Preparing a survey on rituals, recipes, and martial practices

[Ferghis]

This is a part of 4e D&D that sees less use than I'd like it to, at least at the tables I sit at. There are almost certainly many reasons for this, but a big one is the amount of work it takes for players or DMs alike to review the options and make selections with their limited resources. To provide some assistance in looking at what rituals may be most useful and which ones less so, I'm preparing a survey form. I originally tried to use the poll option on Enworld, but the post timed out before I could complete all the poll options, and I lost a lot of work, so I'm now resorting to a googledocs poll. I realize this might deter some respondents, but it allows me to cross post-this on a few sites, which is an advantage. Since the goal is to help folks make some choices on rituals, I'll certainly share the results.

So far, I've prepared a form with all the heroic rituals, and I'm wondering if I should break down the survey by tier. Should I post the Heroic rituals first, then the Paragon ones in a separate survey, then the Epic ones in a third survey, or all together, or what?

I considered separating out rituals from recipes and martial practices, but the latter two are so few that there would be little to ask about, and the choice, from a resources management view, has considerable overlap, so I decided to keep them together as one survey.

Also, I need the preamble of the survey to make the criteria of selection as crystal clear as possible. So far, I've put the following together. Is there any way to improve it?

Please select the best rituals, recipes and/or martial practices of each level. In making the choice regarding each level, please make all assumptions necessary to make that particular ritual, recipe or martial practice usable in a campaign, but without knowing anything specific about your allies (including the other party members) or the adventure ahead. For example, assume that the resources necessary are relatively available, and that rituals and martial practices can be relatively easily purchased. For a teleportation ritual, assume that teleportation circles occur with some frequency in the setting. For a bard ritual, assume you are a bard. For a dragonmark ritual, assume dragonmarks are present in the campaign. Many rituals are very situational. For example, Raise Beast Companion may be considered pretty indispensable in a campaign where such a creature is present, but of trivial utility in other campaigns. I have no bright-line solution for those rituals, so I must ask you to balance their utility with the likelihood that the situation requiring them might arise. In other words, assume that you might have a beast master ranger in your party, but you don't know for sure. Rituals that will only be useful for one particular adventure, such as Pact of the Iron Ring, have not been included as an option, since they do not have general utility. Finally, assume that the campaign will probably be a long one, so rituals, recipes and practices should be selected with an eye for longevity as well: a ritual that remains useful at higher levels is a better selection than one that quickly loses utility later in an adventurer's career.

I'm asking responders to select a fraction of the rituals, recipe and/or martial practices available for each level to get a good spread of interesting rituals. I'm not interested in simply finding the single "best" ritual, recipe or martial practice of a given level. One of the purposes of this survey is to guide players and DMs towards certain rituals and martial practices so that they are less overwhelmed by the volume of choices (and therefore decrease what is often termed as analysis paralysis). The number of possible selections is unrestricted, so if you feel compelled to select more or fewer than the suggested number, please go ahead. But please don't vote for just one ritual, recipe or martial practice for each level, unless it's a level with only a few choices (such as level 7). That would defeat the express purpose of the survey. I'm really hoping to find some interesting rituals, recipes and martial practices that I have not properly looked at before. In that vein, I hope you discuss these choices with other players, and invite you to come back and change your selections (if you are able to do so), if you change your mind later.

Finally, thank you for participating in this survey. I will make the results public after a the flow responses dramatically decreases.

And here's the part repeated at each question, for emphasis:

Again, please make all assumptions necessary to make that particular ritual, recipe or martial practice usable in a generic campaign, but without knowing anything specific about your allies (including the other party members) or the adventure ahead. Further, assume that the campaign will probably be a long one, so rituals, recipes and practices should be selected with an eye for longevity as well: a ritual that remains useful at higher levels is a better selection than one that quickly loses utility later in an adventurer's career. Finally, feel free to make more or less than the suggested number of selections. But, please make more than just one or two.

 

[Ferghis]

I just noticed that there while there are about 260 rituals, recipes and practices of Heroic tier, there are only about 100 of combined paragon or epic, so, if I separate anything, I might put together one survey for heroic, and another for both paragon and epic.

 

[Garthanos]

I have a book on rituals from Goodman Games (kind of thinking they might be a tad over the top in many cases but I also wonder about peoples opinions on those) are you considering including them in your list?