#cant wait to finally get to surge and kit

[monotone-artist]

[id in alt]

some idw redraws

[tigerkirby215]

5e Zed the Master of Shadows build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Riot Games)

Well; I did promise it. I’ll be honest the only reason for this build is that it’s the most obvious build to make with the new Echo Knight from Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, and it would be an injustice not to do so. I honestly don’t care much about Zed as I feel like his popularity has sort of died down as his meta relevance has waned. Regardless this build isn’t just a straightforward “lol Echo Knight 20″ so I hope those of you who want to play the edgy shadow ninja boy are pleased.

GOALS

Living Shadow - Of course the core of Zed’s kit is his shadow clones. Man I wonder how we’re going to recreate that?

Shadow Slash - Both Zed and his shadows need an arsenal of weapons that are always on-hand and are ready to both slash and throw.

Contempt for the Weak - Zed passive is what makes him an assassin, quickly killing anyone who’s already hurt.

RACE

Zed is a Human but due to my continued determination to avoid using the Variant Human race (and also because we really don’t need a Feat in this build except maybe Skulker) we’ll be grabbing Flash from Mark of Passage from Eberron. Your Dexterity increases by 2 and you can increase one stat of your choice by 1: choose Wisdom for some later Feat investment. You can also choose one language on top of Common: if Ionian is a language choose that, but Elvish is pretty close I suppose?

You get Courier's Speed for 5 feet of extra movement from your Zeal, and  Intuitive Motion lets you add a d4 to any Acrobatics check you make or check involving land vehicles, because of all your training with the Kinkou apparently taught you how to drive a cart as well as do back-flips? But of course the main reason I said to take this race was for Magical Passage, giving you a one-time cast of Misty Step per Long Rest. Flash is a powerful summoner spell: use it to make some stylish plays.

ABILITY SCORES

15; DEXTERITY - Being a ninja is about swiftness and precision, and doing sick backflips and parkour. Wait this isn’t a Talon build?

14; WISDOM - To be a master you need to be wise; wise enough to know you enemy and how to exploit their weakness. It’s also a requirement to multiclass after all.

13; CONSTITUTION - Just because Zed isn’t a tank in-game doesn’t mean some extra tenacity (not the CC reduction type) isn’t appreciated. CON is also tied to some of our clone abilities.

12; INTELLIGENCE - The art of war is a game of intelligence. If fighting is sure to result in victory then you must fight!

10; CHARISMA - Zed runs around in Shredder cosplay and half his voice lines are literally just him grunting. He has his own order but he isn’t getting any free beers.

8; STRENGTH - Again you’re not a tank, and Strength simply isn’t needed for this build. The only thing we’d ever really use Strength for is Athletics, and we can get proficiency in the skill to remedy that.

BACKGROUND

Much like the Kayn build we’ll be going with the Faction Agent background, only this time you’re the faction head! Much like your protegee you get Insight proficiency as well as Intimidation since you’re a spooky shadow man. And of course your Shadow Order can provide you with a Safe Haven if needed, giving you a safe place to hide if your half-brother is looking for you. As for your two languages again it doesn’t matter, so pick something fun.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - ROGUE 1

Starting off as a Rogue for the extra proficencies, also because no shit you’re a ninja. Regardless Rogues get proficiency in 4 skills from the Rogue list: choose Stealth, Perception, Acrobatics, and Athletics so you can keep to the shadows and strike at the perfect time. You also get Expertise in two skills that you know: I’d opt for Stealth as well as Intimidation from your background, so you can sneak up on someone and go “boo!” before cutting out their throat.

Of course the main appeal of Rogues is their Sneak Attack, letting them add a d6 of damage against any enemy who’s close to another ally, or you have advantage on by attacking them from the shadows.

Finally your Shadow Order is well-versed in Thieves’ Cant, a secret code that neither the Noxians nor the Kinkou understand.

LEVEL 2 - ROGUE 2

Second level Rogues get Cunning Action, letting them Dash, Disengage, or Hide as a Bonus Action. The key to playing Zed well is much like the key to playing Rogue well in 5e: keep mobile and be everywhere at once. Don’t give your enemy a moment to hit you.

LEVEL 3 - ROGUE 3

You can choose your Roguish Archetype at level 3 and of course the Master of Shadows needs shadowy blades. Or should I say psychic blades? The Soul Knife subclass from the Psionics UA can create weapons as a Bonus Action with their Psychic Blade feature: these are finesse weapons that you can dual-wield, and throw 30 feet normally and up to 60 feet with disadvantage. These weapons deal a d6 of psychic damage and disappear after they hit the target you throw them at, when you dismiss them for free, or after you let go of them.

You can also choose through a variety of Psionic Enhancements. You can either give yourself 30 feet of telepathy, 5 feet of extra movement speed, or health equal to your Rogue level plus your Intelligence. You may notice that in total that would add up to a 4 currently, but that isn’t likely to go higher so I’d recommend either the telepathy or the movement speed. (5 feet of movement combined with the 5 feet from your race means you’re moving at Barbarian speed!)

WHY LOW INTELLIGENCE? - The Soul Knife, despite being a psionic class, doesn’t need Intelligence to function. A +5 in Intelligence would only mean a total of 8 extra health because we’re not going to be taking any more levels in Rogue. You need both Dexterity and Constitution more in this build, so it’s not worth investing in Intelligence just for one skill. But if you can get your Intelligence high go right ahead.

And finally your Sneak Attack increases to 2d6 now.

LEVEL 4 - FIGHTER 1

Now that you have your shuriken it’s time to get your clones. Level 1 Fighters get a Fighting Style and there’s a lot of options to choose from:

Two-Weapon Fighting is the obvious pick, letting you squeeze a bit of extra damage into your second weapon attack if you decide to opt for two-weapon fighting with your Bonus Action.

Thrown Weapon Fighting from the Class Feature Variants UA will vary in utility depending on your DM’s interpretation of “drawing a weapon.” If they let you summon your knives for free with this fighting style (as long as you throw them instantly) take this fighting style. If not Archery could also perhaps increase your ranged accuracy if your DM is cool with the rules.

When all else fails Defense provides a flat +1 to AC.

Why not Dueling? - Dueling is good in it’s own right to increase damage output but it technically only works if you have one Psiblade out. This means that you’ll be gimping yourself by only summoning one knife at a time, which means you can’t have two ranged shots before needing to “reload.” If you have a cool DM Dueling can still work for more damage.

You also get Second Wind, so you can pop a Refillable Potion to heal for 1d10 plus your fighter level once per short rest as a Bonus Action. Even at this late level that can equal up to a third of your health bar!

LEVEL 5 - FIGHTER 2

Second level Fighters get Action Surge, allowing them to take an additional action once per Short Rest. Man I love Fighters; so simple to explain.

LEVEL 6 - FIGHTER 3

HA HA FUCK ME AM I RIGHT?! Echo Knight from Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount suddenly becomes a hundred times more complex! For the sake of brevity I’m literally going to copy-paste the Echo Knight’s ability description from my Skullgirls Isaac build:

The echo (or Living Shadow, if you will) has an AC of 14 plus your proficiency bonus, 1 hit point, and immunity to all conditions. If it has to make a saving throw it uses your saving throw bonus for the roll. It’s the same size as you and occupies a space. On your turn you can make the echo to move up to 30 feet in any direction without using an action but if your echo is more than 30 feet from you at the end of your turn it is destroyed.

You have several things you can do with your echo:

* You can swap places with your echo with 15 feet of your movement, regardless of the distance between the two of you.

* Any attack you make with the Attack action can originate from the echo’s space if you choose to do so.

* When a creature that you can see within 5 feet of your echo moves away from it, you can use your reaction to make an opportunity attack against that creature as if you were in the echo’s space.

* You can use Unleash Incarnation to make one additional attack from your Echo’s location when you take the attack action, adding up to 3 attacks total. You can use Unleash Incarnation a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier.

In short: Living Shadow can attack for you. We good?

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 7 - RANGER 1

We’ve got our Q, we’ve got our W, now it’s time for our... passive? Building characters in D&D is weird. Regardless Rangers get another skill proficiency: I’d recommend the Survival skill to survive if you decide to go into the jungle.

You also get a Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain from Natural Explorer. As per usual whenever I use the Ranger class (which I seem to do a lot) I recommend talking to your DM to find out what enemies and terrain you’ll need, or alternatively use Unearthed Arcana rules. This build is rather separate from Unearthed Arcana but regardless it’s much better than baseline Ranger so I suggest looking at it.

LEVEL 8 - RANGER 2

Second level Rangers get a Fighting Style so I’d recommend one you didn’t take from Fighter 1 (since Fighting Styles don’t stack.) But notably you get access to Spellcasting and learn two spells from the Ranger list: Detect Magic will let you check if your opponent has their ultimate up before fighting, and Hunter’s Mark will let you mark an enemy for death and do an extra d6 of damage every time you hit them.

LEVEL 9 - RANGER 3

Speaking of damage: third level Rangers can choose a conclave archetype, and the Hunter archetype is as useful to assassins as it is to hunters. You get the Hunter’s Prey feature which lets you choose from three different ways to do extra damage, but Colossus Slayer will let you show your contempt for the weak by doing an extra d8 of damage to anyone who’s injured.

You also get Primeval Awareness, letting you spend a spell slot to detect enemies that are near. (Read the ability for a better understanding of how it works.) And speaking of spells how about a smoke bomb? Fog Cloud will let you create a... cloud... of fog. The area is heavily obscured for the duration unless you lose concentration or a strong wind blows it away so you can use it to block enemy vision and get into position to hide and strike!

LEVEL 10 - FIGHTER 4

Man we skipped over our Ability Score Improvements for awhile huhn? Well thankfully there’s no more multiclassing anymore as it’s just straight down Fighter now. But we’ll first be taking a Feat to even out some of our uneven ability scores, and the Observant feat is perfect for a ninja, getting an increase to passive perception to spot assassins in the dark and being able to read the lips of an enemy so you can relay the message to your allies.

LEVEL 11 - FIGHTER 5

5th level Fighters get an Extra Attack good lord finally! The thing is that more attacks means that you’ll have to “reload” your Psychic Blades with a Bonus Action more often, which is why we opted for Colossus Slayer first. So just remember that your knives are limited.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 12 - FIGHTER 6

6th level Fighters get another Ability Score Improvement: increase your Dexterity and Constitution to finally get rid of those awful uneven Ability Scores.

LEVEL 13 - FIGHTER 7

7th level Echo Knights get Echo Avatar: You can see and hear through your Living Shadow, deafening and blinding yourself while you do this. You can keep it up for 10 minutes max and can end it at any time without an action. While your echo is being used this way it can be up to 1000 feet away from you without being destroyed, meaning that you can theoretically teleport to it if you so desire. One of Zed’s biggest strengths is his ability to be practically everywhere at once.

LEVEL 14 - FIGHTER 8

8th level Fighters get another Ability Score Improvement: you can finally cap off your Dexterity for maximum damage with your knives and your shurikens.

LEVEL 15 - FIGHTER 9

At level 9 in Fighter you get Indomitable, letting you reroll a saving throw once per Long Rest. You must use the new roll so be sure to only pop your QSS on an important stun you know you won’t get hit by again 3 seconds later.

LEVEL 16 - FIGHTER 10

10th level Echo Knights get Shadow Martyr. Hey it has “shadow” in the name! Regardless once per short rest you can use a reaction to have your Living Shadow defend an ally (or yourself) when being attacked, forcing the attack to hit the echo instead of you. People can’t shoot Zed’s shadows in League but that doesn’t mean he can’t block a skillshot for an ally.

LEVEL 17 - FIGHTER 11

11th level Fighters get three attacks per round thanks to an improvement to Extra Attack. Again remember that you can only throw two of your Psychic Blades before needing to reload, meaning that if you decide to throw them you can only do so twice before needing to spend a bonus action, and will run out of daggers if you decide to Action Surge. But since your echo can attack with melee it should be fine, right?

LEVEL 18 - FIGHTER 12

12th level Fighters get another Ability Score Improvement: increase your Constitution for more health and more uses of Unleash Incarnation, adding up to you dying less and your enemies dying more.

LEVEL 19 - FIGHTER 13

13th level Fighters get another use of Indomitable. Isn’t cool-down reduction a great stat?

LEVEL 20 - FIGHTER 14

Our capstone is an Ability Score Improvement from the 14th level of Fighter: 2 points in Constitution will give you a 20 HP boost and one extra use of Unleash Incarnation.

FINAL BUILD

PROS

The merest shade of me... - You have a huge array of options in combat which are almost always available for use. You can always be armed with both a melee and ranged weapon and have insane mobility with Misty Step and the ability to swap places with your Echo, not to mention that a 40 foot movement speed puts you above the average movement for humanoids and on-par with most mid-to-high level enemies, letting you easily chase them and keep up.

Our blades crave battle - You have incredibly high damage output. Three attacks with your psychic blades is good in its own right but combined with Sneak Attack, Colossus Slayer, and Hunter’s Mark you can do a grand total of 3d6 + 1d8 extra damage with one of your three strikes. Extra attacks are a great contingency for on-hit damage boosts.

Only the worthy survive - While Zed is squishy in League of Legends this build is much tankier than average. Actually being able to invest in Constitution without losing out on abilities and most of your levels being in Fighter means that your health can easily reach up to 200. Add in Second Wind and Indomitable and you have more than a Guardian Angel to protect you.

CONS

Secrets kept are weapons wasted - You have a lot of set up time to get all your abilities up. A bonus action to draw your weapons and then another bonus action to summon your Echo, plus extra bonus actions to create more blades or more echoes, which will take away from Cunning Action or your mobility abilities.

Only time can judge us - Many of your abilities are limited: limited spells, limited protection with Indomitable and Shadow Martyr, limited damage with Unleash Incarnation and Action Surge, and most notably limited ranged attacks per turn since you can only summon two Psychic Blades per turn.

Balance is weakness - The three levels of Ranger really don’t provide much. More damage is swell and all but taking 3 more Fighter levels instead of 3 Ranger levels would give you more sustainability with Reclaim Potential, another Ability Score Improvement, and most notably a third use of Indomitable and a second use of Action Surge. Ranger makes your average damage output higher but removes your ability to quickly assassinate a target, or keep alive. And it of course forces you to invest somewhat in Wisdom, which might not be possible if you didn’t roll well for stats during character creation.

But I honestly struggled to find many points of weakness in this build; I’m actually impressed with how strong it is overall. You have the tools to take on any fight that may come your way, moving around the battlefield at lightning speeds and dropping any enemy with a flurry of blows. It’s only up to you to use those tools, less you prove yourself a Faker.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

[hellogreenergrass]

Signy Island - Week Six

18th January

Snowing again. And windy. And generally a bit Polar. Despite these clear signs that today should be an inside day, a day where you hide in your heated laboratory and bask in the technological and mechanical advances that have allowed humans to house themselves on a remote Island in the full force of the Southern Ocean. Wondering if you should put a jumper on, not because you are cold, but because it would make you feel even cosier. Or whether you should treat yourself and put your tea in the thermal mug with the Tardigrade on it that your (very considerate) friends brought you. The advantage being that you could have a large supply of hot tea on your desk without having to strain yourself to go to the kitchen to make another when you inevitably forgot about it and it went cold. Such luxuries are afforded on inside days, all the while the Polar winds whirl outside, forcing the seals into the ocean and birds back to their nests in order to wait it out. This was today.

But I didn’t do any of this. I gamely dragged myself and Iain, to be my field assistant, out into the field to drill 88 soil cores spread over hilly and coastal, weather lashed terrain. Each point to be sampled was 100m away from the other, in a grid nearly a kilometre wide and long. This sounds straight forward enough, especially when planning such things on maps. In reality, one point may be at sea level and another 100m away could well be at the top of the cliff. Or in the case of one point, over the edge of a cliff on a steep and disintegrating bank of moss and scree roughly at an angle of 60 degrees, sometimes more.  I’d set out the grid on my own a few days earlier, and whilst I followed my GPS over the edge of the cliff where it indicated the next point was to be, I wondered if maybe I should go back to base and rope up. I decided not and plunged forth, immediately regretting my decision as I downclimbed what turned out to be an unreversible move. It was later pointed out to me that when one is in a situation where they think, “maybe I should do this thing, like rope up and abseil, or call base and let them know what Im doing”, then that is probably the thing I should do. But I styled it out with an ingracious amount of bum sliding, swearing and a heart rate of at least 250bpm. Safe to say Iain and I found an alternative route, approaching the point from the ground up, rather than giving ourselves over completely to gravity and the God’s of misadventure.

Despite the appalling conditions we had a great day out. Iain is good company and made a dull job brighter, if not the weather. In part because of the large amount of innuendo about large penetrating rods into moist substrate….trust a Glaswegian.

20th Jan

I bum lifted today! No, this was not a crude endeavour you filthy minded so and so you. Nor is it innuendo, (well, sometimes it is around here) but is in fact what we call chick counting when the penguins are still sitting on them. Because you have to lift up penguin bottoms. You see, much more delightful than what you were thinking! I was Stacey’s field assistant for the day and we needed to count the Chinstrap chicks over at Cummings and the Moyes Corrie area on the West Coast of the Island. It’s beautiful around there, and the high winds that still hadn’t dissipated from earlier in the week, only added to the drama. Big waves crashed over icebergs in the bay, the mist continuously rose and lowered it’s skirts, so that every few minutes another part of the view would be teasingly revealed or tucked away. I find that clouds and mists on mountains give a good sense of scale, as if we innately equate a cloud with a certain distance. They belong in the heavens, and we on Earth, and mountains are where they meet. Us tiny specks of biology in comparison to either.Or maybe thats just the romantic in me.

Cummings Cove is also home to the Cummings Hut. A battered and bruised relic of early polar adventures, that was all the lovelier for the brow beatings that Antarctica had furrowed upon its walls. It is essentially a roof planted on short, thick stone walls, with the door attached to the roof and slotted into the allocated space, as if the whole structure came as one piece and just needed a few feet of stone to raise it up for head clearance. It felt very Alpine. The roof has recently been replaced, and just the other week Iain and Matt came out to replace the chimney vent. And on this trip Alex painted the front door to match the fascia. Its now a bright blue (Cuprinol Beach Blue in fact!) and alongside the roof and gables that are ‘BAS Green’, a sort of pale sage, it looks quite fetching. Inside, the hut contains a worktop the length of one side with an array of tinned and dried food stuffs: namely a worrying amount of processed cheese in tins, several butts of drinking water and the Tilley lamps and Primus stoves of yore that furnish all our huts. Along the other side are two bunks with fleece skins over the mattresses for warmth and a mound of down sleeping bags of varying ages, sizes and perfumes. A small Perspex window looks out from the rear gable over the cove and the dozens of fur seals that live there. We stopped briefly, leaving Alex to stock up the first aid kit and finish the paint work, before heading out to count the penguins.

To get to Moyes Corry and the majority of the Chinstrap colonies that we needed to see today, we hiked up the short but steep scree and snow slope that makes the Southern edge of the bay and Cummings area. At the top, the ridge was greener than expected (for a ridge) and on closer inspection showed a multitude of colours and textures in the diverse array of moss and lichen species present. This was Cryptogam Ridge. Naturally. (FYI: Cryptogam is a plant with no true flowers, cryptogram on the other hand is code breaking). Down the cliff from here was our first colony and out of 35 nests this year, only 2 chicks have made it this far. In previous years there have been three colonies at this spot, but today, only one. And this one doesn’t appear to be having a good year. Stacey and her colleagues suspect the combining doom of climate change and the El Nino to be the indirect cause.

Next we had to ascend a small peak and then traverse across its Southern slopes of perilously placed scree, before shuffling our way down the final descent – a 50 degree slide of snow, ice and loose rocks. Remember that here in Antarctica, the South facing slopes are the ones kept shaded and cold, not the North face! A mile more and we arrived at the biggest colony on todays survey list: A few hundred nests of chinstraps. I gloved up, armed with a spray can of blue sheep dye to mark the nests we had checked off, and got lifting! Taking a cluster of nests at a time, I offered my right hand in a distracting  sacrifice to the understandably furious pecks of the parent penguin, whilst lifting its tail up and counting the chicks beneath. Sometimes there was nothing, sometimes an egg, but usually it was a grey fluffy mass  and sprawling wings that stares blankly at you with the blackest little eyes, like beads of onyx dropped into a mound of silvery fuzz. The chicks vary in size, from the recently hatched that are smaller than my palm, to the huge and frankly ridiculous chicks that are near the size of their parents. All the more ridiculous as their parents are still sheltering them, but as they are so big now the parents are lifted clear of the ground and balance atop a massive fluff bundle. So I repeat this process for the best part of 200 times: bend, lift penguin, get pecked and hit (flippers hurt!), shout out the number to Stacey and then spray the rock adjacent blue. Sometimes the nests were at the bottom of the cliff, so I would scramble down to the surging waves, slipping on the rock as my boots – now weighing a few extra Kg with congealed penguin shit – struggled to take grip on the frictionless schist rock. Shit on schist.

At the final colony, we looked down into a wen that was flanked by hundreds of meters of soaring cliff. Stacey pointed out the nests of sea birds that I had overlooked, too distracted by the view of a Moe Island. Moe is essentially a mountain in the sea, and a spectacular feature of Signy. The island stands maybe a mile offshore, perhaps less, and the bulk of it is a mountain peak. Although the whole island cant be more than a kilometre or two in diameter. There is a brief plateau on one side, before the land gives way to a sheer cliff into the sea. Today it was snow capped and what had been huge waves crashing the beach at Cummings, now looked like sloshing ripples lapping at pebbles under the mass of Moe. The cool thing about Antarctica is that latitude has already done the work of altitude. We may live at sea level, but to all intents and purposes it’s the same as being a few thousand meters up in the mountains of Europe. So smaller peaks that we would not even consider a mountain back home, are very Alpine. Both in topography and climate. A hill of 50m above sea level  has more in common with the high mountain plateaus of Northern Norway than anything at the same level back in the UK. Stace and I both stood in silence taking it in: Just beneath us a flock of Cape Petrels floated in the sea, hundreds of them bobbing like black and white flotsam in the swell. Our view stretched to the horizon and it was exhilarating knowing that there was nothing but open ocean for thousands of kilometres, and in fact if we set sail from here and just let the winds take us, we wouldn’t make land fall again until we hit the South Orkneys from the other direction. Such are the currents of the Southern Ocean, circling around and around the continent. I felt so very very lucky to be here.