It's always fun to build League characters because they provide a good framework to base the build around. With five abilities, counting their passive, you get an easy sense for what the character should do and can possibly work in some other stuff from there. Quinn is a particularly straightforward example of a character with a very classic archetype - a ranged warrior with a bird companion - that I nevertheless thought would be fun to explore because I haven't tried a build with crossbows yet. As I was building her, I realized there were a great number of ways the build could be taken, and I try to point those out where I can. Also, it's worth noting that this build and the gear for it is picked in a vacuum without consideration for what adventure it may be in, so certain options might be better in specific situations.
With that being said, let's get into the build for Quinn, Demacia's Wings from League of Legends!
QUINN, DEMACIA’S WINGS
CHARACTER Quinn of Uwendale
SOURCE League of Legends
GOAL Born in a remote mountain hamlet, Quinn grew up in the wilderness and became a ranger for Uwendale alongside her twin brother. She fell into a deep depression when he died but encountered an azurite eagle that saved her life when visiting his grave. She was sponsored to knighthood by Lady Buvelle, whose husband she and her brother had once saved, and now fights alongside the eagle that saved her, named Valor, as she ventures into distant lands on scouting missions. In-game, Quinn is classified as a specialist class, which is a class defined by not fitting into any other, who deals physical damage at range. Her passive, Harrier, has Valor mark enemies to make them vulnerable, increasing the damage of Quinn’s next attack against them. With Blinding Assault, Quinn demands for Valor to fly forward and gouge at the eyes of the enemy, blinding them. Heightened Senses passively increases Quinn’s attack and move speed when she hits a marked creature and can be activated to reveal the surrounding area briefly. With Vault, Quinn bounces off of a target, damaging them and putting distance between them and her. Finally, Behind Enemy Lines has Valor pick Quinn up, increasing her speed and allowing her to recast it to use Skystrike, unleashing a rain of arrows in an area.
LEVEL 1 First things first, let’s cover our ABCs – ancestry, background, and class. Perhaps it’s a little boring, I know some people try to use different ancestries just to keep things interesting, but Quinn is a human with the versatile heritage in my eyes, granting her a bonus general feat at 1st level. As a ranged combatant with keen senses, we’ll be taking our free boosts to Dexterity and Wisdom. Our heritage gives us Feather Step, allowing us to Step into difficult terrain, which is fitting for a wilderness scout such as Quinn, while our ancestry Natural Ambition will give us a bonus class feat.
After reading Quinn’s lore a bit, the best background option I could think to take for her was the scout background. This gives her an initial boost to Dexterity and a free boost that we’ll take to Intelligence. It makes us trained in Survival and Mountain Lore as both Quinn’s home was mountainous and scouting she did outside Demacia’s borders into Freljord covered similar terrain. The Forager skill feat allows us to find more food in the wilds when we Subsist, which is handy but not exactly a great fit for Quinn.
I’m sure it comes to no surprise that we’ll be taking ranger for Quinn’s class, and we’ll be taking precision edge. The facet of precision edge that allows us to mark a target and then hit them for extra damage is an almost perfect replication of Quinn’s Harrier though fortunately we don’t consume our mark when we hit them. Ranger offers a choice between Strength and Dexterity for its key ability score, and we’ll be taking the boost to the latter. With our four other boosts, we’ll increase Dexterity again, as well as Constitution, Intelligence, and Wisdom (Str 10, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 10). Rangers are automatically trained in Nature and Survival, but we’ll swap out that second one to be trained in Stealth instead. There’s no real reason for this decision within the gameplay of League, but anybody that spends much of her time hunting or scouting out areas is going to need some measure of subterfuge. We’ll also become trained in Acrobatics, Athletics, Crafting, Diplomacy, Medicine, Society, and Thievery. Finally, we have two class feats to select. Our first will be Animal Companion – Bird to gain Valor as our animal companion. One thing I like about this is that we just got another one of Quinn’s abilities – Blinding Assault is covered by the Support action of the bird companion as it can leave an opponent dazzled, making it harder for them to hit until they clear the blood out of their eyes. For our second class feat, we’ll take Crossbow Ace. While Quinn uses a repeating crossbow in game, that’s a little out of our reach initially, so we’ll start with a standard crossbow that we can crank up the damage on with this feat.
LEVEL 2 Looking into some Survival skill feats for Quinn, we’ll start with Experienced Tracker so that we can Track at full speed at a penalty. For our class feat, we’ll actually take a slight detour from ranger to pick up the Scout Dedication. This somewhat helps capture the effects of Heightened Senses as it gives us the Scout’s Warning ranger feat for free, meaning even when we’re not using the Scout exploration activity, we can still try to bolster our companions’ initiative, but if we do use the Scout exploration activity, it increases the bonus we provide.
Gear: everburning torch
LEVEL 3 Our first skill increase will go to Survival, increasing it to expert proficiency. As part of that idea of the idea of mimicking the effects of Heightened Senses, we’ll take Thorough Search, giving us a bonus on Perception checks in an area if we spend more time searching through it.
Gear: +1 crossbow, ring of discretion, everburning torch
LEVEL 4 We’ll pick up Quick Jump because that’s always a handy feat to have and kind of works in line with her Vault ability – as does our class feat, Running Reload, allowing us to Stride and reposition while we reload our crossbow.
Gear: coyote cloak, +1 crossbow, necklace of knives, everburning torch
LEVEL 5 This set of ability boosts will get slotted in Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, and Charisma (Str 10, Dex 19, Con 14, Int 14, Wis 16, Cha 12). We’ll take our skill increase to get Acrobatics up to expert proficiency. We’ll use our ancestry feat to pick up Unconventional Weaponry for the repeating hand crossbow. This is an iffy option and very dependent on what the DM is willing to allow in his or her game. The repeating hand crossbow might not fit the parameters of the Unconventional Weaponry feat in their eyes. If this is the case and the option is disallowed, I’d consider taking Witch Warden to represent Demacia’s inherent distrust of magic. Also, all instances of the repeating hand crossbow in our gear would be replaced with the standard crossbow. On a different but similar note, if the repeating hand crossbow is permitted, an important piece of equipment to pick up is the shootist bandolier, a piece of adventuring gear that reduces the reload time of the repeating crossbow’s magazine by 1. In cases where that’s still too many actions, we can also just draw the standard crossbow back out and get some use out of our Running Reload and Crossbow Ace feats.
Gear: +1 striking hand repeating crossbow, coyote cloak, bracelet of dashing, +1 crossbow, ring of discretion, everburning torch
LEVEL 6 The Wilderness Spotter skill feat is a good fit for the ever-vigilant Quinn while the Mature Animal Companion class feat makes Valor stronger.
Gear: +1 leather armor, +1 striking hand repeating crossbow, +1 striking crossbow, coyote cloak, necklace of knives, onyx dog wondrous figurine
LEVEL 7 Another skill increase, another proficiency in Survival, getting us to master. In part of mimicking Qujnn’s Heightened Senses, I’m picking up most of the Perception based feats that I can, such as the Expeditious Search general feat, which we can use to search an area quickly though not necessarily fully.
Gear: horn of fog, +1 leather armor, boots of elvenkind, +1 striking hand repeating crossbow, coyote cloak, +1 crossbow
LEVEL 8 With Terrain Expertise – Mountain, we gain a bonus to all our Survival checks made in the selected terrain, and this feels appropriate for her history. With the Scout’s Speed class feat, we gain a flat 10-foot status bonus to our Speed, which stacks with Fleet since the latter is untyped. Additionally, we increase this bonus to +20-foot status bonus for calculating our travel speed. Meaning we can probably keep up with our allies’ horses while on foot, which is ridiculous and I love it. While I am unable to replicate Valor picking up Quinn as per her Behind Enemy Lines, this large increase to Speed helps capture a single aspect of it.
Gear: boots of bounding, clandestine cloak, horn of fog, +1 leather armor, +1 striking hand repeating crossbow, +1 striking crossbow
LEVEL 9 We’ll take another skill increase to Acrobatics, making Quinn a master in it, but that’s as far as I’m planning on taking that particular skill. We’ll pick up Hardy Traveler as our ancestry feat in part because I like the flavor of it for Quinn, but its mechanical benefits are also nice. Its bonus to our travel speed is a circumstance bonus, meaning that it stacks with Scout’s Speed and we calculate our travel speed with 55 feet for now, meaning that we cover 5 miles an hour and 40 miles in a standard adventuring day. We’re faster than a regular riding horse. Which is nutty and I love it.
Gear: +1 resilient leather armor, boots of bounding, cloak of elvenkind, horn of fog, goggles of night, +1 striking hand repeating crossbow
LEVEL 10 We’ll put these ability boosts to increase Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom (Str 12, Dex 20, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 18, Cha 12). This increase to Intelligence nets us a new language but also makes us trained in Deception, to help when Quinn is scouting in places that she shouldn’t be and gets a chance to talk. Since we have master proficiency in Acrobatics, there’s no reason not to take the Kip Up skill feat so that we can stand from prone as a free action instead of having to burn an action on it. We’ll also further increase Valor’s capabilities by making him an Incredible Companion with the Nimble option. There is a choice here where we would take Savage instead, since that would increase his size to Large and allow us to potentially ride him, as per Behind Enemy Lines. And if that’s more important to you, I’d say absolutely go for it. I just like Nimble better in this case.
Gear: greater coyote cloak, +1 resilient leather armor, shock weapon rune, boots of bounding, horn of fog, +1 striking hand repeating crossbow
LEVEL 11 This time we’ll take our skill increase to Stealth, finally bumping it up to expert proficiency. Then, we’ll grab Fleet, which as I already explained, is untyped, meaning that we have a standard Speed of 40 feet and a travel speed of 60 feet. That’s 6 miles per hour and 48 miles per standard travel day. With a day of walking, we put ourselves 16 miles ahead of most horses.
Gear: +2 striking hand repeating crossbow, greater coyote cloak, eyes of the eagle, +1 resilient leather armor, boots of bounding, ring of sustenance
LEVEL 12 Quinn can aid her allies with the Quiet Allies skill feat, lowering the chance that more of them will fail. Since Heightened Senses reveals concealed creatures or those in bushes, Hunter’s Aim is an appropriate class feat for us to pick up as it allows us to take two actions to give ourselves a bonus to the attack roll and ignore our target’s concealed condition though this can only be used against our hunted prey.
Gear: +2 resilient leather armor, +2 striking hand repeating crossbow, +2 striking crossbow, greater coyote cloak, shock weapon rune, swarmeater’s clasp
LEVEL 13 We’re just increasing a couple of our semi-important skills into a better position at this point, increasing Athletics to expert with this level’s skill increase. We’ll also pick up Bounce Back because I’m running out of options that I like and League has a respawn mechanic.
Gear: +2 greater striking hand repeating crossbow, +2 resilient leather armor, greater boots of elvenkind, +2 striking crossbow, greater coyote cloak, eyes of the eagle
LEVEL 14 With our recent increase to our Athletics proficiency, we can grab Powerful Leap so that we Leap even farther and because I still kinda like that idea for Vault. Building out of Hunter’s Aim, Targeting Shot allows us to use a single action to make an attack against our hunted prey that ignores its concealed condition as well as all cover. This does have the press trait, meaning we can only use it to follow up another attack, but it is still a handy feat.
Gear: winged armor rune, +2 greater striking hand repeating crossbow, +2 greater striking crossbow, +2 resilient leather armor, winged boots, greater clandestine cloak
LEVEL 15 Our ability boosts this time around will see increases to Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, and Charisma (Str 14, Dex 21, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 19, Cha 14). We’ll finally increase our Survival skill to legendary proficiency. Our general feat will be Pick Up the Pace as it allows us to hurry out companions along, drawing them closer to keeping up with us.
Gear: +2 greater resilient leather armor, winged armor rune, bag of holding (type IV), +2 greater striking hand repeating crossbow, greater boots of elvenkind, +2 striking crossbow
LEVEL 16 Using our legendary proficiency in Survival, we’ll pick up Legendary Survivalist so that we can survive even in the most extreme of environmental conditions. The class feat is the final one that will buff Valor as Specialized Companion gives us an array of boosts as well as the Ambusher specialization, making Valor better at Sneaking as well as making him harder to hit. This somewhat fits with the fact that he can’t be targeted in League of Legends.
Gear: greater shock weapon rune, +2 greater resilient leather armor, greater boots of bounding, winged armor rune, +2 greater striking hand repeating crossbow, +2 greater striking crossbow
LEVEL 17 To keep pace with Valor, we’ll take our next to last skill increase to Stealth, getting it to master proficiency. Our last ancestry feat is going to be Group Aid so that Quinn can aid her fellow Demacians more readily.
Gear: +3 greater striking hand repeating crossbow, greater shock weapon rune, dragonscale amulet, +2 greater resilient leather armor, wing armor rune, bag of holding (type IV)
LEVEL 18 A good mix of our Survival and Stealth skills, Foil Senses allows us to employ workarounds the extra senses that some creatures possess. For our class feat, we’ll take Impossible Volley to gain the effects of Behind Enemy Lines’ reactivation as we can shoot at all targets within a select area. Unfortunately, the Impossible Volley really only works with the hand repeating crossbow and even then only has 5 shots. We unleash this upon a crowd of enemies when the opportunity rises, but then we’re switching to the standard crossbow for the remainder of the encounter unless we find a chance to reload the hand repeating crossbow.
Gear: anklets of alacrity, +3 greater striking hand repeating crossbow, +3 greater striking crossbow, greater shock weapon rune, +2 greater resilient leather armor, greater boots of bounding
LEVEL 19 Our final skill increase will be Nature, boosting it up to expert proficiency. Then, we’ll get True Perception because I’m taking way more feats to mimic the effects of Heightened Senses than I really need to.
Gear: +3 greater resilient leather armor, anklets of alacrity, greater cloak of the bat, +3 greater striking hand repeating crossbow, greater shock weapon rune, dragonscale amulet
LEVEL 20 At this final level, we’ll apply our ability boosts to Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, and Wisdom (Str 14, Dex 22, Con 16, Int 18, Wis 20, Cha 14). With this bonus to Intelligence, we receive another language and then become trained in Arcana so that Quinn can more readily recognize when she comes across it. Even with our high Speed, we can use Swift Sneak so that we can Sneak at our full speed. Our final class feat is Superior Sight so that gives a few benefits – a bonus to Perception checks, low-light vision, and the ability to automatically succeed at checks to target concealed, hidden, or undetected creatures.
Gear: +3 major striking hand repeating crossbow, +3 greater resilient leather armor, major goggles of night, anklets of alacrity, +3 greater striking crossbow, speed weapon rune
CONCLUSION There we go! The build for Quinn manages to capture, at least in part, all of her abilities as well as a good piece of her lore. We cover Harrier through her Animal Companion class feat and Hunt Prey action, Blinding Assault is achieved through the Support benefit of our bird animal companion, Heightened Senses is covered through a slew of Perception based feats, and Vault is done through stuff like Running Reload. An alternative to consider for Vault is Skirmish Strike if you can find a place to fit it in. We can effectively achieve the effects of Behind Enemy Lines through our speed boosting feats as well as Impossible Volley though, as mentioned, we could make Valor a savage animal companion sot that he can potentially carry us. Another archetype to consider outside of Scout Dedication is the Drow Shootist Dedication, if your GM will allow it. This gives access to an array of good feats that work well with hand crossbows like the weapon that she favors. It otherwise offers a lot of feats that ranger already had, so I thought it would be more fun to explore the Scout Dedication and am ultimately happy with the choices I made.
Be sure to let me know what you think of the build!
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