Health and Wellness

Question: Can a Scion with Assess Health use it on himself by looking in a mirror or other reflective surface?

Question: Hey, I noticed on your Health purview write-up that you restrict its use in some ways. While I understand the need to make it a non-spammable asset for the PCs, I still wonder about how you explain that restriction in-game.

A double-header! Two questions that are really asking about the same thing.

The first one's easy: no. As it says clearly at the beginning of the Health purview, "no Health Boon may ever be used by a Scion on himself unless it explicitly states otherwise." Mirrors will not somehow circumvent this rule any more than bending over to look at one of your body parts would.

As for the second question, I assume you're also referring to the rule that Health boons can't be used on yourself, and there are reasons for that: the Health purview is geared only for healing others because that's how it works in mythology. Gods of healing or medicine almost invariably heal others and bestow blessings or curses on their people, but they never doctor themselves, which is why Dian Cecht, doctor extraordinaire, died of a plague, or Shennong, master of all medicinal herbs, died of poison. Healing gods heal others, but they seldom heal themselves; their legends are all concerned with saving other important gods, curing the plagues of humanity or visiting pestilence on those who anger them. Apollo is always on deck to heal the other gods, but there is no story of Apollo saving himself from death's door; Sekhmet visits disease on humanity like nobody's business, but she never gets sick herself.

Mechanically, this is also important because affecting your own body and health is covered by Epic Attributes and knacks rather than by a purview. Mastery over the bodies of others falls under Health; mastery over your own body falls under Stamina, for healing yourself, armoring yourself against disease and so forth, and Appearance, for sculpting your looks and body into whatever form you please. If Health were also usable on yourself, it would be one of those indispensable skills that every PC would want to take just to use on themselves, and the end result would be a bunch of people with Health who didn't actually use it to heal anyone but themselves - the exact opposite of how healing power generally appears in mythology.

So Health is restricted to use only on others because it's both more mythically resonant and more mechanically balanced. Gods of Health are doctors, healers, scientists and plaguerats that spread their gifts to others, not themselves; that's what Stamina, open to any character, is for.

(Of course, there are the two exception boons in Health - Virility/Muliebrity and Blessing of Health/Curse of Frailty - which get to be used on the Health Scion as they don't break the above rules. They're the only powers of their kind in the game, and even if they weren't, gods of Health often are associated with fecundity as illustrated by their own offspring, not just the babies they help others out with.)