Welcome back to our latest Champion Spotlight design blog! Today, we're going to go into detail on our newest Champion: Ishi Snaggletooth - Kobold Fighter, who will be available in our latest event: Ahghairon's Day- launching on August 15th! I hope this blog will give you all you need to know about our latest Champion.

How you can unlock Ishi:

Ishi is unlocked by playing Ahghairon's Day, a limited-time event launching on August 15th and running until August 27th. Once you unlock Ishi, she swaps with Jarlaxle or Stoki.

Who is Ishi:

In addition to being an adorable pile of Kobold fanciness, Ishi is a character played in the weekly Roll 20 livestream on the D&D Twitch channel. Ishi is an overconfident loudmouth. She's out to prove herself, and she doesn't know when to shut her mouth. I don't know about you, but I can definitely relate on that point! Since she began her adventuring career, she's often been looked down upon as "just a kobold". However, she's taken that frustration and channeled it into championing the fact that monsters can be adventurers too! Thanks to a few lucky encounters, and her ability to exaggerate her skills, she's known as a deadly duelist most noted for defeating the great Hershel Von Saberberg in a duel to the death. The remnants of his cape now adorn her small stature as a reminder to those that she passes: Ishi is not to be messed with.

You can go along on the continuing adventures of Ishi & co. every Friday at 1PM PST. She is roleplayed by Violet Miller, AKA DistractedElf.

Ishi's Design:

From our initial discussions with Violet, we keyed into the idea of "monsters are people too", as it is core to who Ishi is. She's a fighter who focuses on DPS and increasing your gold find.

Ishi is always out to prove herself, and that is reflected in her Quick Strike basic attack. Quick Strike states: Ishi attacks the front-most enemy a quarter second faster than anyone else. That means if you're fastest champion is attacking every 4 seconds, Ishi attacks every 3.75 seconds. If you then add a champion that attacks every 3.5 seconds, Ishi steps it up and attacks every 3.25 seconds!

The first ability you'll unlock with Ishi is her Monsters are People Too! ability. With it, she increases her damage by 25% for each non-human champion in the formation. It's an additive bonus, so if you can get her surrounded by 6 non-humans, she's got a 150% increase in her damage, just for hanging with her peeps!

From there, you can unlock the first of her specialization choices, which focus on increasing your gold find.



If you want to use her in the early game, when you're cleaving through enemies quickly, choose Clear 'em Out! If you want to have her boost your gold find when you're close to your wall and fighting against a bunch of baddies, choose Wait for It!

Her next ability is Let's Find Some Treasure, which increases all gold found by 10% for every non-human champion adjacent to Ishi. Are you sensing a pattern here?

From there, you reach her second specialization choice, which is all about choosing her friends.


You can choose her friends from 3 groups:

1. Shorties: Both monsters and "standard" adventuring races that share a similar aversion to being the tallest in the room.
2. Tall Monsters: The name says it all. Monstrous races who tower over Ishi.
3. Tall Folk: These are tall folk that Ishi doesn't consider monsters, but at least they're not humans!

Whichever route you go, Ishi's damage is raised by 100% for each of those races in the formation!

Ishi's Ultimate Attack:

Ishi's ultimate is called Confidence Boost. It's all about her strutting her stuff in front of her friends. For each non-human in the formation, Ishi's damage is increased by 100% for 15 seconds. Pair that with friends who attack quickly, and Ishi can easily bounce around the screen, laying waste to your enemies!

Ishi's Equipment

Slot 1: Rapier

• Ishi's Rapier increases her damage.

Slot 2: Cape

• Ishi's cape inspires those around her, increasing their damage (even if they're human).

Slot 3: Hat

• Ishi's amazingly fancy hat increases the effect of Monsters are People Too! increasing Ishi's damage for every non-human adjacent to her.

Slot 4: IOU

• Ishi once ran into the famed Artus Cimber, and carries an IOU from him to be redeemed at a later date. This equipment card increases the effect of Let's Find Some Treasure, increasing your party's gold find for every non-human adjacent to Ishi.

Slot 5: Nub Ub the mouse

• Ishi's pet mouse, Nub Ub helps to inspire her to continue onward when using her Confidence Boost Ultimate Attack.

Slot 6: Pocket Soup

• I've heard it's a delicacy, but the pocket lint turned me off from trying it. Pocket Soup decreases the cooldown of Ishi's Ultimate Attack, allowing her to use Confidence Boost more often!

TL;DR- Final Ishi Thoughts

We're super excited to introduce Ishi into the game. Hopefully she'll inspire you to think of new formations, casting those pesky humans aside. We'll be watching the discussion online and on discord to see how well she's received, so let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, or on the official Discord!

Welcome to what will hopefully be the first of many new dev blogs highlighting our Champions. We hope this blog will give you all the details you need on our newest Champion: Azaka Stormfang - Weretiger Fighter. She's launching in the update set to go live tomorrow - Wednesday August 8th, but we wanted to give folks a day to get ready for her arrival!

How you can unlock Azaka:

Azaka is unlocked by completing the two Azaka's Procession variants at the end of the Tomb of Annihilation campaign, so if you haven't completed the campaign yet, get cracking! It's quite a challenge to unlock her, but we've increased the level cap for Champions this week as well, so that should help you push a bit further. Once you acquire Azaka, she swaps with Arkhan or Zorbu.

Why we chose Azaka:

In each of our campaigns, we want to unlock multiple permanent Champions. These are Champions that you can unlock as an achievements for completing a certain level of a campaign, whose equipment gets added to regular gold & silver chests once you collect them. The Grand Tour has Drizzt Do'Urden (unlockable in a variant of the Underdeep Cartography adventure), and now Tomb of Annihilation has Azaka Stormfang. We're looking forward to unlocking more permanent Champions in the future.

We chose Azaka as our first permanent Champion in the Tomb of Annihilation campaign because of our fans. Let me explain. When we began designing the Tomb of Annihilation campaign, we needed a guide to get us around Chult. We chose Azaka as our guide in much the same way that any DM running the Tomb of Annihilation TRPG campaign might, since she is a listed as one of the possible guides within the book.

Azaka joined the Champions as a guide to Chult in the fifth Tomb of Annihilation adventure: The Templar's Camp.

However, once she was around for a few adventures, Dylan started hearing requests on our official Discord and livestream for her to join the Champions. We didn't realize how quickly our fans had become attached to our guide, but as soon as we heard the request, we realized how much we liked the idea. Suddenly, our first Tomb campaign Champion was born!

Azaka's Design:

We wanted to make sure Azaka could be impactful to your late game strategy once you acquire her. Rather than look at what she could do differently in the slot, we focused instead on what she wanted to do as a character.

As a weretiger, she's really a beast of two worlds, and we wanted to reflect that in her design. Additionally, we didn't want to go the same route as Tyril where her weretiger form was just one option out of her specializations. We wanted to highlight swapping between human & weretiger forms as the cornerstone of her design. Her Curse of Lycanthropy ability dictates how she transforms.

Azaka's Curse of Lycanthropy

In human form, the counter over her head tracks how long until she transforms again (normally 20 attacks).	In her weretiger form, the counter counts down till she transforms back to a human (normally 60 seconds). The red arrows remind you that she gets stronger with every attack.

As a guide, she hides her weretiger curse from the heroes as long as possible, so we wanted to make sure she felt like more of a guide than a raging beast of DPS all the time so we leaned on her increasing gold find in human form with her Guiding Hand ability. While in human form she increases gold find by 20%. This percentage continues to increase as you gain levels with Azaka, but it is decreased by 50% while she is in weretiger form.

We also wanted to show how adept she was at traversing the jungle. We started with a formation-wide boost to damage while in Chult. However, we didn't want her to only be a viable Champion in the Tomb of Annihilation campaign, so we extended her Adept Traveler ability to any outdoor area, which there is plenty of in Chult.

When we looked at her Weretiger form, we leaned on the narrative that we designed around her final assault on the Lost City of Omu. The Champions were captured and Azaka (in her weretiger form) assaults 3 of the shrines on her own, single-handedly collecting a third of the puzzle cubes that the Champions need before she succumbed to the death curse. Because of that story beat, we wanted to allow her to continue to grow in strength the longer she remains in her weretiger form. From that discussion, her Taste for Blood ability was born. Each time she attacks in weretiger form, she does 10% more damage than the previous attack (stacking multiplicatively). If you can maximize her time as a weretiger, she's a beast on the battlefield!

So we felt like we had a good idea of what her two forms would do, then we needed to work out the specializations. As I noted above, we didn't want her weretiger form to just be a specialization route, we wanted her transformation to be available early and used often. Her specializations allow you to highlight which version of Azaka you need for that adventure. In order to do that we decided the dial we would turn would be the length of time she spends as a weretiger.




If you choose Resist the Curse, she spends less time as a weretiger (from 60 seconds to 15 seconds), focusing instead on the gold find boost of her human form more often.

If you choose Lycanthrope Forever, instead of transforming into a weretiger after 20 attacks, she transforms into weretiger every 12 attacks instead, maximizing how often she shifts into weretiger form.

Azaka's Ultimate Attack:

We decided early on that her ultimate attack would be tied to her Mask of the Beast, a magic item listed in the Tomb of Annihilation campaign. When she uses the mask, she can cast the spell animal friendship, so her ultimate has her donning the mask and calling two tigers to her aid. The tigers have two abilities that are tied to her specialization.



If she specializes in Lycanthrope Forever, the tigers help you transform into a weretiger, and allow you to stay in that form even longer:

• Their attacks (every 5 seconds) count as her attacks for the purposes of Curse of Lycanthropy, advancing your counter into weretiger form quicker.
• For the duration of the ultimate, the countdown out of weretiger form is paused. So instead of the normal 60 seconds in weretiger form, you get 60 seconds + whatever time you spend as a weretiger while the ultimate is active.

If she specializes in Resist the Curse, the tigers help you collect gold:

• Attacks by the tigers cause enemies to drop gold whether or not they are killed by the attack. They will still drop gold when they are killed.

Azaka's Equipment

Azaka has 6 equipment slots, and a variety of Chult-inspired equipment to collect.


Slot 1: Scimitar

• Azaka's Scimitar is always by her side, granting her a bonus to her DPS.

Slot 2: Puzzle Cubes

• The puzzle cubes remind Azaka of a great moment of triumph for her and her friends, granting a bonus to the party's DPS.

Slot 3: Coin Pouch

• Azaka's Coin Pouch grants a bonus to her Guiding Hand ability, increasing the party's gold find while Azaka is in the formation.

Slot 4: Earrings

• Azaka's Earrings grant a bonus to her Taste for Blood ability, increasing her damage in weretiger form.

Slot 5: Map

• Azaka is an adept guide throughout chult. As such, her map grants a bonus to her Adept Traveler ability, increasing the party's DPS whenever they are in an outdoors area.

Slot 6: Mask of the Beast

• Azaka's Mask of the Beast decreases the cooldown of her ultimate attack, allowing her to use her Mask of the Beast more often.

TL;DR- Final Azaka Thoughts

We're super excited to introduce Azaka into the game. We think she's going to be a strong DPS character who can also help you boost your gold find and help you get to your Champions' level cap sooner and push to your wall. However, we can only design and test a Champion so much. We'll be watching the discussion online and on discord to see how well she's received, so let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, or on the official Discord!