play, but I wouldn’t immediately turn them down, either.
The Bottom Line
It should be obvious there are few supplements more “fluff”-oriented than the Harrow Deck. But it is very well-designed fluff: the integration with the tropes of D&D/Pathfinder is impressive, and the readings are themselves fun to do. Paizo has also found a number of clever ways to incorporate the deck into other products, none of which feel forced. It’s a great tool for fortune-telling in any fantasy game.
Note: This is my 85th entry in the Iron Reviewer series.
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