Add New Column

2nd-level Legacy Systems & Zombie Projects

Casting Time: 1 action; the actual consequences may not surface for weeks
Range/Area: Touch; one spreadsheet or workbook currently relied upon by the caster’s organization
Components: V, S, M (a single inserted, deleted, or moved column, row, or tab)
Duration: Permanent, until independently discovered
Classes: Financial Analyst, Operations Manager, New Hire

You insert, delete, or move a single column, row, or tab in a target spreadsheet. Every formula referencing a cell at or past the point of change silently shifts to reference the wrong value; no error is produced, because the file’s underlying formula chain has never been documented and no creature currently employed understands its full structure. This is a precondition for the spell, not a coincidence.

Any creature who would rely on the file’s output before the change is discovered must succeed on a Discovery saving throw, its DC set by the file’s Technical Debt score (see Animate Legacy System), to notice the discrepancy before acting on it. On a failure, the organization takes damage equal to the scale of whatever decision was made using the bad number — this damage cannot be reduced, resisted, or prepared for in advance, even by a creature who suspected this exact spell had been cast.

At Higher Levels. When cast using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the shift additionally propagates to any other file that has ever copied a formula from this one, without requiring a separate casting.

Flavor: “Can someone check why Q3 numbers look different in this version vs. last week’s? Might just be me.” — Slack thread, no resolution, 11 months old