Doom's Tarot

This spell is a part of the Crystal Ball spell chain and is found in the Crystal Ball rune stone.

Every fortune teller knows the card they fear drawing. Not because they are superstitious, the posteramancer is many things but superstitious is not among them. It is because they understand what the cards actually are. The cards are not symbols. Not metaphors. Not the idle imagery of charlatans trying to seem mysterious. The tarot of the future is a literal drawing from time, and every card pulled is a genuine fragment of what is coming, given physical form and direction by the posteramancer who called it forth. Most of those fragments are survivable. One is not.

When this spell is cast the posteramancer reaches into Doom, the dark future symbol that knows every ending before it arrives, and draws cards. 1d20+1d6 of them, materializing from time itself in a cascade of sharp-edged temporal energy, each one humming with the particular menace of something that was always going to happen to someone. The posteramancer sends them across the battlefield, splitting them as evenly as possible among all present - enemies, allies, the posteramancer themselve. If there are more cards than participants the excess cycle back to the first target struck, distributing themselves until every card has found a home. 

Each card that lands on an enemy strikes for 1d12 damage, piercing enough that 20% of what it deals reaches Vitality directly regardless of armor or magical defense, the future caring very little for what the present uses to protect itself. Each card that lands in front of an ally and the caster restores 1d12 Vitality. And for each card, the posteramancer rolls the 1d12 die with particular attention. A result of 12 means that card was the Death Card, drawn from Doom's deepest reserves. The target that receives it dies instantly - friend, foe, even caster, the future Doom always had planned for them arriving ahead of schedule. The posteramancer watches the cards fly with the practiced calm of someone who already knew how this was going to go, never worried not even for their own possible doom.