Character creating their own Harrow deck

[Ravenspath]

I've been working on a character that I hope to play some day. He has the fortune teller background and I want him to use a Harrow deck for that purpose. There isn't enough gold left to buy anything other than the simple deck, which I know is mainly used for games vs. fortunes.

How would you allow the character to modify the deck they have to create their own?
Would you require them to have Trained Crafting or would you allow them to do it Untrained?
Would you follow the regular crafting rules and would that be per card or for whole deck?

I have some ideas but hoping to take into the brain trust of other players and GMs.

Thank you.

[breithauptclan]

As far as I can tell, all of these Harrow Deck items are mechanically equivalent. They have no mechanical abilities or benefits. The only difference between them (other than their price) is how nice the cards look.

There are some (here and here) that do have some mechanics to them. But for role-play of a fortune teller background the 1 GP simple harrow deck should be more than enough (many GMs wouldn't even require a deck that costly). I don't think there is a Harrow Deck item specifically for fortune telling.

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For crafting a harrow deck, you would need to be trained in crafting and would need to have the formula for the item. You would craft the entire deck using the normal crafting rules for one crafting operation (which normally takes at least 4 days).

[Ravenspath]

Thank you for your input. I greatly appreciate it.

I was thinking the same thing in regards to crafting a full deck as well.

From a role play perspective I'm hoping to have him build his own deck at some point. But you are right that the character doesn't "need" to have a fancier one for fortune telling.

[keftiu]

There's supposedly a full Harrower Archetype coming in Stolen Fate, last we'd heard.

[Ashbourne]

I started playing a Tengu fortuneteller last week. I started off with the simple Harrow deck, and after one session was able to buy the common deck with my basic Pathfinder Socity wages.

If you want to craft to upgrade your deck, it takes a minimum of 4 days + 1/2 the cost of the finished deck in supplies. You can reduce the cost by taking longer, but it may take a long time to cover all the costs. Rules are on page 244 of the CRB The new Treasure Vault book has alternative crafting rules but I don't know them yet. Because the cost of crafting an item is based on the cost to buy it, I would think crafting it would be by the deck, unless your GM lets you divide the cost and time by the number of cards in the deck.

You don't need a fancy deck to start RPing Harrow reading. Outside of the game, normal decks of cards are used for Cartomancy. So the basic Harrow deck is enough to start.

If you don't have crafting you can use the fortune teller lore skill to earn income by fortunetelling in downtime to save up for the nicer deck, but that would take a few weeks of downtime. Adventuring is your best starting out. By the time you get downtime in a game to craft you'll likely have the gold to just buy it anyways.

If you're playing Organized play you'll have some downtime between every Scenario, other games downtime might not even come up, or not very often, depending on the adventure and GM.

Placing nine cards on the table, then turning them face up one at a time. I see some time in the near future, you get the harrow deck you desire.

[breithauptclan]

Standard crafting rules the 4 days still costs the full price of the item in materials. You can reduce that to 1/2 the cost if you spend quite a bit of additional downtime.

I also haven't fully looked into the alternative crafting rules in Treasure Vault.

[Ashbourne]

breithauptclan wrote:

Standard crafting rules the 4 days still costs the full price of the item in materials. You can reduce that to 1/2 the cost if you spend quite a bit of additional downtime.

I also haven't fully looked into the alternative crafting rules in Treasure Vault.

Looking at the rules again, it says you need 1/2 the cost upfront to start, and then pay the rest when completed. The first part of that is stated in 2 places in the book the last part is only in the skill section. good to know, thanks

So if you just made a 1st level character if you don't have 5 gold left and extra downtime, it's not an option to craft it yet.