Question: Shadow Priest RP

Lore Role-playing
#1

Hey, guys! I was wondering if can I roleplay my new Shadow Priest as some kind of a Death Priest who is interested in the nature of death and undeath, hence its powers over life have become darker and more entropic? Can I detach myself as much as canonigly possible from the whole void/ mad whispers etc. thiny and simply stick to the negative energies originating from death and undeath?

Note for any fellow-DnD players: What I mean above is, can I roleplay as some kind of Grave/Death domain Cleric?

#2

You can, but it would require a lot of foot work to pull off.
You cannot use void form or any void/mindrelated magic.

I would actually use an affliction warlock to be honest. Your magic is designed to slowly drain the life from your victims and being affliction, your magic is mostly shadow and not fel.
Take it from there.

#3

I don’t think the Shadow Priest is the best fit in that case. The Shadowpriest in WoW is a lot like the Psionic magic type from DND, coupled with some shadow magic. It mostly revolves destroying, manipulating and dominating people’s minds with a bit of destructive void magic thrown in.

Given your focus is mostly on death/entropy, I’d recommend you RP as a Necromancer(can use either Shadowpriest, Death Knight or Warlock for that with a bit of creativity).

The way spell schools and type work in Warcraft is a bit different, so odds are you will get your spells relating to death/entropy from arcane studies as opposed to a powerful diety, so you’ll be more of a wizard than a cleric in that sense.

#5

I think you’d be better off doing that with a death knight in a robe.

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#6

(It’s me! The forum won’t let me post with my initial character, weird)

I really appreciate your answers, guys! It’s just I don’t really get it. Why since a Priest has powers that manipulate and protect life by using the Light cannot say that by using the powers of the opposite polarity ( Shadow/Void) he ends up having dominance over the opposite of life, death? I am aware of the Shadow Priest’s lore of course, it’s just I dont see why it is so far stretched. If you take a look at the Cosmology, the sphere of death/undeath/decay is close to the primal source of Shadow/Void.

#7

Shadow derived from void and apparently actizzard wants us to develop more abilities into that spectrum as we evolve as priests.

Death and undeath have a different source and at the moment no class can manipulate both undeath and void. This is one of the reasons they removed devouring plague from shadowpriests.

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#9

Warcraft has a special class for this kind of stuff, and it’s necromancer. Which sadly isn’t playable in WoW. I suppose warlocks and shadow priests would work as a substitute for now.

#10

UH Death Knight… it have all the skills, and skeletal or rotten minions.
Everything you need to be a sucessfull Necromancer!
Grab a cloth (or Acerus set, thats cloth-like) and you are good to go…
If you use TRP or anything like that, just add “He is alive” and change the class to “Necromancer”

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#11

Death knights are to necromancers what paladins are to priests. It’s a completely different class, with the same power source.

#12

Let’s start (another) request for the necro to be added in WoW. :smiley:

#13

Don’t forget his original question tho’
The answer is: sure, you can do and play whatever you like, but it would take a bit mental gymnastics to pull this. As the others explained, the Shadow and Void are not too “Death Priest” like
On the other hand, define “Death Priest”
Its depends on the culture.
For the Trolls for example, there is Bwonsamdi and as his priest, you are deffinitly a Death Priest, but like the huangans or bokors of the haitian voodoo
Or - since the Zandalari are a bit Aztek-like - you could embrace a bit bloodier, heart cutting out, chaning you to a sacrifical altar and flay you alive kind of Death Priest… not insane void cultist, but commanding the shadows and darkness of da Other side.
For the Kul Tirans death is heavly tied to the sea, and their death priest I think would be more water-shaman oriented. But the depths are quite dark and silent, like the void…
Its worth to dig yourself in the culture of the choosen race, how, for example, a Dwarf pirest would see Death and why would it choose to its priest. From the Crust of Azeroth the Earthen came, and after our life ends, we will return to the blazing hot embrace of the earth we came from - and as a fire-mage or shaman, he burns the corpse or tosses it to a magma pit. But like Neltharion, the connection of the deep places “infected” him and opened his mind for the Old Gods… Yogg-Saron is called The God of Death… you don’t actually have to know you are a servant of an Old God, you could belive, Death himself whispers to your ear and grant you the powers…

#14

Thank you so much for the answers everyone!

I believe, however, I might have miscommunicated what I was interested it. I do not wish to be a Necromancer and command the flesh by the use of unholy magic. I am not interested in the practical use of undeath, I am more interested in the philosophical/spiritual/supernatural knowledge of life, death and undeath and the essence behind it. That is why I went for a (Shadow)Priest, as the class serves this mentality/approach on the matter. Thus, my initial question was if Light is concerned with life, can Shadow/void be concerned with dead?

#15

Shadowpriests and voidpriests are concerned with insanity, madness, damaging the psyche of their enemies by drawing power from the voidlords. Light is order and void is chaos, they oppose and do not exist at the same place, at the same time. Normally in the original Warcraft setting a shadowpriest could not cast light spells while succumbed to the shadows.

Necromancers are the priests of undeath and death in the Warcraft universe. Light and undeath can exist at the same time at the same place, example undead priests.

If you will, rather an undead priest can be as far as a stretch you can go with a priest worshipping death, but to fully role play as a priest concerned with death and the undying then a death knight is far more suited.

Warlocks draw power from the fel, which is different from undeath and void.

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#16

Both the Light and the Void essencially deals with both the matters of creating life and harboring the dead. Void are able to create life on worlds who are void of all light, were as creatures created by the light dies(or changes) where there is only void. Both of these cosmic forces also harbors the afterlife, in a myriad of different ways.

Being a priest devoted to the shadows means you must know the light, cause the brightest light casts the darkest shadows. As a shadow priest you walk dangerously close to the void, to hear it’s whispers, It’s truths and thus you also gain hints of what is to come both in this world and the next.

The voids visions show you not one truth but a myriad of truths, all this information might cause you to lose grip of what is perceived as the mortals reality. Mortals are commonly firm believers in the light, which usually have but one truth and shuns the others as lies.

As a shadow priest you don’t delve into undeath, cause undeath are unnatural and against the truths envisioned by the void. However you can be concerned about the spiritual side of the afterlife, thus the void teaches us that death is not the end but only the beginings of something far greater.

Thus being a shadow priest concerned with death, whould require you to have a firm belief that death is a means of freedom from the shackles that both life and undeath binds us with. You could basicly attempt to RP a member of the Cult of Forgotten shadows.

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#17

Wooah! What a nice answer! Completely grasped the more philosophical afterlife theme I had in mind! Thanks!

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#18

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