Its time for Undead Paladins

Community General Discussion
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Its time. Like 20 years now and we still don’t have them. Why?

Reasons they should exist:

1 - They already exist. The Scarlet Crusade + the Argent Dawn/Crusade have Undead Paladins within them. Stuff that is omnipresent in lore should be playable by the players. Its on par with not being able to play as a Human Warlock or a Dwarf Shaman.

2 - It makes sense even if the above wasn’t true. Undead can already be Priests and they can already be Warriors. During the Paladin class order hall campaign, Paladin enjoyers will remember a character called Delas Moonfang

Delas Moonfang was a priestess of Elune who wished to play a larger part in the Legion’s defeat, so she went to Light’s Hope chapel and joined the Paladin order there. Your job as Highlord was to train Delas until she ultimately became a fully fledged Paladin.

From this we can see that there isn’t much to becoming a Paladin once you’re already a Priest - you do some combat training and gain some discipline and boom, you’re now a Paladin, once a Priest.

3 - We don’t actually care about the lore, nor what actually exists in the game right now, lets be honest. Or well, Blizzard doesn’t, anyway. Thats why milliseconds after Nightborne join the Horde, they learn the entire ways of the monk and become masters at Mistweaving, Martial Arts and Brewmastery. Thats also why they can just decide out of thin air that they want Taurens to be Mages and, look at that, they suddenly can be mages.

Meanwhile, Priests and Warriors have been part of the Horde as Undead for 20 years, and have made good friends with and surrounded themselves with Blood Elf paladins, the Argent Dawn and the Argent Crusade - but at no point did any of them say “hey, maybe we should give the priests some weapons and tell them to man up?” crying laughing emoji??

4 - No one cares if they don’t have their own racial/paladin mount right away, like Zandalari Trolls or Dwarves do. Blood Elves and Humans have been stuck with ones from classic and vanilla. Most people just use the order hall ones that you buy with order hall resources.

5 - “But dey cant wield da lite, it burns dem cuz dey unded” Ok? And Warlocks literally self harm in order to gain mana back - Demon Hunter’s chug demon souls and blood and burn out their own eyes. Death Knights are literally rotting and falling apart. Priests self harm through Shadow Word: Death, Warriors cast Blood Rage, sacrificing their own health to become more powerful, Monks allow you to hit them so they can reverse it with Karma. Dealing damage to yourself directly or by a consequence of using your chosen magic or combat style is an almost ubiquitous part of lore AND class design at this point.

6 - It would be omega cool. Possibly even poggers. Think about the coolest character you know. Picture it in your head. Thats right, its Beric Dondarrion from Game of Thrones:

This guy keeps dying, but keeps coming back thanks to the power of the Light because he needs to slay more of the scourge. Don’t you want to be as cool as Beric Dondarrion, the Lightning Lord?

Reasons they shouldn’t exist:

  • They might be too cool to handle, your mind may shatter upon gazing at one for the first time, irreversibly savaging your brain and leaving you a husk of your former self.
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This would be cool

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Just stop with this crap. Not all classes should be all races. They already ruinned the lore/gameplay with trash like tauren rogues. We dont need more of that.

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You need to create new lore to explain why the current lore is wrong, so lets hear your fanfic then.

Lets ask Chris Metzen and [redacted]:

What’s that, unwavering willpower is what is required to use holy magic as an undead? Hmmm, what class do we know specialises in mental fortitude and strengthening one’s own will? A class with spells and talents like ‘Concentration Aura’, ‘Unbreakable Spirit’, ‘Divine Purpose’ and ‘Strength of Conviction’ to help them, perhaps?!

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Arr!
You’ll never hear me sneaking up behind ye, then you’ll be sorry you bad-mouths us Tauren Rogues.

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Tauren rogues always existed in the game, they were just that good…

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They can be Holy Priests too (in the lore they can only be Shadowpriests) and Monks even, meaning that the Light and the Chi doesnt really care about the host after all.
I’m just gonna say it again: All non heroic classes (with DK being the obvious exception there) should be available to all races.

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Unfortunately for the people trying to take that stance, as you pointed out, there’s plenty of light-wielding undead NPCs around already. The Legion opening scenario (which is canon) even has most of the priests you rescue from cages when playing horde be Undead Priests in Argent Dawn tabards.

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We litteraly have Undead Priests, for some reason they still can use the Light, but all of a sudden Pala would be out of the Question?

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If it was me, I would just deleted anything in the lore after the wotlk. Or at least… the shadowlands trash lore. And just start again from that point. Saying it was a very bad dream or something, haha.

Just because the actual lore is bad, doesn’t mean we need more bad stuff added to it, like undead paladins.

its not the same. Priest have bad stuff in them as well. That’s why they have a shadow spec. They are not as fanatics about light and honor as paladins.

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Ok, lets delete everything after WoTLK…and use the Vanilla>WoTLK lore to justify Undead Paladins, because the Scarlet Crusade already has them from the base game, and the Horde has had Undead Priests since 2004

Neither are paladins. Paladins have bad in them too - Blood Knights, the Scarlet Crusade, Arthas before he turned, Exarch Maladaar and the other paladins in the Auchenai Crypts.

Paladins are not immune to corruption, void of evil and 100% devoted to honour. Half of the Paladin lore in the game is evil or dishonourable or corrupted Paladins slaughtering people because of dehumanisation or false righteousness.

BUT, even if we pretend they were 100% incorruptible, honourable and unwavering beacons of mental fortitude and tenacity, that lends more credence to the idea of Undead Paladins, not less!

Arguing against Undead Paladins is like trying to argue against Human Hunters at this point. There really is zero angle of attack that makes sense. It reminds me of when people tried to argue against Zandalari Troll paladins.

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You do make some decent points. But still, paladins are very devoted and honorable. They should not be easily corrupted. And when they are, it will happen something drastic, like Arthas, turning into a DK or some stuff. Being still a normal paladin, with retribution/protection/holy spec, doesn’t fit to an undead.

Scarlet Crusade are not just randomly evil people btw. They are just fanatics about their own believes. In their way of thinking, they feel like they are the good guys.

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I would say every race can be at least warrior, hunter and rogue and that makes sense, because these are classes who lore wise has no unique powers they just use weapon and master it so Tauren rogue is pretty much logical thing. Rogues are bandits with knives, daggers swords that’s it.
P. S. Of course I forgot the monks as well every race should be able to be one.

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Yeah, very logical for a stealthy assasin to be a big cow. Love your logic, what can I say.

Warriors dont fit to skinny/small races that much tho. Hunter dont fit undead. Its wierd for a rotting corpse to have a living pet and enjoy the nature/wildnes. Rogues needs to be fast races. A cow rogue is dumb. They are big and slow.

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Testing sentence.

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Rogue doesn’t only mean stealthy assassin, we have outlaw for instance. They use swords. Marauder is also a rogue.
Outskirt Barrens bandit is also a rogue if we go in this direction of thoughts.
Talking about hunters undead, well pet might be dead as well, there is a lot of dire creatures in Tirisfal Glade. Undead are anyway extraordinary race, so normal rules don’t apply to them.
And about warriors… xD
If you have bollz and strong spirit to move forward and fight you are already a warrior. It’s not only about big muscles.
Just wield your weapon bravely and swing it here and there. So don’t see how goblin cannot be warrior or gnome.

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Its time for Undead Druids!

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So what if they use swords? They are still 1h fast weapons. Rogues used swords since vanila. But even outlaw is still a stealthy/fast/cc spec. Nothing that fits to a slow big and fat tauren.

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Holy zombies are paradoxical and would kill the class fantasy of a paladin.

Should have lost the ability to cast the light the moment they became undead.

No, they haven’t.

Loreweise, priests of the Forsaken are shadow priests. Everything else is game mechanics that had to be squeezed in somehow. It’s somehow Lore, yes. But it is inconsistent lore. Inconsistent lore is bad writing.

A paladin is more than a mixture of warrior and priest. There are many other characteristics, especially with the silver hand.

And now you want it to become even more stupid?

He isn’t undead. He’s human. Play a human with flame enchantment and be revived by a priest for a true dondarrion. You basically want a white walker or a wight as a follower of the Lord of Light. Would be lol too.

Nah, they would need 2x the willpower as a normal paladin. Once regularly and once to ignore the burning flesh, the smell of decay and the maggots inside. They also have to believe they are doing the right thing, as portrayed in Rise of the Lich King. This works for the Scarlet Crusade and for Arthas. I don’t see how that would work with the Forsaken, as they are purposly evil.

Yes. But they are no longer paladins as soon as they fall.

What is the point of a paladin if you take away everything that makes him a paladin?

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shame they exist in the lore from vanilla then :man_shrugging:

maybe you should apply to be a writer for blizzard and retcon the old lore then

Ok :slight_smile:

This was their first iteration of the lore - they cleaned up a lot of the nonsense (like holy priests existing, but they cast shadow magic???) by reorganising the lore a bit during Legion. In this reorganisation, they clearly stated that, yes, it is as it appears - Undead Priests use holy magic, it just harms them, in the same way Demon Hunters harm themselves as they consume demon souls.

The aforementioned points were pointing that it already exists within the lore - but, if you don’t actually care about the lore, like Blizzard when it comes to Nightborne Monks or Tauren Mages, then that makes it even easier to add Undead Paladins, as you can now attack it from ‘it makes sense’ OR ‘lol its cool’

He died like 6 times and kept getting resurrected, he says himself he saw the void. He wasn’t unconscious, he was fully dead, throat slit, impaled, knife through the eye, nearly chopped in half etc - he was then resurrected from the dead, into undeath. That makes him undead. He says himself - he loses memories, parts of him, each time he comes back - he is becoming even more undead with each resurrection.

Ok.

Orcs have 2x the strength of humans. Gnomes have 2x the intellect of elves, etc. Having 2x of a stat in WoW lore isn’t a big deal. Only the strongest of minds can survive undeath, not go insane and retain their faith in the light like their fellow priests. Awesome!

Zeal doesn’t always have to be lawful good in nature - the Blood Knights were draining beings of pure light while chugging fel magic and they still were paladins, unless you want to just retcon all of that, too.

Sez who?

Again, Paladins are not Lawful Good robots, they have causes - what you think is Lawful Good differs from someone else. The Crusades in real life were Lawful Good on both sides - both sides saw themselves as defenders of the downtrodden against a rabid horde of evil. They both thought they were doing what was holy, righteous and good.

Think of real life honour as another example. In the West in WW2, it was honourable to surrender once defeated, and honourable to treat your new prisoner with respect. In Japan, it was dishonourable to EVER surrender, and those that did surrender were barely worth more than a stray dog.

You can’t just paint everything ‘paladin’ through the lens of an idealised version of the Silverhand, (which makes me wonder did you even play the Paladin campaign?!) and expect the existing lore to move aside so your view can neatly fit on top of it. Thats not how it works.