RP Char. Immersion Question

Even when I’m not RPing, I’m immersing in my head with my character in the game world. My question is to those who play Death Knights, Shadow Priests, Warlocks, etc. How do you do it? How do you perceive yourself (character) as anything “good” when your class is all about working with negative, potentially evil magic/etc? Looking for honest input and fresh perspective.

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I can only speak personally on this matter of course, and it can change between each individual character. But in the case of Death Knight’s, they (usually) did not choose that fate, it was something forced upon them, and if they are trying to be “good” they are trying to make do with what is available to them.

As for warlocks, they did choose their path, but, and this won’t be the case for a lot of characters, and I don’t know if this is still technically the lore-accurate reason, the warlocks that are accepted adventurers and “heroes” are the kind of warlock who spends time studying and learning to control fel energy in order to better fight back against it. “Fight fire with Fire” sort of thing.

Don’t have a shadow priest so can’t speak personally on that, but I assume there are numerous backstories that could lend to similar situations as proposed above.

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One of the reasons I made Keelath was so I could play through the Horde BFA War Campaign and not have it so immersion breaking he was doing these evil and questionable things in the name of Sylvanas.

That said, he was a paladin in life, which explains why he still tries to do good for people, too. It makes him the morally gray character I wished Sylvanas would have been. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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My characters that delve into the “negative” realms all see their abilities differently. I have Aura, my Sister of Elune, whose primary specialization is Holy, because her goal to “be the best ally” on a team. But she’s 10,000 years old… in that time, she’s gone through cycles much like her Mother Moon, where she’s delved into the darker side of the moon’s magic. She knows both healing, AND shadow magic for this reason, and while she doesn’t necessarily favor the shadow side, there’s just times she doesn’t feel like prolonging an encounter with something trying to kill her, and can’t deny the Shadow spells are much more efficient.

My warlock is pure chaotic. She IS actually evil. So how does she get through quests for the Alliance? Well, a smart, evil person doesn’t make it known that they’re evil. They go under cover. They need resources, and working for the Alliance, learning who their big players are, the strength of their armies, who their main champions are, that’s all part of the survival piece as an evil character. And then you get to snicker as you go through questlines and NPCs are like “Here, take this trinket of our village as thanks! We owe you so much!” Because you know your character is like “Oh you poor suckers…if you only knew what I planned to use this for.”

And then I have my purely power-hungry character in my demon hunter. This guy has pretty much straight up lost his mind. He doesn’t have much of a personality. He’s just filled with power and rage and is just coherent enough to register someone is pointing him in the direction of his next outlet.

My death knight claims she’s not actually undead. She’s a gnome that decided to run a bunch of experiments on the plague gas used in Gnomeragon that turned everyone into Leper gnomes. She studies diseases, and uses the weapon that was turned on her people against others. She might be in denial. Or she might have developed a hefty immunity to frost fever. Who knows?

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As an rper, I often use a class in a different way than it is presented. It takes a little imagination and a heavy use of the add on TRP3. I always liked the concept of a battle mage, or dual class of warrior/mage. This is something like a D&D character concept.

What you do with your character is up to you. Just because a class says it is undead, does not mean you have to play it that way. I much prefer characters that are alive. Flawed and different, yes. The frost magic and the blood magic and especially the unholy magic can be used many ways. My Unholy DK is a necromancer, which is in itself considered to be evil. But, he is doing it for research! He is very much a morally grey character. His methods can be considered evil, but they do get results.

This guy is actually a character I made to be fashioned as a Witcher. With some major differences of course. His abilities and magic are from enchanted and some even cursed items that give him an edge over the monsters he seeks to destroy. He went through an intense ritual to get him to where he is in power and it has warped him a little, but he is alive.

Personality is all up to you. Evil is not as cut and dried as most people think. What might be considered evil to some is just powerful to others. Even the characters who consider themselves filled with the Light, can be seen as evil, if they take it to an extreme.

I hope this helps. Good luck in game!

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I don’t have much to add to the excellent responses above, other than to share how I personally navigate this situation with my character.

Jairian was a paladin in life, but abandoned the Light during a crisis of faith. He actually did choose to become a Death Knight. (To be fair, the choices presented to him at the time of his conversion were pretty terrible, but that’s a story for another time. :wink:) While not necessarily “good,” he has retained a deeply ingrained desire to bring order and justice to the world from his previous life. He sees quests as an outlet for the enforcement of those values, but doesn’t really bring any moral judgement of his own. Questing also serves as a great cover for socially-acceptable murder, and he uses this to sate the Death Knight’s addiction to inflict pain without calling undue attention to himself.

Of course, this is just my take on it, and to echo Sianiar - how you interpret your character is all up to you!

For Zurom it was originally about survival. Learning about fel magic in the time after the Third War is how he kept himself alive in the Ghostlands. Afterward, it was more about minimizing the damage it causes. Not exactly a fight fire with fire mentality. More like, studying the enemy is the best way to defeat them.

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I am often curious about RPing a Warlock that’s more on the side of a Necromancer/Demon Hunter. Like, with Demonology and controlling demons, how many players RP that their Warlock has vast knowledge of the demonic plane and uses the demons against their will to right wrongs on Azeroth?

IMO no magic is inherently evil. Magic is simply a force, like strength, which can be used for good or evil, depending on who’s wielding it. There are shades of gray there, too. As for Warlocks specifically, I’ve known people who play their Warlocks a bit like Demon Hunters, who entrap their demonic servants instead of making pacts with them.

But even still, in a demonic pact, the demon doesn’t typically have any power; they are just a tool, like magic is.

In DND, it’s 100% possible to have a good or neutral Warlock, and it’s possible to have a chaotic evil Paladin. Some Warlock pacts aren’t even really that damning, to be honest. Power is what you make of it.

That’s actually how I played my warlock, though, not all their demons were forced, some were rebels to the Legion, some may be forced, the felhunter was raised since it was a felpuppy, others might just have had ulterior motives but haven’t double-crossed anyone yet.

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The warlock’s I’ve played/incorporated into my stories were tied together, a master and apprentice. The master believed that true power came from how much you could control. He liked the idea of someone who could master both the dark, and the light; the gift of creation and the talent for destruction. He ended up going the way of the warlock not only because the light simply didn’t sing to him (nor was it often used in controlling ways…Paladins might count but who wants to wear all that armor?) but also because demons are spawned from the twisting nether, a realm of chaos by nature. If you can control chaos, THAT is a form of true power. And part of controlling chaos is knowing the realm and the creatures that dwell within it.