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The Harrow Deck is loads of fun...until you actually go to interpret the cards, because the listings in the divination/rule book are not alphabetized. This mind-boggling decision is the greatest source of frustration in my mind, but Harrowings themselves are also more than a little complicated in general: there are three kinds of matches, and the potential for misaligned cards, all for the interpreter to watch for. Yuck!
Presenting:
The Harrowing Spreadsheet, a PF game aid
(implemented in Google Sheets)
Of course, plenty of other tools have sprung up around the world to try and get a handle on all of this. Here's why mine is different:
- You can either have it automatically draw for you, or you can enter the card names yourself. The former is good for quick and easy readings, and the latter is good for rapid interpretation of a spread from a physical table reading. No more flipping through a book that lacks a proper index.
- Automatically highlights the True, Opposite, and Partial matches in the spread. This is almost as good as the above.
- Uses a colorblind-safe color palette for the above (for you red-green folks; those of you with tritanopia are out of luck, sorry)
- Clearly identifies misaligned cards, and only prints the misaligned meaning when the card really is misaligned (this follows the "quiet cockpit" philosophy of UI design: only show people what's relevant). What's not to love?
- Supports all the alternate spreads presented in Pathfinder Player Companion: The Harrow Handbook
- One word: automation
- One word: protected sheets so you don't enter data into the wrong cells or delete something important and break it by accident¹
- Doesn't require Excel (personally, I love Excel, but I'm a weirdo). Alas, won't work in Excel², either, because it does require a bit of scripting. Sad face. :(
- You'll smell better³
You'll need to copy this to your own Google drive to use it because it's not a static spreadsheet. You have to enter values into it to make it go, and of course that wouldn't work as a shared document. Alas, that means giving up a small bit of your privacy to the Google Collective, but let's face it: they already know about that thing you did, so what else is there to lose?
Comments, feedback, fan mail, and constructive criticisms are always welcome. Hate mail and trolls > /dev/null 2>&1
¹Claim may be more than one word.
²Excel version is coming soon.
³Claim has not been verified.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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The Harrow Deck is loads of fun...until you actually go to interpret the cards, because the listings in the divination/rule book are not alphabetized. This mind-boggling decision is the greatest source of frustration in my mind, but Harrowings themselves are also more than a little complicated in general: there are three kinds of matches, and the potential for misaligned cards, all for the interpreter to watch for. Yuck!
Presenting:
The Harrowing Spreadsheet, a PF game aid
(implemented in Google Sheets)Of course, plenty of other tools have sprung up around the world to try and get a handle on all of this. Here's why mine is different:
- You can either have it automatically draw for you, or you can enter the card names yourself. The former is good for quick and easy readings, and the latter is good for rapid interpretation of a spread from a physical table reading. No more flipping through a book that lacks a proper index.
- Automatically highlights the True, Opposite, and Partial matches in the spread. This is almost as good as the above.
- Uses a colorblind-safe color palette for the above (for you red-green folks; those of you with tritanopia are out of luck, sorry)
- Clearly identifies misaligned cards, and only prints the misaligned meaning when the card really is misaligned (this follows the "quiet cockpit" philosophy of UI design: only show people what's relevant). What's not to love?
- Supports all the alternate spreads presented in Pathfinder Player Companion: The Harrow Handbook
- One word: automation
- One word: protected sheets so you don't enter data into the wrong cells or delete something important and break it by accident¹
- Doesn't require Excel (personally, I love Excel, but I'm a weirdo). Alas, won't work in Excel², either, because it does require a bit of scripting. Sad face. :(
- You'll smell better³
You'll need to copy...
I made a copy of this in my Google Drive, and after opening it and giving permission for the scripts to run, the Tapestry, Cross and Path autodraw sheets don't show anything. Bridge and Sword work.
I made a copy of this in my Google Drive, and after opening it and giving permission for the scripts to run, the Tapestry, Cross and Path autodraw sheets don't show anything. Bridge and Sword work.
These three configurations need a starting card. For the Tapestry, you have to pick the attribute for the Choosing. The Cross requires that you select a an attribute and alignment for the center card, called the Signifier.
The Path is a little different. You start at the bottom (which should be auto filled), and then choose one of the two cards above it in the next row (hence the name...you pick a path from the apex to the last row).
Good to have some free harrowin' spreadsheet newfangled stuff out there. ;)
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I have updated the Excel version of the Harrowing spreadsheet to include a tab for the spell Harrowing. It automatically calculates bonuses and penalties for the spell using the rules from the spell description in the Inner Sea World Guide.
I'm still not sure how to handle the Harrowing spell when you get a Crown card in your opposing alignment.
My harsh interpretation is that all your d20 rolls are penalized. Which means you are pretty screwed, and have to spend your bonuses just to get a +0 (or +1 if you were lucky somewhere).
A nicer answer would be to just pick one of the other categories (perhaps at random?), to get the penalty.
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The Google Sheets version has been updated to include the tabs for the Harrowing spell.