Do No Harm

Question: Hippocratic Oath feels kind of weird. By the time you get this boon, you could have enough health boons to give yourself +46 dice. Then your Fatebonds would start buying off the boons you never use.

Well, first, some confusion to clear up: Hippocratic Oath/Vow of Pestilence is one of those few boons on our site that uses the level of boons you have, not the total. I'm not sure if we had an old draft of the boon up there or are just bad at games, but we're properly embarrassed and apologize for the confusion all around. It's been corrected.

So: your total number of boons doesn't matter for this one. It's based on your Health's level as if it were an Epic Attribute, so the most dice you'll get from it when you first get it as a level 5 boon is +11, and the most dice you can ever get from it once you have level 10 Health is +46. If it were based on number of boons, you'd be looking at a Legend 11 or 12 god having +191 dice to Health rolls, which would be a little excessive. Essentially, it's Arete that only applies to Health boons, and it scales accordingly.

On to the second half of your question! Which I think is also the product of some confusion. Our Fatebond system never targets individual boons; rather, it targets purviews. You will never get some boons bought off in a purview but not others - it's an all-or-nothing proposition from Fate, which is deciding not just what you can do but what concepts you are associated with as part of your divine destiny. If you get a negative Fatebond to Health, it will apply to all of Health; no Health boons will be safe from being bought off, and conversely, if you get a positive Fatebond to Health, it will purchase all Health boons for you, regardless of what they do. Fate cares about symbolism and cosmic power more than it cares about the gritty details of exactly what boons you're using (and trust us, Fatebonds are complex enough without introducing yet another thing Storytellers would have to keep track of).

So if you use a lot of Health, it doesn't really matter what Health boons you're using. If you have Hippocratic Oath up and use Restore, Heal and Martyrdom with reckless abandon, you're probably going to get a Fatebond bonus to Health, which will not differentiate between boons within the purview. Your Cradlesong and Lingering Malaise will be safe, even though you never use them because of your Hippocratic Oath, and they'll still count toward your total number of Health boons for powers that use that as a measurement. On the other hand, if you have Hippocratic Oath and you really don't use your Health boons much, or you use them but fail at them a lot, you might get a negative Fatebond to Health; if that happens, all your Health boons are equally subject to being bought off, whether they're positive ones you use with Hippocratic Oath or not.

Thanks to all you eagle-eyed people for noticing those kinds of little bobbles. I'm sure Jioni would be thrilled to have a hundred more dice to all her Health rolls than she currently does, but we want the game to still have some risk attached to injury.