Champion Design - Twin swordsmen: Kenshen and Taiyen

Over the past year or so I've been working on and creating some champions in my free time, which i'll be honest, have gone through a lot. Their designs have varied and changed a lot, They have almost become entirely new people both in their own rights, one even changing their entire gender! In making these two i think I've only scratched the surface of the true difficulties that riot probably faces. While for me the problem was not necessarily the kit, but how well the kit reflected who these people were, making them who they are and have it be reflected in their designs and styles. Now enough about my ramblings and difficulties with these two, I will start with their kits, a bit about their intended roles and limitations, and last their lore. If you enjoy please up vote and tell me what you think about these characters!

Without further delay, I present you Kenshen and Taiyen.

Kenshen - The swordsman

Resource bar: Unique to Ken, he uses focus for his resource bar. He generates 5 focus per auto attack. He can hold a max of 100 focus in his bar. When he is at max focus state his passives gain a bonus. If he drops below max focus, these bonuses dissapear. Visually, when in this state, he has what looks like multiple flickers of himself when he moves or attacks, when he walks, the ground will shimmer or warp, and when he blocks a ranged attack, another instance of his arm will appear to block it instead of his actual arms.

Passive: "True swordsman" : He has two stances for fighting, "sheathed and unsheathed", and has different effects for each stance. Each stance has separate cool downs for their abilities.

"Sheathed stance" - In this stance he gains an additional 15% movement speed. Any time he auto attacks it takes him out of this stance. When he activates an ability in sheathed stance it puts him in unsheathed stance afterwards. If he is in max focus state the movement speed bonus in increased to 25%. Abilities used in this stance gives focus.

"Unsheathed stance" - In unsheathed stance Ken passively gains a bonus 10% bonus attack speed and a 30% chance to block incoming ranged auto attacks. If he does not auto attack for 5 seconds he returns back to sheathed stance. If he uses any abilities in this stance he returns to sheathed stance afterwards. If he is in max focus state he gains 20% bonus attack speed instead and his chance to block incoming ranged attacks increases to 50%. Abilities used in this stance cost focus.

Q: Sheath Flicker (sheathed) / Instance strike (unsheathed):

Sheathe flicker - Is a skill shot where Ken swings his sword and the sheath flies off, and stuns first unit it hits. after it reaches max distance it warps back to Ken's hand. Scales with ap, 30% roughly. Gives 15 focus on cast.

Instance strike - A skill shot that can hit multiple opponents. Applies on hit effects, and can crit. It can be used up to four times in a ten second period. Each successful hit applies a stack. It also applies a stack on the last it. On the last hit, if it hits, it applies 20% bonus damage for each stack for a max of 180% total damage on the 4th hit. If the fourth hit misses, the stacks are consumed and there is no bonus damage. Scales with ad by 100%. Cost of 5 focus per cast.

W: Distortion / Stutter cut:

Distortion - Ken channels for a half second and suffers a movement speed debuff during that time, then he distorts the space in front of him, blocking all incoming Auto attack damage for the next 2.5 seconds. Reduces tower shot damage by 30%. Can not make auto attacks during this time, any other abilities will cancel the rest of the blocking period. Gives 10 focus on cast.

Stutter cut - Ken makes a cone shaped skill shot with another cone inside of it, causing a stutter in space. If he successfully hits target with the center cone inside of the bigger cone, the target takes 60% bonus damage on top of what he would normally take from the bigger cone. Can hit multiple targets. Scales with Ad by about 80% cost 15 focus on cast.

E: Warp slice / Stutter step:

Warp slice - Ken makes a fast dash to target unit. Dash is set distance. Hits target for full damage and any other units for 40% of the dashes damage. Can go through walls or other terrain categorized as impassable. Scales with Ap for about 50%. Gives 20 focus on cast.

Stutter step - Ken slashes outward as he warps back wards out of a back flip. Disengages to about max range for Warp slice. During the disengage of stutter step he takes a damage mitigation of about 15 - 20%. Scales with Ad to about 40%. Costs about 25 focus.

R: Instance sever

Ult passive - If he kills target champion with his ultimate he gets all of his abilities cool downs reset, including ultimate. If the target champion moves out of range then he simply dodges all damage and gets half of the Cool down for all abilities. If He fails to kill target champion and they are in range he gets no bonus CDR.

Instance sever - Kenshen focuses his and his blade's , Stutter, space warping and manipulation magic for their ultimate attack. During a 2 second channel, Kenshen absorbs all incoming damage and stores it, at the end of the 2 seconds he blinks to target champion (within a certain range) that did the most damage and deals 65-85% of damage he took plus his full AD to the target. He cannot activate while cc'd (i.e. silence, stun, suppression, snare), however once he has activated it he can not be cc'd. Cost: Ken must have at least 50 focus, but once he uses ult it consumes his entire bar of focus.

Kenshen is supposed to be a dueling powerhouse with the ability to match if not exceed nearly anyone on one on one combat. His kit gives him many options with high outplay potential sitting in wait. However it will take much skill to be able to optimize his style of fighting and his kit. Early game he will be a strong roamer and dueler, while late game he will have to split or play very well in team fights. His weakness that has been designed on purpose is that he starts to fail when fighting multiple opponents. While his kit may make it easy to take out one champion, you'll have to be smart against two, but against three? It'll only get tougher from there. His only saving grace from that situation would be his ult.

Design wise, I would try to keep his Cool downs moderately low. The unique mechanics he brings to the field are his stance switching and how it is implemented, and his "Counter" ultimate. All in all he is best suited for mid lane and top lane.

Taiyen - The sword of nature

Passive: "Water's respite" : Tai's natural stance is that of water. In this stance she gets 15% life steal per auto attack which scales to increase by 5% every 6 levels. any time she switches stances she gains a 5% in movement speed. Stacks up to 3 times. Each of her other stances last only 5 seconds before she defaults back to this stance. Lightning strike glows blue.

Q: "Steel whirlwind" - Her first auto attack in this stance causes her to blink to target enemy within a set range.

"Steel whirlwind" Passive - She gets the persistent effect of bonus attack speed, scaling with level in the ability. Visually wind wraps around her and her sword. Her lightning strike scare glows white.

W: "Crushing Strikes" - Her first auto attack in this stance causes her to displace target champion. They are sent straight a set distance and if they hit terrain they are stunned for a second.

"Crushing Strikes" Passive - She gets the persistent effect of bonus armor, scaling with level. Visually her sword and her body become encased in a layer of stone. Her scar glows a light brown.

E: "Licks of Fire" - Her first auto attack in this stance is a ranged attack that has the same range as the blink of her "Steel whirlwind".

"Licks of fire" Passive - She gains the persistent effect of bonus Ad scaling with level. Visually her body is lightly burning but her sword is covered in flames. Her scar glows Red.

R: Elemental Fury - She prepares an onslaught of the elements. Her ult has a 4 second total cast time. Every second a wave of one of the elements fire, starting with earth from the bottom, then wind from the right, water from the left, and fire from the top. If hit with the earth portion they are knocked up. If hit with the water or wind portion they are slowed, and if hit with the fire portion, they are hit with Damage over time. What makes her ultimate more dangerous however, is during the cast time she can continue to aim it changing where each portion may strike. Only ability of hers to scale with AP.

"Elemental Fury" Passive - If Tai were to normally die, she instead takes a few moments and Rekindles her body with fire, and resurrects at a portion of her max health, losing 5% of her health per second. If she can kill an enemy she stops losing health per second and comes back for good. Has long cool down. In this state using her stances instead consumes 5% of her health. Her ult Consumes 50% of current health in this state.

Taiyen's place on the rift is that of a Brawler or team fighter. While she may not have a whole lot of raw killing potential she still has enough to do well in laning phase, and she is most influential in the team fight. The team fight, or even skirmishes early, is where she flourishes, easily able to turn entire fights with good focus and smart fighting. Her shortcomings are kinda obvious in a sense, no matter how you really look at it, she just isn't that great of a duelist. It is possible that you could build her all damage to make up for her lack of straight damage, but in that sense you lose a lot of her utility and powerful team fighter.

Her unique-ish mechanics are her rebirth, her ult casting, and her stances automatically defaulting. On a side note, i would actually be interested to see her used once or twice as an AP tank, get and for the ult XD. Just an idea. Anyways her main roles would be top lane or jungle.

As you can see, for twins these two fulfill completely different roles for the team, and in such a way that they complement each other and their shortcomings amazingly. Now for a little taste of the lore.

Ken and Tai are from a relatively young and small country hiding in the Ironspike mountains. This country lay between a lot of the major countries of runeterra; Noxus, Demacia, Ionia, Zaun, Piltover, and Freljord. This country started out as a small town in the mountains, but quickly grew as people fled the bigger countries out of many reasons, escaping persecution, love, ideals, whatever reason you could think of, someone was there for. And for all intents and purposes, it seemed a vast majority of those who came their were soldiers or had some experience in battle. Realizing that their neighboring countries my someday try to squash them out the makeshift growing series of towns became a city state focused on preparing all of its residents for being able to fight. And they took the name of Resina.

After some time the city state of Resina became well known for producing Magical mercenaries, known as Reavers. Not just Mercs too use a spell or two, and not just mages to wield a blade. These Reavers were elite swordsman and swords woman that were well versed in magic. There had even been schools formed to train children from the age of 8 to adulthood, if the parents and the children chose to take that path.

It wasn't long before Resina grew large enough to be known as a very small country. This is where the story of Kenshen and Taiyen starts. At this point in time 85% of Resina's population had the ability to use magic of some sort. The other 15% being respectable craftsman that helped hold the country together. Ken and Tai were twins born too two powerful mages who had escaped to Resina for their love. One an ex-Noxian general, and the other a mage from Ionia.

When they came of age to decide whether they would enter a Reaver academy or go to normal school, they showed no signs of any latent magical abilities. Rather then let there family down they still went to The Reaver academy without any magical abilities, and made up for it with raw swordsmanship and their intellect in using the tools they could. Required to form a team, no-one teamed up with them leaving them with each other.

It became apparent after their first few years Ken had a much better affinity for dueling and beating just about anyone one on one, with it becoming increasingly more difficult for him to fight more and more opponents. While Tai was the complete opposite. She thrived in a brawl, manipulating multiple people to win fights. Ken favored the short sword and Tai the great sword.

Every graduating class of Reaver has a tournament when they graduate, rating each team. This is important not only for ranking's sake, but for income's sake. The higher the rank the more likely they'd get hired by various people. 10 years later, when Ken and Tai were preparing for their Reaver graduation, an enchanted swordsmith who had escaped from Noxus years ago came too town.

In stopping by their shop he tells them of his swords, and when one sword, stutter, caught Ken's eye, he explained Stutter's story. "You don't want to mess with that blade, any who have wielded him or challenged him, have gone into a fit of madness where they will attack crazily until they are either stopped, or die."

The day before the tournament, the man is robbed, but Ken and Tai step in and stop the robbers from stealing all the blades. Out of thanks, The man tells Ken the swords name. "His Name is Stutter, Never call his name unless you mean to challenge him. And if you do, he will come to your side to try you. I hope you never need to use him."

It was the final round of the tournament, the round started out well in the twin's favor, but then their opponents pulled some of the enchanted blades that had been stolen the day before. One of them had used lightning to strike down his sister. Tai laid their with the markings of a lightning strike across her chest. "In the off chance she is still alive I have to kill you at any cost." While there were no rules against kill your opponents in the tournament it was frowned about heavily. 

"Stutter." Ken whispered as he raised his right hand to the sky. In an instant, Space warped and contorted above his right palm until the blade, stutter was resting in his hands. As he drew the blade, a mark burned into his hand, and instantly his body felt weird. He could feel and see multiple instances of space and time around him and how to manipulate them. He dashed at their opponents, warping in and out of existence till he reached them to fight them.

It was cold at first, but then there was a burning, one that was thought to be dead. Her body was on fire... It was on fire..... It was a blaze! Tai's eyes widened with soot and ash blowing off of her body. She sat up and saw Ken in trouble, surrounded by multiple golem constructs. Like the wind she was next to him, With the strength of a mountain she sent a group of the golems flying, and with the next swing she lit them all ablaze, just like she was.

And in those desperate moments before they were sure to die, their magic abilities emerged. Taiyen had the ability, to focus and channel elemental magic through herself and her sword. Kenshen and his sword, had the ability to manipulate space and warped portions of space, causing "stutters" in the space around ken. While he had this ability latent inside of him, he had no way to access it without a proper tool, and stutter was just the blade for it.

Well I hope you guys enjoy these two new characters! I basically just put a Summarized version of the lore so it will have to do, but if you want to see the full lore let me know guys. Also if you guys are interested, my wonderful girlfriend is currently working on concept art of these two. If you enjoyed then please up vote, and vote on the polls if you'd like! If you want more of me ask for it and I'll send you my YouTube channel. Not gonna lie and say its overwhelming league stuff or anything, but its something i do that i love to do. anyways, see you all!