M12: Skywinder Drake

Wizards has a lot of images from the M12 set up on their website. What they had up so far was pretty interesting but one card in particular brought back memories of possibly the most important draft of my life. The card?

I expect most people will see this and be pretty unexcited. Sure, it's a nice aggressive card for blue in drafts but what's so special about it? Well, it is a functionally equivalent reprint of the card Rishadan Airship from the Mercadian Masques set, which was the limited format for the first Pro Tour I qualified for.

It was December 5th, 1999. Pro Tour: Chicago was taking place and there was a storm in Toronto so the turnout was very low. Jer had won a PTQ in Waterloo earlier in the season but still let a couple of us crash at his parent's house in Toronto and chauffeured us around. I think it was just myself and Tom playing in the tournament. There were 5 rounds and I was 3-1 going into the 5th round. The judge then pulled out a rule I'd never seen before and hadn't seen since. There were enough people at 3-1 that if we all drew some of us wouldn't make top 8, but if just one table drew they'd both advance. He didn't want games dragging on as we waited to see if other people were drawing or not so he said we had to decide _right now_ if we were drawing. We were all choosing secretly if we wanted to draw without even knowing who our opponents were. If two people wanted to draw and happened to get matched up they could draw. Otherwise we had to play. No one ended up drawing.

My opponent ended up being incredibly slow, and we actually ended up naturally drawing. I'm not sure if he did it on purpose or not, I certainly played fast as always. At any rate we both ended up making top 8. We had a draft archetype we liked in Team Comf which involved focusing heavily on blue for aggressive flyers (3/1 and 2/3 for 3) coupled with great control cards like waterfront bouncer, stinging barrier, counterspell, and gush. I ended up drafting mono blue with I think 4 bouncers and a ton of flyers. I won the first two rounds easily and ended up in finals against a young Richard Hoaen. I believe we split the first two games and were on to game three for all the marbles.

We ended up doing a lot of early damage to each other and then the board clogged up with a lot of junk on both sides. On the critical turn I declared an attack and Hoaen cast shoving match. This was a blue instant which gave all creatures in play on both sides the ability to tap to tap another target creature. In a game with a lot of creatures and low life totals it might as well read 'target player wins the game'.

Typically what will happen is the caster will tap a creature to tap something else. The something else has the same ability so it taps back. Eventually everything is tapped. And when everything is tapped, I lose. So I put on my best dejected face and didn't tap anything back. After all, doing so would guarantee I lose. Hoaen tapped my flyers and then said he was done. It was at this point that my heart started racing and I got really excited. I turned to the judge and said 'I get to attack now, right?' and the judge nodded. So I attacked with my Saprazzan Outrigger, used my balloon peddler to give it flying, and then used the shoving match and my remaining creatures to tap the rest of Hoaen's flyers. Outrigger punched him in the face and killed him off. 'Target player wins the game' indeed, but for some reason he targeted me with it instead of himself.

I often get asked by people why I never concede games when it's 'obvious' I'm dead. This game is the primary reason why. Even when I know I'm guaranteed dead just the act of staying calm and making my opponent keep making plays can result in them making a brutal mistake and throwing the game away. Also, sometimes I actually have an answer in hand. If I'd always concede when I didn't then good players could play around my answer when I don't. By always making the game play out to conclusion I remove that tell from play. (An exception is if I think time is a concern and it's just game 1 and not the match. Conceding early to save time can make sense.) Interestingly, the first time I qualified for Nationals I won a slot in a grinder. My opponent in the last round of that grinder had the game guaranteed won several times but managed to throw the game away at every turn.

Never give up! Never surrender!

Magic the Gathering: Nationals

At the GCBGB event on the weekend I was talking to some people and someone asked if I ever went to 401 Games. (Duncan and Sara run a board game night there every Wednesday, I believe.) I said I hadn't been there for board games before but had been a couple times for Magic. Some people asked if I had any old decks kicking around to play with and I told them I always just borrowed cards from Duncan. Duncan overheard and mentioned that he hasn't actually been keeping up with Magic sets recently but was thinking about starting again, and it came up that Canadian Nationals for Magic are in Toronto this year, and are in the middle of August. Conveniently for me, between the World Boardgaming Championships and Fan eXpo. I've been qualified for Nationals for quite a few years now on rating but I've been steadily slipping. Two years ago I believe it was top 75 in Canada make it in and I was 76th, but tied with 75th so I got in. I went to take a look to see about this year... Top 100 qualify. I am 101st. And tied with 100th. So I'm in, again, barely. (I'm tied with Josh Rider and I seem to recall I was tied with him last time too but I can't actually find any reference to the 2009 invitation list. Google is letting me down! This is why I need to blog about this stuff.)

At any rate, I now have a major Magic tournament going on a short jaunt from my apartment. I guess it's time to learn a constructed format full of cards I've never seen before. And a draft format that doesn't even exist yet. And to find a source of cards to build a constructed deck. Possibly just cash money. I wish there was a deck rental service for Magic...

The official website from the tournament organizer doesn't even say what the format is. The wizards.com site does, in a sense. It says 3 M12 boosters are used but there are two drafts. I'd assume both drafts are the same format but that hasn't always been the case and core set drafts seem weird to use in a major event. At any rate, it turns out M12 isn't even out yet so I can't really get started on practicing the actual format straight away. It comes out on Magic Online on August 1st, while I'm at WBC. Nationals is the second weekend after I get back from WBC so that'll leave almost 2 weeks for playing on Magic Online which should give a reasonable amount of practice. The paper pre-release for M12 is next weekend, July 9th, so I should probably head to that. The release is the next week so hopefully I can find some kind of drafts to get involved in during the second half of July.

As far as constructed goes, the format will include all of the last two blocks, the last core set, and this one. A very full format of which I have no information at all. I did a bunch of drafting with Scars of Mirrodin but the other 7 sets are completely new to me. (M12 being unreleased is new to everyone.) They also just banned two cards so the format should be shaking up from that change along with potential changes from M12. I think I should put a bit of a focus for the next couple weeks on reading up about rules changes in the last two years along with what's going on in post-ban standard to get some ideas percolating in my little brain.

League of Legends: Damage Mitigation

A couple days ago I had what the kids these days would call an 'epic game' of League of Legends. The opposing team picked heroes that did pretty much exclusively magical damage. Someone on my team noticed this and mentioned that we should all just buy some magic resist. 25 minutes into the game 2 people hadn't bought any at all and we were getting obliterated. I think the hero kills at one point were 6-22. So the other guy and I went back to harping over and over about magic resist. 10 minutes later we had a flawless ace against them since 4 of us had enough magic resist that it felt like we were practically unkillable. We stormed into their base while they were dead and won the game despite still being down at least 10 kills. It seemed like stacking on more and more resists was really doing something and I want to take a look at what it actually does and if it really does make sense to stack on as much as we did. (In some games armor just gets better the more you have. In others the marginal gains are worse the more you have.)

The formula (for both armor and magic resistance) is the same and very simple. The amount of damage you take is multiplied by 100/(100+MR). Simple enough. But what impact does that actually have on how much damage it takes to kill you? Assume you have X health and Y MR. Then the amount of damage it takes to kill you (alternatively, your effective health, a stat which WoW players put way too much emphasis on but which works here due to the lack of full resists/dodges.) is:

Z=X*(100+Y)/100

Y' = dZ/dY = X/100

X' = dZ/dX = 1+Y/100

The important things to note here are that Y' doesn't vary with Y and X' doesn't vary with X. How much health you have doesn't matter when you're looking at how good adding more health is. How much magic resistance you have doesn't matter when you're looking at how good adding more magic resistance is. There is no inherent reason who you should stop at any given level of magic resistance, or why you should keep piling it on. They do, however, vary with each other so it is entirely possible that the most efficient stat in terms of gold and inventory space will change as you buy more items. 

The best magic resist item in the game adds 76 MR for 2610 gold. (It also gives 8% movement speed and a hefty amount of health regen in the form of 40hp5+.35% of your health every second.)

The best health item in the game adds 1370 health for 3000 gold, but it takes time to charge up. (It also gives 45hp5.)

Ignore the other bonuses (though the MR item just has strictly better ones) and for the same price you can get 76MR or 1192 health. What's the equilibrium point for those two gains? 

dY*X/100=dX*(1+Y/100)

76*X/100=1192*(1+Y/100)

Y=100/1192*(76*X/100-1192)

Y=.06376X-100

X = 15.68(Y+100)

Lets look at some typical values of Y. With nothing at all you probably have around 30 MR. X = 2039. If you have more than that much health you should get MR. If you have less then you should get health. 

With just the Mercury Treads boots you have 55 MR. X = 2431. 

With a lot of MR I typically get up around 200. X = 4704. 

I must admit I'm a little surprised here. All signs are pointing to just getting more health first. Especially when you consider that most teams will have physical damage dealers too, and MR does nothing against them while more health does plenty. I think I'm going to try getting a basic tanking item and then rushing the super health item and see how it works out in my next game.

City of Villains: Free to Play?

Last year I posted about paying to play an MMORPG and how not only do I not have a problem with doing so, but I think it's been a good idea. The City of Heroes/City of Villains game is apparently going to switch to free to play during their next patch and that has me thinking about giving it another shot. On the surface this doesn't make a lot of sense. If I really wanted to play the game why wouldn't I have reactivated my old account already?  As things stand right now doing so would get me access to everything in the game (I may need to also buy expansions? I don't know.) but in the new model I'd get a lot of stuff completely free but I'd have to pay money afterwards to get everything. For the switch to make any sense one would imagine if I actually wanted everything I'd be paying a fair bit more.

Looking at their comparison page it looks like if you play for free you only get to choose from about half the classes. You lose a third of the power sets. The claim is you get 70% of the (admittedly awesome) character builder. You lose the ability to join a guild, or send private messages, or mail, or write on the forums. You get 2 character slots instead of 12. Your AH usage is 'limited'. They appear to be adding payer exclusive servers and priority to payers in the log-in queues. You can't even talk to a GM if you're a free player. If you had an old account at some point you get to come in at the second tier, so I'd be able to send private messages and mail. I could join but not form a guild.

Now, the reason I was intrigued is I thought maybe other people would want to play too. I stopped playing the first time around because I didn't know anyone but my brother who played at all and I'm bad at making friends. My character was awesome. Oroku Saki who led an army of ninjas called the Foot Clan. Not terribly imaginative, but awesome nonetheless. Looking at what free players actually get though, I'm not sure that would even work. Not being able to send tells in game seems absolutely crippling in an MMO. They do say it's subject to change before launch so I'll be keeping an eye on things to see but if it works the way it says on that page I can't in good conscience recommend to anyone that they sign up as a free to play account.

Great Canadian Board Game Blitz: Toronto - 2011 Recap

Yesterday was the Toronto GCBGB event held in the back room of a pretty nice pub in downtown Toronto. It was definitely a fun time with a lot of new faces in attendance. Overall 21 people showed up to play at some point during the day with a couple people only playing a few rounds. One change to the format this time is they didn't run any 5 player games. I believe the reason was time concerns (many games just take 25% longer with 5 people instead of 4) though I think for scoring purposes it's pretty bad too. Of course with 21 people we ended up playing a lot of 3 player games which have scoring concerns of their own. Oh well. Off to the games!

Round 1 - Bohnanza, 7 Wonders, Carcassonne, Wizard, Dominion, San Juan

I was randomly assigned to pick 5th. We had 18 people to start off so we were going to be playing 3 4-player games and 2 3-player games. When it was my turn to pick I could still pick any game I wanted so I went with San Juan. It is both the game I'd enjoy playing and the game I think I have the best chance of winning so it was the obvious choice. We ended up being one of the 3 player games. A 19th player showed up just before the game start and he chose to join the other 3 player game instead of ours so we were the only 3 player game in the round. One of the other players had played before, the other hadn't. In fact, the guy who had played before was in my game of San Juan last year too. He seemed vastly improved from then when I think he was pretty new to the game.

The game opened with righty going first and building. I played a tobacco storage. I never crafted or sold myself and it remained my only trading related card for the game but just having it in play meant I wasn't falling behind when they were crafting and selling either. I followed it up with a carpenter, a cycled archive, and then a quarry. With the purple building combo in play I went into playing lots of purple buildings and actually ended up building almost all the good ones. Chapel, then library, then prefecture. I didn't end up with a large building but I did build all 3 statues as well as putting 6 cards under the chapel. I ended the game and was multiple buildings ahead of the other players, I think. One had a zumft hall with a good selection of production buildings but it wasn't quite enough as I won by 7.

Round 2 - Alhambra, Ra, Roll Through the Ages, Saint Petersburg, Medici, Glen More

This round featured 2 games I've never player before, one I've played exactly once, and one I really dislike. Picking 5th last meant I might have been in a bad spot but fortunately one of the two games I like and know was still available. I hadn't played it in like 2 years (since WBC2009 I think) but figured I could pick it back up again. The game was Saint Petersburg and featured 2 new players, myself, and the guy from San Juan who seemed like he really knew the game.

I opened up in the noble seat on the first turn and we ended up only taking 1 building off the board in the building phase. That meant I got the only noble on the first turn which was a pretty big boost to my game. I then managed to manipulate the board such that we'd get 6 workers on the second worker turn when I happened to be 2nd. Those two things combined meant I was making 15 gold a turn compared to 12, 9, and 9 from my opponents. After another turn I pretty much stopped generating more income and focused exclusively on victory point buildings, managed to snag the 7 point per turn building pretty early on. I ended up winning very handily 84-65-58-55.

Round 3 - Ingenious, Ticket to Ride, Two by Two, Ticket to Ride: Europe, Thurn and Taxis, Yspahan

I got to pick first in this round which seems like it should be good. Unfortunately there isn't a single game in this selection that I both know and tolerate. If I'd been thinking ahead I would have played some T&T on BSW last week to refresh myself on the game so I could have played it. I don't really like the game though, and since I didn't know it either I stayed away. I ended up picking Ticket to Ride which is the only game from the set that I thought I knew.

I was doing pretty well for myself in the game and was in a good position near the end of the game. I counted my cards in hand and trains left and figured out I could end the game in like 3 actions. Instead I went for more tickets. Now, I had 6 yellow cards in hand and was connected to the 6 yellow and the 5 yellow so I had a pretty good chance of pulling a ticket near my track worth a fair amount. Observant people will note I said I had 6 yellow in hand and there was still a 6 yellow track in play. I could have taken it and ended the game in 2 turns. That seems strong. Instead I went for tickets. One I could do trivially, building just one 3 track. Great! Then there was another I could do with the same 3 track, and the 6 yellow, and a singleton. I decided to keep it as well despite knowing fully well that I could have ended the game in 3 turns and therefore someone else probably could have too. (One guy built a bunch of 6s and didn't go for tickets ever either, so it should have been obvious that I wasn't getting 3 more turns if he didn't want me to.) He then immediately built the 6 yellow, dropping down to 4 trains in stock. The game ended one turn later, so I both only got 2 turns and didn't get to build the 6. I ended up coming a pretty distant 3rd place. In fact I was exactly the negative point value of the route I took, so I could have tied for 1st if I'd just taken the 1 ticket. Probably I just win if I build the 6 yellow myself instead of taking tickets at all. The guy who came last was actually the guy building all the 6s. It turns out he got spited out of a critical piece of track and failed to do all of his tickets.

Round 4 - Egizia, Puerto Rico, Santiago, Stone Age, Settlers of Catan, Container

By this point we were up to 21 people so we were playing 3 3-player games and 3 4-player games. All 6 games were now included. I was tied for 3rd at this point, with Duncan. This round featured 3 games I've never played before, 2 I have played a ton but don't like, and 1 I both like and know. Stone Age time! It ended up being a 3 player game. In fact only 2 people had chosen it when the last person was to pick and she was forced to play it. Neither of them had played before but both seemed interested in playing it and both seemed like they wanted to play again later so that's good. The game itself was less good. There are things about Stone Age that you just can't know until you've played it at least once, like how to properly value the different cards. I ended up winning by over 100 points.

Round 5 - Agricola, Power Grid, Caylus, Tigris & Euphrates, El Grande, Steam

Everyone ahead of me or tied with me lost in round 4, so I was back at the top of the pack. This round had lots of interesting options, and I almost wish I was 2nd going into the round instead of 1st. Someone asked me what I'd do if I was 2nd and I said I'd go to whatever game 1st picked (unless they picked the one game I didn't know). Sadly no one else seemed to feel that way as the top 6 all chose a different game. As for what I was going to pick, well, Steam was out since I've never played it. I think El Grande is terrible with 3 players and didn't want to risk it. I just don't like Caylus and would never pick it over Agricola since I think Agricola solved the problems Caylus has. So it was down to Agricola, Power Grid, and Tigris & Euphrates all of which I like to play and think I'm pretty good at. I went with Tigris & Euphrates since I never get to play it and wanted to practice for WBC. It ended up being a 3 player game with 1 new player which was a little unfortunate. I would have prefered a 4 player game. In retrospect I probably should have gone with Agricola since I like it a lot with 3 or 4.

The game itself featured me beating up on the new player and the 3rd player building an empire with 2 monuments in it. I screwed up a blight and failed to take over one of the monuments when I really needed to, and after that failure (using my last blight) it was very hard to stop him. I managed to set up one chance where we would do an external red fight. Red was both of our lowest numbers by far and the winner of the fight was going to score up 5 or 6 red points. He ended up having enough to successfully defend (I had to attack since he was guaranteed to win since he had a red monument) and as such won by an incredible margin. 16-8-7.


Coming second in the last round meant a lot of people could pass me with a win. It turned out two people did so. Sara and Duncan. Both of whom already have passes to Fan Expo since they're volunteering for the gaming convention. So while I didn't end up actually winning (exclusively to that screw up in Ticket to Ride!) I did get the prize I wanted. And as an added bonus I got to play 2 games on Roll Through the Ages with Sara and Duncan afterwards. Fun game. I'll probably try to pick it up since it's short and similar to Ra! Dice but better.

GCBGB

And I'm off for a day filled with board games! Woo!

Galaxy Legion: Ergosphere Filter

The next mission in the temporary mission chain was released this morning. The mission is called The Aevax Experiment and it costs 25 energy for 55 experience. 60 shots gets you an NPC battle which rewards a cloak building. You can repeat the mission a total of 15 times. It took me 13 shots to kill the NPC so I'm looking at 1565 energy per building. It will take me more than a week of exclusive energy spend to pick up all 15 of them which is a pretty substantial commitment. So the question is, what does this do and how many do I actually want?

The ergosphere filter is a dedicated defensive structure that provides cloak to a planet. It takes up only 1 space and provides 150 cloak. On top of that it gives your planet a buff for another 20% cloak on top. You can only build one per planet so you can't go super multiplicative on a good planet. Note that even with no other cloak on the planet the 20% buff will give 30 more cloak just from the filter itself so really it's worth 180 by itself.

There is only one building with more cloak per space than 180. It provides 300 for 1 space but you can only get 5 of them total and you can only use 2 per planet. Also note that if you build the filter on a planet with 2 of these buildings the filter is worth 300 for 1 space too. In short even without putting much effort into a planet this is by far the best cloak building in the game. Any planet worth defending with cloak needs one of these bad boys.

But as I said earlier I don't like spend space of defense for most of my planets. Now, 1 space isn't a lot to spend and can end up costing nothing at all just given how space works out. Also there are some good production buildings which will go on every great planet which provide some cloak and the filter will give 20% more from those. From buildings I have access to I can get 40 each from 2 spy uplinks, 150 from a counter intelligence, and 150 from modified grid pylon (also limited to 15 from a mission). Combined with a filter that's 530 base cloak, multiplied up to 636 from 380 without the filter. Double those numbers if you're in a normal full legion (sadly I'm not) and you're looking at 1272 cloak by adding 1 space instead of 760.

What does that much cloak do for you? Planet cloak has only one impact on the game: it makes it harder for other players to scan the planet when they're going scanning. So we need to look at how scanning works to see what this building actually does.

Scanning works on a two roll system. First you make a roll with a chance for success based on your scan value and the number of planets you've already scanned. I don't know the exact formula and it really doesn't matter since cloak doesn't matter here. The game doesn't even know what planet you're looking for at this point. It's just checking to see if you can get anything at all. If that roll succeeds the game picks a planet for you. It isn't clear how that happens but people assume it isn't completely random across every planet. Occupied planets are over-represented it seems but no one knows for sure. If the planet chosen is occupied then a second roll is made. This roll is based on ship scan against planet defense. The chance for success seems to be (1-cloak/scan). So if their scan isn't as good as your cloak you simply can't be found. If they have more scan than you have cloak then how good cloak is depends on how much scan they actually have but it always gives you a chance to stay hidden. (Contrast this with planet defense and attack which can be completely surmounted if you have small amounts.)

To really get a handle on how good cloak is we need to look at some standard scanning values. The actual current maximum scan possible is 15294. However this requires the use of a limited use buff and requires them to have picked the scanning class. (Everyone gets to pick a race and class which each provide benefits. I started with the scan one and did like it a little but have since switched and it seems almost all high level people have also picked something else.) The max without those two percentage buffs is 10620. I have pretty reasonable scanning tech for my level, I think, and my max right now is 3024.

Most of my planets aren't in danger of being attacked by a very high level player, I don't think, even if they find it. Someone around my level, though, would be all over my better selection of planets. Assuming they have 3000 scan, how good is the ergosphere filter? With it they'd have a 58% chance to find it. Without out, they'd have a 75% chance. 17% is a pretty reasonable difference but it doesn't feel game breaking. It feels big enough to justify spending the 1 space for sure, but I'm not as convinced that it's worth all the energy to get them.

In conclusion any planet worth spending a bunch of space on cloak needs to have one of these. And planet with all the production/cloak buildings can make good use of the filter too, but it's not nearly as mandatory. Personally I have one planet that needs to have one. Probably 7 or so that would like one. And I'll probably get more planets that want/need them in the future. If this mission wasn't trapped behind a 500 flux probe mission I'd probably do it a few times and leave the rest for the future. But I'm pretty sure in the long run I'll want all 15 of these at some point and I'm not sure I'll get another chance again. Spending a week's worth of energy isn't something I look forward to doing but it seems like a reasonable price to pay.

Optimizing D&D Healing

In previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons each person had a number of hit points and if you ran out you were unconscious and/or dead. Most people would have no real way to restore health on their own (other than resting for months at a time) but if one of your characters was a cleric you were set for life. Clerics cast healing spells a few times a day and even if they did absolutely nothing else they'd still be mandatory because you need to be able to handle damage spikes and just keep moving from fight to fight. Maybe forcing someone to be a cleric is a problem, maybe it isn't, but it was certainly a feature of the system.

In 4th edition they changed the way healing works entirely which shakes that whole world all around. All characters still have a number of hit points which will knock you out and/or kill you when you run out, but now everyone has a second health related stat: healing surges. You get a number of these things based on class and con value and basically you can spend one at any time out of combat to restore 25% of your maximum health. So, as long as no one actually dies and everyone has at least 4 of these things left you're guaranteed to be capable of being at full health for the next fight. You can also take an action once during each fight to get the same amount of healing. If your group doesn't have a healer in 4th edition you aren't just screwed after the first fight. As long as you won and no one died you can keep playing.

Healing classes still exist in the game, though they're more hybridized than in previous editions. All of the healer classes can be built in ways such that they can do reasonable damage, or buff the party's attacks and defenses on top of the extra healing they bring. They bring the extra healing in two primary ways: by letting other people use healing surges in combat and by making those healing surges better.

Normally each person can only heal themselves once per fight, and it costs them a standard action to do so. Standard actions are pretty good and in a vacuum are way better than healing for 25% of your health. You'll use it in a pinch or if you really have nothing better to do but you're rarely happy about it. Healers can spend minor actions to let other people heal themselves with their healing surges. The healer still gets their standard action too so the party isn't losing out on damage done in this process. The healer can also hit the same person multiple times so if the enemies are threatening to spike someone down they can deal with it.

Perhaps more importantly the healer modifies the amount of healing done. This varies from class to class. I'm playing a shaman, and the basic idea is my minor action heal (which can be used twice per fight) heals a second target as well. Clerics make the heal a lot bigger on the one target. I'm not really sure what other healers do, exactly, but I'm pretty sure they all do something. This can actually be a huge difference in the amount healed compared to someone just spending their surge themselves.

As an example Aidan is playing a rogue and has 37 maximum health. His surge would heal himself for 9, though we found a magic item which raises everyone's number by 1 if they stand near Sky. So, he can spend a standard action to heal himself for 10. Or he could almost certainly hit an enemy for 20ish damage with that action instead. I took a bunch of healing related feats and items, so if I make him spend a surge instead with my healing spirit spell he's actually heal for 9+1(Sky's belt)+1(my neck)+5(my wisdom) or 16. Also, someone else would get an extra d6+1 healing which averages to 4.5. Also, everyone standing beside my pet (guaranteed to be at least one person and often 2 or 3) gets an extra 5 temporary health which will get damaged first if they get attacked. So all told we can either heal for 10 as a standard action or for ~30.5 as a minor action. It's not all in one spot and I have to modify my whole turn to position my pet properly but I get thrice the effect and still get to keep my standard action. So, yeah, healers may not be mandatory to play the game anymore but they're still pretty mandatory for being awesome.

What I want to look into, however, is how to heal up after a fight. In this case temporary hit points don't help at all and we have to commit to standing around for 5 minutes if we want to recharge my healing spells. If we're not willing to do so then healing up becomes easy... Everyone uses surges to get near full and we move on with our lives. The tricky part comes when we're willing to wait a little bit. Now I can actually heal people without costing them surges (I can land the d6+1 where I want) and surges are worth x+7 instead of x+1. The x varies from person to person, so I should try to have the person with the biggest number spend their surges and spill over to the people with the lowest number. I also want to try to bring people as close to full as I can so I don't waste the d6s or the surges. It turns out there's a feat which makes all out of combat healing dice roll maximum and I may want that feat at some point just to make the process deterministic! For now it seems like the right idea most of the time will just be to make Sky spend his surges and try to spill into Aidan since Sky heals for much more per surge (and has more surges) and Aidan has the least of both. Thinking about it a lot is unlikely to really help while I'm rolling dice. I should probably work out how many x+7s it will take to heal everyone and then see how much healing each person would need from d6+1s in order to need one fewer x+7.