Invoker's Hand of Fate ritual

Question

In D&D4, I'm playing an Invoker. One of the rituals is:

Once per day, you can use Hand of Fate without expending components

I don't think I've ever used this ritual. Part of it is me just forgetting about it (you get it at first level, which means you can't even use it for a while), and part of it is probably our gameplay style of "let's barge in and worry about consequences later."

Two questions are:

1. What does it mean by "course of action". The examples in the book are dealing with objects and ways to go, but can I ask for more general questions? Like, "Should I purchase this item" or "is this message to meet in private a trap?"

2. How have others used this ritual to make the game more interesting?

Answer 1

The hand can conceivable answer most any question that can be answered with a gesture and whose time-frame does not extend beyond the current hour.

"Should I purchase this item" is a little vague. "Direct me to the best weapon to use in my upcoming duel" would be better.

For your second question, perhaps something like

• "What is the safest path to the meeting?"
• "Should I go to the meeting or directly to the bar?"

I think the DM has the onus to keep the power useful and interesting. The hand explicitly favors reward over risk, so the DM is free to use it to get y'all into interesting encounters of just the sort an adventurer should be ready for.