League Champion Idea
Introduction
League of Legends content was not what I had in mind when I first started this blog,1 and I try not to apportion very much space in my brain to it. Nevertheless I have yet another league related post here, this one blessfully shorter! 2
A few days ago, in the shower, for whatever reason I found myself theory-crafting a new champion idea! Once the idea took root, I couldn’t but continue polishing it in my mind to a reasonably fully-fleshed package, and now I record it here to finish exorcising me of this demon.
League Champions
League has 172 and counting champions. These are the roster of playable characters you select from when queueing up into a game, and each unique and interesting in its own way. The League entertainment universe has grown massively, spanning now multiple different video & table-top games, e-sports leagues, smash-hit TV show Arcane etc., however the original bread and butter for this whole empire was peddling paid content around new champion releases (League is a freemium game) - players entranced by a shiny new champion buying cosmetic upgrades for said (“skins” - essentially different looks / cosplay for the champion). After all, looking cool in game is easier than in real life! I’m just setting the scene for why new champions have generally captured so much imagination!
My champ idea
A champion needs a key theme / shtick. This can be serious stuff, like recently reworked champion Shyvana - she’s a half warrior half dragon, transforming into dragon form to breathe fire on her enemies. Others are more light-hearted, e.g. Fizz who’s essentially a frog on a pogo stick.
What got me going in the shower (?) was some kind of clone based gameplay (i.e. spawning a body double like in Naruto). This is no new-fangled idea - existing champions like Leblanc, Neeko, Zed etc. have clone action. But I asked myself, what if every ability of the champion summoned some kind of clone? Champions have 4 abilities - Q, W, E, & R (because those are the buttons you press to activate them), and they must provide the player with some kind of reasonable range of actions with which to have impact in their game play. The general capabilities that you want your abilities to span are
- Do damage unto your enemies (very important)
- Chase after / escape (mobility) from your enemies
- “CC (crowd control)” to ensnare / foil your enemies.
- Protection (shields, heals etc.) for you / your team members.
There’s a whole long tail of other types e.g. “utility” abilities which are generally less popular amongst the player base than the tried and tested number 1.
Clones & Body swaps
I wanted every ability to spawn a clone / body double, and also to have some way of “switching places” with the clones. This would allow some very interesting and tricky playing possibilities - juking / faking your opponents. Leblanc and Neeko can both spawn clones that are indistinguishable to their enemies, and even independently controllable from their main character, however they cannot “swap” with their clones; upon receiving damaging / timeout the clones disappear in a puff of smoke. Zed can spawn a shadowy sillhouette figure at some distance, and can then re-activate the ability to swap his character location with the shadow - however the shadow is non-targettable and so not a true body double. I envisioned a fusion - where the body double is targettable like Leblanc and Neeko’s and can take damage, and “swapping into the body double” preserves that state (damaged or not) - hence it becomes a game of whether to swap or not, and for the enemy whether to invest resources into damaging the clone (if they expect you to swap into it), or ignore the clone and still attack the original.
For fairness, League champions all have standardised power / impact in the game, and usually their most powerful ability, their “ultimate” (pressing R) has a long cooldown. The ability to swap places with a clone is quite strong, so I give that to the R button with a medium length cooldown, potentially with multiple charges - more on that later.
My proposed ability list is then:
- Q (damage plus mobility): spawn a stationary, non-controllable clone at target nearby location. Press Q again later to shoot a damaging bolt from both you and your clone in the direction of your cursor.
- W (durability plus utility): spawn a non-controllable clone right in front of you that walks forwards in a straight line away from you. This clone spawns with extra health on top of your base health amount.
- E (crowd control / ensare enemies): spawn a non-controllable clone immediately above you in the air that “ground slams” (the super hero move) at its summoning location, slowing and damaging all enemies in a smallish radius.
- R (???): Body swap with / empower a pre-existing clone
Press R to body swap
Q, W & E are all independent abilites; R is only usable in a short timeframe after pressing one of Q/W/E. E.g:
- press Q to summon clone at target location
- press RQ to body swap with that clone
- can still press the second Q to shoot damaging bolts from you and the clone (except now the clone is old you!)
This is exactly how Q becomes a mobility spell in conjunction with R: summon your Q-clone at a distance, maybe over a wall, and then press R to body swap with that clone, effectively placing you across that wall and leaving your old body for the wolves. If the Q-clone were controllable (i.e. could move), this would probably be too powerful, as then you’d have double mobility options.
Similarly for the W-clone, again it’s non-controllable, it just walks in a straight line directly away from its summoning point. You can summon it in the direction of the fog of war to scout. If it finds an enemy, so be it, let them attack it. Perhaps you feel safe to body swap to it, then press RW, and now in this new body you get its current levels of extra health - hence it’s a durability &/or utility spell.
In league, combos (combinations) of abilities make the gameplay more interesting, and the more combos the better, up until things get too complex. My next proposal may be pushing this limit…
R empowered E and other combos
For the E-clone, I want a combo of QE or WE to spawn a body-slammer above you and the clone’s head. Double slam! Importantly this is significantly more useful - allowing you to effect E at a target location from a distance - otherwise you have to walk right up next to your enemy to slam them. For beefy melee champions, this is par for the course, however my champion would probably be a squishy ranged champion, that has to think carefully before body swapping within close range of an enemy.
Now, thematically, pressing RE should again body swap you with the body-slamming E-clone, however I’m unclear if this is desirable - it wouldn’t achieve any jukery as the slammer comes on top of you - my vision for RE is to make the body slam stronger - no longer slowing hit enemies, rather knocking them up (a stronger type of crowd control, essentially a brief stun). “Imbue your E-clone with vigorous energy, if not actual sentience”. This is where a QERE or WERE combo now really shines - 1. summon a Q/W-clone, 2. summon now two E-clones body-slamming at the location of you and the Q/W-clone, then 3. cause both body slams to be empowered. I’m not sure how to describe this other than “controllable knockup at a distance” (walked out by W-clone or just apparitioned out at the Q-clone location).
Perhaps double knockups (on you and your clone’s head), and even triple knockups if you do QWERE are too strong. Maybe RE should only make the body-slammer above your real body’s head empowered. This would however necessitate a special combo of e.g. QERQRE or QRQERE to achieve knockup at a distance, i.e. first swap with distant clone, and then empower the body slam on top of your new body location.
Normally in league you can’t just use a spell multiple times in quick succession, that would be ridiculous and stupid (perhaps non-surprisingly there’s actually a game mode just for this called URF - ultra rapid fire). To allow such intricate combos (or e.g. some double jukery like summoning both Q and W clones and body swapping back and forth between them), we’d need a “charge system” - i.e. you store multiple (e.g. up to 2 or 3) R “charges”, which you can then use in quick succession - with the downside of then needing to wait quite a while to regenerate charges one by one before you can repeat such a manoeuvre.
More details
In my mind there seem to be a lot of powerful and fun combos unlocked by usage of this R ability design. It’d be a sad time when you run out of charges! To alleviate this and add more agency to the champion, I would propose an additional mechanic where successfully hitting your abilities on enemy champions accelerate the time to your next R-charge generation. The more pro-active and skillful you are at landing your shots, the sooner you can do another cool combo! E.g. your Q makes you and your Q-clone shoot out damaging bolts. If you can aim so that both hit an enemy champion, double the R-cooldown reduction! Perhaps to help ensure this, you can land an R-empowered E to knockup an enemy, guaranteeing a short window where they can’t dodge your Q-bolts. Likewise if you can hit an enemy in the venn-diagram intersection of two body slams, double cooldown reduction.
The W-clone should have some versatiliy. You can send it forwards to scout. You can also summon it just to block an enemy skill-shot/projectile if you time and aim it well. Indeed walking forwards uncontrollably in a straight line, it’s an easy target, but you may still choose to WRW swap into its body to access its extra health, all the better to charge forwards into battle. Perhaps this extra health could stack semi-indefinitely (reset on real-body death?) - so if you elect to keep on WRW-ing, eschewing other Q/E R combos, you can significantly increase your durability.
Conclusion
Is this champion ridiculously overpowered? Quite possibly! Many simpler champions exist with less flashy kits. Only possessing two actual damage spells, Q and E (even if E becomes multiplied in number and power by combination with Q,W & R) is one good limitation on the champion. For those familiar with the roles in League, this would probably be a mid-laner (or perhaps support). I’m no game designer but I think it’s an interesting concept! What might we call this champion? What would their back-story be? I don’t know, I’m open to suggestions!