Maxine Agassiz (EVS Keyword) Discussion

[RiceP.]

5 hours ago, Plaag said:

u forget abt emissary and when she cheat with any tomes-she heals, so it reduces dmg this way

also still haka+totem makes all band become invinsible for most of ranged atacks

Can agree on that, but emissary can be countered with lures (both him and maxine are weak wp5) so there is still  possibility for counterplay. Also, "take the hit" is not free and any time you use it it takes away potential healing.
Let's not forget that (besides new Maxine) discard usually comes from your hand, and so the cards for reconfigure, meaning that healing is definitely not indefinite (ha), and since this version does not have access to an easy card draw in form of "captain of the superior" all this healing would certainly be restricted and relying upon spending resources. 

Edit: I've re-read her card one more time and realised that her ability does not even goes off when discarding from your hand, only from fate deck, meaning you have even less opportunities for healing.

[Jordon]

I totally did not pickup on the Breachburnt wording to heal per suit discarded. I read it as a single discard (from the fate deck) and also if you cheated with your reconfigure suit. So at most it was 2 healing from Calculate. 

However I now see how others may interpret it being pre reconfigure suit discarded. I have no idea where the intent would be in this instance. She does only have 9wds, which is extremely low. This would give some credence to having a potential super heal. However she also has a get out of jail free card with her Demise, so I'm not sure if that justifies her 9wds (plus smaller heals).

 

Also a bit unrelated to the current discussion, but I find Harness the Ley Line a bit confusing. I'd like some confirmation. 

1. Only works on non  actions, so she cannot use it defensively and can only use it offensively via Split Across the Worlds. 
2. It still only prompts her reconfigure only if she cheats. However any suit would get treated as a +2 tome. 
3. So for a simple duel benefitting from this, she would naturally get +2 to any stat. So her Converging Ley Line free action would need a 3 and Calculate would need a 4. However she would auto pass if she cheats with any card (minus BJ). 
4. Cheated cards benefitting from Harness become essentially 11 (9 +2) although the +2 is mostly irrelevant since your hitting your TN with that 9 anyway. Split Across Worlds being the only potential action to actually benefit from the reconfigure 9+2. 
5. Deep Discovery would still get the +2 if she's on the centre line, essentially making any card on the opponents discard pile an minimum 11

 

[RiceP.]

45 minutes ago, Jordon said:

Also a bit unrelated to the current discussion, but I find Harness the Ley Line a bit confusing. I'd like some confirmation. 

1. Only works on non  actions, so she cannot use it defensively and can only use it offensively via Split Across the Worlds. 
2. It still only prompts her reconfigure only if she cheats. However any suit would get treated as a +2 tome. 
3. So for a simple duel benefitting from this, she would naturally get +2 to any stat. So her Converging Ley Line free action would need a 3 and Calculate would need a 4. However she would auto pass if she cheats with any card (minus BJ). 
4. Cheated cards benefitting from Harness become essentially 11 (9 +2) although the +2 is mostly irrelevant since your hitting your TN with that 9 anyway. Split Across Worlds being the only potential action to actually benefit from the reconfigure 9+2. 
5. Deep Discovery would still get the +2 if she's on the centre line, essentially making any card on the opponents discard pile an minimum 11

I am now also confused, by your question.
Harness the Ley Line does not work like that. Only thing it does is bumps your non-melee actions by +2 and gives them inbuilt tome.
To make advantage of the reconfigure you still need to physically cheat in tomes, after that you'll have a duel total with two tomes. If you cheat any other suit, you'll get duel total with tomes and the suit you've cheated with, it would not magically transform into 9 tomes.

[Mycellanious]

1 hour ago, RiceP. said:

I am now also confused, by your question.
Harness the Ley Line does not work like that. Only thing it does is bumps your non-melee actions by +2 and gives them inbuilt tome.
To make advantage of the reconfigure you still need to physically cheat in tomes, after that you'll have a duel total with two tomes. If you cheat any other suit, you'll get duel total with tomes and the suit you've cheated with, it would not magically transform into 9 tomes.

To clarify, the rulebook defines "Tome Cards" as specifically the 1-13 of Tomes 

[solkan]

2 hours ago, Jordon said:

I totally did not pickup on the Breachburnt wording to heal per suit discarded. I read it as a single discard (from the fate deck) and also if you cheated with your reconfigure suit. So at most it was 2 healing from Calculate. 

However I now see how others may interpret it being pre reconfigure suit discarded. I have no idea where the intent would be in this instance. She does only have 9wds, which is extremely low. This would give some credence to having a potential super heal. However she also has a get out of jail free card with her Demise, so I'm not sure if that justifies her 9wds (plus smaller heals).

 

Also a bit unrelated to the current discussion, but I find Harness the Ley Line a bit confusing. I'd like some confirmation. 

Harness the Laylines isn't modifying any card values.  The effect says "+2 to its non-Actions".  That means that it's a bonus that applies in Determine Final Duel Total step:

Quote

Players then add their stat, the value and suit of the card in the Conflict, and any additional suits or modifiers together to determine their final duel total.

It's not a stat modifier.  It's not a card value modifier.  It's just a bonus that applies to all of those specified actions, effectively as a miscellaneous modifier.

2 hours ago, Jordon said:

1. Only works on non  actions, so she cannot use it defensively and can only use it offensively via Split Across the Worlds. 

It doesn't do anything for her Wp or Df stats, or her Aetheric Tear action, if that's what you mean.

1. It still only prompts her reconfigure only if she cheats. However any suit would get treated as a +2 tome. 

It's not a card value modification.  It's a +2 and a  that gets included in the final duel total.

1. So for a simple duel benefitting from this, she would naturally get +2 to any stat. So her Converging Ley Line free action would need a 3 and Calculate would need a 4. However she would auto pass if she cheats with any card (minus BJ). 

No, she doesn't get +2 to the stat (relevant for models that copy or take her actions).  She effectively gets +2 to her duel totals for those actions.  

1. Cheated cards benefitting from Harness become essentially 11 (9 +2) although the +2 is mostly irrelevant since your hitting your TN with that 9 anyway. Split Across Worlds being the only potential action to actually benefit from the reconfigure 9+2. 

It's not a card value modification.

1. Deep Discovery would still get the +2 if she's on the centre line, essentially making any card on the opponents discard pile an minimum 11

It's not a card value modification.

 

[Jordon]

Cool, sounds like I had it totally wrong then 😅

Thanks for the clarification! 

[hydranixx]

On 10/31/2021 at 4:44 AM, Mycellanious said:

I find that this crew doesn't mind HtW all that much, because they are amazing at rigging the deck. By the time I activate Kiya there are like 15 cards left in my deck, and I put 7 of them them there so the odds of flipping Moderate on a Negative is high. 

That's fair. 

I generally shy away from relying on min 2 models on anything worse than a straight flip, but even I admit that I've hit some monster hits late in the round. I fondly recall putting down a 6 Wound Pale Rider with exactly 6 Irreducible damage while on .

[Adran]

On 10/31/2021 at 7:42 AM, Plaag said:

so how it pass playtest? 

and why noone asked abt it before?

yestarday i saw maxine taked 8 dmg and healed all dmg passive with 2 actions, i was shocked that it happened

this is so stupid-u dont spend any resourses(like getting some trigger/spending cards for healing flip, spending stone) and dont have any restrictions(once per activation, los/range to model), also it can be done by using very useful action like calculate and cheating with any card with suit of reconfigure ability to pass tn

if u are not agree abt 1 healing per all 10/5 cards discarded, than it must be once per activation ability

Were you shocked because Maxine healed 8 and you only thought she could heal 4 (or more likely 3 because its pretty unlikely that Maxine will cheat in a tome and get the ram trigger on the melee attack at the same time), because you and the players had different reading of the rules, or were you shocked because you had the same reading of the rules, but when the expected healing for the actions was 5 and they got lucky and healed 8?

And if it was the latter would you have been as shocked if you saw the action happen, and rather than the 8 healing, or even the 5 healing you expected, only 1 point was healed over the 2 actions?  

Because I'm fairly sure taking actions to heal, and cheating cards from hand is using up resources. And Monomaniacal is the lowest wounded master outside Jack daw, who has the ability to turn any incoming damage to 1, so its not all that surprising she has good healing, because she probably needs it. 

Under the best healing outcome reading for Calculate the possibilities you should be expecting to heal ~2.5. You can cheat in a card to make that ~3.5, but that is still a cheat that probably would have happened else where. 

Grammer is not my strong point, but I think that the way the ability is written only really works if the "discards from the fate deck" is entirely unrelated to the "Cheats fate with a card that matches the reconfigure  ability" because I can't make a sensible sentence that really fits the rules to work the other way. "Discards From the fate deck with a card matching its reconfigure ability" doesn't really fit the rules for discarding, and doesn't really allow for multiple heals when you read the rules on page 8 that all cards discarded are done so at the same time. 

But that's my opinion and how I read it, and I must admit if people hadn't complained about it I would never have thought you could read it the other way. And if I read something and don't see a problem with it as written, I'm not going to bring it up as an issue, so its only if you have people reading it in the different ways that then interact when you might find that players aren't all reading it the same. 

Most of the FAQs are instances of 1 group of players reading something in a different way to another group. Sometimes the Community can decide which is right and Wyrd don't need to say anything, but other times people will stick doggedly by their definition until they are formally told its wrong. (I'm going to say the armour can't be ignored vs Irreducible damage is one of these. By the words in the rules there was only 1 way it could go, but some people were sticking to a different reasoning). 

From my grammatical understanding, there isn't a way that discarding 10 tomes to calculate the possibilities should heal 10 damage, but I'm not 100% on my understanding of Grammar, and I can easily believe that a lot of other people aren't and so can read it that way (or that I'm wrong and that they have a better Grammar knowledge than me).

But when I first read it I didn't even think there was another way to read it. And most people don't pour over the rules in fine details, so if they are told something works like x then they will accept it unless they are completely sure it should work like y, or that x is so horrendously powerful that it can't be right. 

[trikk]

@Adran

It's:

Discards from it's fate deck

or

Cheats Fate with

 

a card matching it Reconfigure

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

10 minutes ago, Adran said:

Were you shocked because Maxine healed 8 and you only thought she could heal 4 (or more likely 3 because its pretty unlikely that Maxine will cheat in a tome and get the ram trigger on the melee attack at the same time), because you and the players had different reading of the rules, or were you shocked because you had the same reading of the rules, but when the expected healing for the actions was 5 and they got lucky and healed 8?

And if it was the latter would you have been as shocked if you saw the action happen, and rather than the 8 healing, or even the 5 healing you expected, only 1 point was healed over the 2 actions?  

Because I'm fairly sure taking actions to heal, and cheating cards from hand is using up resources. And Monomaniacal is the lowest wounded master outside Jack daw, who has the ability to turn any incoming damage to 1, so its not all that surprising she has good healing, because she probably needs it. 

Under the best healing outcome reading for Calculate the possibilities you should be expecting to heal ~2.5. You can cheat in a card to make that ~3.5, but that is still a cheat that probably would have happened else where. 

Grammer is not my strong point, but I think that the way the ability is written only really works if the "discards from the fate deck" is entirely unrelated to the "Cheats fate with a card that matches the reconfigure  ability" because I can't make a sensible sentence that really fits the rules to work the other way. "Discards From the fate deck with a card matching its reconfigure ability" doesn't really fit the rules for discarding, and doesn't really allow for multiple heals when you read the rules on page 8 that all cards discarded are done so at the same time. 

But that's my opinion and how I read it, and I must admit if people hadn't complained about it I would never have thought you could read it the other way. And if I read something and don't see a problem with it as written, I'm not going to bring it up as an issue, so its only if you have people reading it in the different ways that then interact when you might find that players aren't all reading it the same. 

Most of the FAQs are instances of 1 group of players reading something in a different way to another group. Sometimes the Community can decide which is right and Wyrd don't need to say anything, but other times people will stick doggedly by their definition until they are formally told its wrong. (I'm going to say the armour can't be ignored vs Irreducible damage is one of these. By the words in the rules there was only 1 way it could go, but some people were sticking to a different reasoning). 

From my grammatical understanding, there isn't a way that discarding 10 tomes to calculate the possibilities should heal 10 damage, but I'm not 100% on my understanding of Grammar, and I can easily believe that a lot of other people aren't and so can read it that way (or that I'm wrong and that they have a better Grammar knowledge than me)

I read it as "discards from its fate deck a card matching its reconfigure".

I think the bit that seems weird in your version is you kept the 'with a.'

[Adran]

3 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I read it as "discards from its fate deck a card matching its reconfigure".

I think the bit that seems weird in your version is you kept the 'with a.'

If you also read page 8 

"If multiple cards are placed into a Discard Pile at once, they are revealed to all players before being placed in the Discard Pile in any order the discarding player chooses."

Then Discards 10 cards is 1 discard which contains 10 cards, not 10 discards, so it shouldn't matter how many tomes there are in there (unless your are reading it so that it needs at least 1 tome to cause it). And that should stop multiple healing from the same discard effect based on the way it is written (at least I think so). 

Like I say, I read it one way, and I'm having to try and get my head around reading it other ways. 

[Plaag]

2 hours ago, Adran said:

Were you shocked because Maxine healed 8 and you only thought she could heal 4 (or more likely 3 because its pretty unlikely that Maxine will cheat in a tome and get the ram trigger on the melee attack at the same time), because you and the players had different reading of the rules, or were you shocked because you had the same reading of the rules, but when the expected healing for the actions was 5 and they got lucky and healed 8?

And if it was the latter would you have been as shocked if you saw the action happen, and rather than the 8 healing, or even the 5 healing you expected, only 1 point was healed over the 2 actions?  

Because I'm fairly sure taking actions to heal, and cheating cards from hand is using up resources. And Monomaniacal is the lowest wounded master outside Jack daw, who has the ability to turn any incoming damage to 1, so its not all that surprising she has good healing, because she probably needs it. 

Under the best healing outcome reading for Calculate the possibilities you should be expecting to heal ~2.5. You can cheat in a card to make that ~3.5, but that is still a cheat that probably would have happened else where. 

Grammer is not my strong point, but I think that the way the ability is written only really works if the "discards from the fate deck" is entirely unrelated to the "Cheats fate with a card that matches the reconfigure  ability" because I can't make a sensible sentence that really fits the rules to work the other way. "Discards From the fate deck with a card matching its reconfigure ability" doesn't really fit the rules for discarding, and doesn't really allow for multiple heals when you read the rules on page 8 that all cards discarded are done so at the same time. 

But that's my opinion and how I read it, and I must admit if people hadn't complained about it I would never have thought you could read it the other way. And if I read something and don't see a problem with it as written, I'm not going to bring it up as an issue, so its only if you have people reading it in the different ways that then interact when you might find that players aren't all reading it the same. 

Most of the FAQs are instances of 1 group of players reading something in a different way to another group. Sometimes the Community can decide which is right and Wyrd don't need to say anything, but other times people will stick doggedly by their definition until they are formally told its wrong. (I'm going to say the armour can't be ignored vs Irreducible damage is one of these. By the words in the rules there was only 1 way it could go, but some people were sticking to a different reasoning). 

From my grammatical understanding, there isn't a way that discarding 10 tomes to calculate the possibilities should heal 10 damage, but I'm not 100% on my understanding of Grammar, and I can easily believe that a lot of other people aren't and so can read it that way (or that I'm wrong and that they have a better Grammar knowledge than me).

But when I first read it I didn't even think there was another way to read it. And most people don't pour over the rules in fine details, so if they are told something works like x then they will accept it unless they are completely sure it should work like y, or that x is so horrendously powerful that it can't be right. 

i played vs maxin 2 during playtest once and we both agree that healing is once per discarding all cards, but then i heard axel played and told that he healed 5 as i remember per 1 calculate-it is insane amount of passive healing while u make one of the strongest actions in game, also with bebe u can draw some tomes-so cheating with any of them gives u additional healing and make them become a 9 for a duel, also with cryotologist u can make bebe draw 2 cards again

also possibility to draw jokers from melee trigger is pretty insane too

[Gheist]

On 10/30/2021 at 5:44 PM, Mycellanious said:

I find that this crew doesn't mind HtW all that much, because they are amazing at rigging the deck. By the time I activate Kiya there are like 15 cards left in my deck, and I put 7 of them them there so the odds of flipping Moderate on a Negative is high. 

I always feel like pulling  moderate with Kiya is kind of a undesirable outcome. She requires such a lot of setup most of the time that you need to hit the severe. But thats my opinion. I found hard to wound stuffs a lot of the potential of this crew which i feel is allright because otherwise it would be steamrolling everything else.

On 10/31/2021 at 9:35 AM, Plaag said:

u forget abt emissary and when she cheat with any tomes-she heals, so it reduces dmg this way

also still haka+totem makes all band become invinsible for most of ranged atacks

I feel like Breachburnt needs clarification wether all discarded Cards or only all cards matching a reconfigure ability (which would be my read)

How many Tomes does she usually have? How often can the emissary realistically take the hit after that before the whole evs Crew is top decking? i'm not saying it's not good but i can't see it being a problem without having put it on the table, which i can try next weekend.

The thing that Harata and Orville can make the whole crew more or less invincible to shooting attacks is nothing new ---> i always feel that it's good 1st turn but then it get super hard to maintain because it is a 2 inch bubble in which every member must be within 4 inches of Harata. And i need those AP spread further apart usually. But that trick can fall apart with initiative lost rather fast. I mean.... just kill orville?

[Gheist]

20 hours ago, Adran said:

If you also read page 8 

"If multiple cards are placed into a Discard Pile at once, they are revealed to all players before being placed in the Discard Pile in any order the discarding player chooses."

Then Discards 10 cards is 1 discard which contains 10 cards, not 10 discards, so it shouldn't matter how many tomes there are in there (unless your are reading it so that it needs at least 1 tome to cause it). And that should stop multiple healing from the same discard effect based on the way it is written (at least I think so). 

Like I say, I read it one way, and I'm having to try and get my head around reading it other ways. 

Nice. Nobody remembered that sentence

I guess it needs a tome to cause the healing because it wouldn't fit in with the whole crew mechanic otherwise.

Tht interpretation would solve it balance wise. it's a maximum of 6 health healed per round. Spending 3 Tomes from your hand to do so

And the thing with Beebe and the cryptologist: Yeah can be done, but that's so much effort just to keep doing that, it can't be efficient.

[Maniacal_cackle]

I'm not convinced that there are many balance issues with Maxine 2 even if she can heal a ton (relative to other titles at least). I've been crushed by her once and had a solid win against her once so far, so not too much experience yet.

Other crews can heal for more, and Maxine's tricks aren't necessarily more powerful than those crews.

[Adran]

8 minutes ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I'm not convinced that there are many balance issues with Maxine 2 even if she can heal a ton (relative to other titles at least). I've been crushed by her once and had a solid win against her once so far, so not too much experience yet.

Other crews can heal for more, and Maxine's tricks aren't necessarily more powerful than those crews.

I don't think its a balance issue, you are looking at the difference between her healing about 10 damage a turn, but you have total knowledge of the final number, and her healing on average 13 damage a turn, with a range of 8-20. (actual numbers may vary depending on how you play her, but that's the sort of difference you are going to be getting across the two/three different readings).  SO overall I don't think the extra healing with its possible spike levels either way but probably only 3 extra points on average is going to make a huge difference on the table top. 

21 hours ago, Plaag said:

also possibility to draw jokers from melee trigger is pretty insane too

I'm not going to calculate the odds, because it is too variable, but its not all that likely that you will draw a joker from her melee attack. Marcus 1 is more likely to draw you a joker across the turn with his primal domain for example. 

[Gheist]

2 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I'm not convinced that there are many balance issues with Maxine 2 even if she can heal a ton (relative to other titles at least). I've been crushed by her once and had a solid win against her once so far, so not too much experience yet.

Other crews can heal for more, and Maxine's tricks aren't necessarily more powerful than those crews.

I don't think there are any other balance issues than with Maxine 1. I'm having a lot of sucess with the crew, but our Meta is very non-competitive, so i can't say if it's really the Keywords credit.

I feel like every decent Condition orientated crew is gonna crush EVS because apart from hopeful Prospects i can do pretty much nothing once the slow distracted injured poison whatever is going strong.

Maxine 2 is even more Vulnerable because she can't counter conditions by applying the opposite condition.

[Plaag]

4 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

I'm not convinced that there are many balance issues with Maxine 2 even if she can heal a ton (relative to other titles at least). I've been crushed by her once and had a solid win against her once so far, so not too much experience yet.

Other crews can heal for more, and Maxine's tricks aren't necessarily more powerful than those crews.

examples?

[Gheist]

19 minutes ago, Plaag said:

examples?

McMourning, YanLo, Anya, Jedza, VonSchill, ShenLong

But if i understand you correctly the issue you have is that it is a passive heal and that it stacks with the Emissaries aura?

[Adran]

10 minutes ago, Plaag said:

examples?

Experimental? Seeker? Cadmus? Nephlim? Big hat? Pig/Sooey? Frontier? Amalgam? Friekorps? Tormented? Syndicate? Ancestor/retainer?

Certainly they are all keywords that can be healing in the region of 10+ damage a turn. 

[Plaag]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

Experimental? Seeker? Cadmus? Nephlim? Big hat? Pig/Sooey? Frontier? Amalgam? Friekorps? Tormented? Syndicate? Ancestor/retainer?

Certainly they are all keywords that can be healing in the region of 10+ damage a turn. 

and now compare each example with PASSIVE heal while you are doing not heal, but dmg with melee or calculate possibilities or cheat to make your minimal card become 9, also with trikk's wording u can heal in average 4-5hp per calculate and  2-3 per melee trigger

i think it would be like monks spend chi to get+2 and same moment heal 1(while chi tokens are still unbalanced)

will it be balanced? 

its obvious that the answer is "no"

dont get me wrong-my suggestion just to make healing once per activation/or once per all discarding

[Plaag]

2 hours ago, Gheist said:

McMourning, YanLo, Anya, Jedza, VonSchill, ShenLong

But if i understand you correctly the issue you have is that it is a passive heal and that it stacks with the Emissaries aura?

remove poison-mcmorning will not heal, yanlo have downgrade-he is very weak first 2 turns, anya heals from atacks and trigger with totem as i remember, jedza heals passive in bubble and to heal more she need to spend actions just to make healing, vonschill cannt heal such many per activations-he need to spend actions just to heal(like libr) or make some discarding (like engineer, but now its a problem of yannik-no downgrades on any discardings and its bad),shen-spend action just to heal

the point is that u almost dont have any downgrades on this healing with maxine

[Adran]

46 minutes ago, Plaag said:

and now compare each example with PASSIVE heal while you are doing not heal, but dmg with melee or calculate possibilities or cheat to make your minimal card become 9, also with trikk's wording u can heal in average 4-5hp per calculate and  2-3 per melee trigger

i think it would be like monks spend chi to get+2 and same moment heal 1(while chi tokens are still unbalanced)

will it be balanced? 

its obvious that the answer is "no"

That's a false way to look at it. And its filled with exaggerated numbers. 

There is no way you are healing an average of 4-5 on a calculate, no matter how you read the breechburnt. With the most extreme reading, your average is 2-3, with a possible extra 1 if you cheated in a tome (which could be from your opponents discard pile, but still cost you a card to do so). The Melee trigger should only average 1.25, and you would need to spend a stone to also get the cheat heal since you are needing to cheat a suit that isn't your reconfigure. The other reading has a high spike healing, but not that much higher mean healing. 

Passive Healing - Nephlim, Cadmus, expermental, seeker, tormented.

A lot of the other healing I referred to was on models you hired to heal, or on bonus actions, so its not a fair comparison if you are counting cards drawn because you hired the cryptologist so you can get an extra Trash for treasure.

 

 

[Da Git]

9 hours ago, Plaag said:

once per all discarding

From what @Adran's said with the rule book quote (that's deffo changed my mind for the rule), this is currently the case.

So basically, hit the Cascading magic trigger, heal 1 (or 2 if you cheated a tome and SS'd the Ram), Calculate, heal 1 (or 2 if you cheated a tome), heal 1 for bonus if cheated a tome. So from all that, Maxine's healed max 7, but cheated 4 tomes and spent 3 SS... yeah, she just heals... no resources needed whatsoever...

Sure if you're taking the Emissary, that healing potential goes up a lot (potentially +4 in Maxine's activation), but then you're also spending 10ss on a model that has to activate first to put up the aura and be close to Maxine. It also costs more cards if you want to TtH.

[Jordon]

Even if it does rule to be per tome discard, it's not all that likely to heal in any extreme amount. Just to see, I loaded up Vassal and I tried this ability 20 times just to see. I did it in groupings of 5 where I changed my starting hand with each new grouping.

What I found was about 50% of time I pulled 2 tomes. A few times I drew three and a few times I drew one. I only drew 4 once and zero also once. So if your not cheating in a tome, you're likely healing two damage. 

If you were really concerned about getting a rare spike, then simply capping it 4 would solve the issue. It's highly unlikely you'd ever get any more than that anyway.