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Can anyone think of an alternative to the Harrow Deck of Many Things to reward the party for bringing Zellara and Venster to their final rest? The problem is that I don't think the deck will be fun for me or my party, whilst I really enjoyed reading about the HDoMT, it's far too unpredictable for my tastes as a GM (even if I remove the craziest ones I'd still need to leave in loads that are unbalancing, a pain to adjudicate or introduce distracting sub-plots at the end of a campaign just to make a decent-sized deck). I also don't think my players will particularly enjoy it, their characters are a smart, relatively cautious group, and drawing from a DoMT isn't a smart move, even with a free redraw; a couple of them might draw a card if they were in a particularly reckless mood, but I doubt it, two of them definitely won't.
Anyway I've been wracking my brains trying to think of something suitably cool to give them that fits the scene as I quite like the way it ties things off neatly, and I'm coming up blank, any suggestions?
Creative Director
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If you're interested in keeping the theme of a card-based reward, you can still have them draw from the Harrow Deck of Many Things, but do so with a different mechanic than the classic one. Rather than have them draw a few cards, perform a full Harrow reading for each character and let them pick one of the cards from the Harrow reading to apply the effects of. Alternately, you could pick the card for them if you want to control the randomness of it. The Harrow deck is a little more forgiving than the standard deck, and one out of nine cards is PROBABLY going to be good; at least, there should be at least one choice that's not a total ruin.
If that's STILL too random for you, I'd suggest instead simply having each PC draw from the Harrow deck and using the card's suit (Intelligence or Strength or whatever) to determine where that PC gains a +2 inherent bonus to an ability score. If the card drawn matches the PC's alignment maybe he also gains another perk (like the "avoid one fate" card or a wish or something?).
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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I rather like the idea to give each character one final reading not during, but after Crown of Fangs. Kind of like the outro-scenes of Fallout 1 and 2, where the future history of the places you visited is detailed. This might not be a crunchy benefit like the HDoMT, but i think it has lots of style potential, and makes for a more memorable campaign conclusion - especially if you do not cheat, and get true matches on the Rakshasa, Beating and Lost ;-)
Seriously though, I think it would be a great way to make just such a "sendoff" happen.