Does the Echo Knight fighter's Manifest Echo feature create a snapshot of the character when creating it, or does it change as the Echo Knight does?

Question

The Echo Knight fighter's Manifest Echo feature (Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, p. 183) lets you "manifest an echo of yourself".

Does Manifest Echo create a snapshot of the character when creating it? Or does the echo change as the Echo Knight does?

• Let's say you pick up a fallen enemy's weapon. Does your echo knight instantly get that weapon as well? Or do you need to make a new echo first?
• And what about changes to your body (like a multiclass in druid with Wild Shape, or a changeling that changes how they look)?

Basically: Is the echo always a reflection of your current body? Or can it be different from your current self?

I'm interested in both the visual and mechanical implications (if any) of this.

Answer 1

It mostly doesn’t matter, but it probably doesn’t change

Mechanically almost every single feature of the Echo Knight let you act based on the Echos position, the Echo itself never does anything. So for those it doesn’t make a difference.

The only cases where it might come up is if you’re under an effect that changes your shape or size (e.g. Enlarge/Reduce) which could affect Attack Of Opportunity, or if you’re using Echo Avatar, which allows you to see through the Echos senses. If you have anything altering your senses (like Wildshape or Polymorph (just an example, you couldn’t use the feature while polymorphed anyway)) your DM would have to make a judgement call of whether those changes apply to your echo as well. My feeling on either of those is that if the intention was that any changes of the sort should propagate to the Echo as well the feature probably would’ve said so, so I’d rule no on both of these.