Hey
So I rolled an Undead Hunter because I thought this race/class combination could be very interesting for RP, and because I’m a fan of both the race and hunters in general.
I’m kinda stuck though when it comes to choosing an archetype / back story for my character.
Could anyone please advise what kind of character I could create for this race/class combo?
Thanks!
Highly recommend
They are a fine bunch of corpses
Personally, I think a old Human Hunter from Lordaeron, who sold meat at the markets, could be an awesome venue to start RPing your hunter!(if he is from Lordaeron, any other city and more recently raised could work aswell!)
Or one of the new generation of Dark Rangers that Nathanos trained from amongst the Forsaken is a very viable option aswell! They use Crossbows, which could give you something to stand out amongst the other Darkfallen Elf Dark Rangers!
So many avenue’s to start your RP background from as a Forsaken!
As far as archetypes categorically attached to undead hunters go, they can be Nathanos Blightcaller’s dark rangers (as Moridunum mentioned). For Silas here I played a little off of Nathanos himself as a paradigm for the class fantasy of this concept, and how they might be flavoured differently to the elves. He likes dogs and axes (plural).
Looking at pet models on Petopia might give you some ideas as well. You could have a bat rider whose mount fights with him on the ground, a spider handler, or a falconer with one of those mummified eagles.
I always thought Forsaken riflemen would be a good fit for the ‘cold, dispassionate sniper’ archetype, but I’ve never actually seen one like that before. If you wanted to do that, you could play something like the Dead Shot class from the Warcraft RPG.
Oh, you.
I had a gif of Clint Eastwood tipping his hat for this, but I think a few weeks of not posting have had my level 3 perms confiscated.
Thanks for the advice!
Being a follower of Nathanos sounds fun, however can you elaborate on that?
Who is Nathanos, and would my character be part of the Forsaken army?
Also what kind of transmog would apply in this case?
In life, Nathanos was a human who saved a high elf called Sylvanas Windrunner from an Amani ambush. When Sylvanas became the Ranger-General of Quel’thalas, she declared that Nathanos should be trained as a ranger. Nathanos was the only human ranger and he was talented enough that he even became a ranger lord, one of the Ranger-General’s lieutenants. However, he attracted a lot of controversy so rather than cause trouble for Sylvanas, Nathanos left for his homeland of Lordaeron.
Nathanos was killed and reanimated as one of the undead by the Scourge, during the Third War. Sylvanas, who has also been killed and raised as an undead dark ranger, broke free of the Scourge’s control and managed to liberate Nathanos from their control as well. He became the champion of Sylvanas Windrunner when she founded the undead nation of the Forsaken on the ruins of Lordaeron and eventually, he became her second-in-command.
Eventually Sylvanas turned against the Horde and Nathanos defected alongside her, only for him to be killed by the night elven priestess of the moon, Tyrande Whisperwind, who wanted to avenge the mass murder of night elves that Sylvanas had perpetrated. There’s more to the story but that’s the most relevant information at the moment.
Articles you may want to look at:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Nathanos_Blightcaller
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Sylvanas_Windrunner
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Forsaken
Nathanos has two aesthetics. One as a mouldering corpse who wears green and brown huntsman’s outfit made out of leather, one as a red-eyed vampire-looking fellow dressed in black and grey. In both cases, he’s known for wielding axes and a longbow and fighting alongside darkhounds, demonic-looking dogs that inhabit the ruins of Lordaeron.
After the Cataclysm expansion, he became a hunter trainer and is likely responsible for training a lot of undead hunters. The most famous undead hunters are dark rangers, who were almost all high elf rangers in life. However, there are some Forsaken rangers who were human when they were alive. They mostly sport a leather aesthetic and seem to focus on crossbows and axes as their weapons of choice.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Making_the_Rounds_(Horde)
Lady Sylvanas Windrunner says: Nathanos has been training a new generation of rangers. They represent both our past, and our future.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Forsaken_Ranger
So if you want to play a very traditional undead hunter, you could aim for a look similar to that and claim to be one of the many rangers trained by Nathanos.
Heya, wanted to give my two cents here.
Being a Hunter makes you also an outdoors type (but you don’t have to). It’s totally possible for your Forsaken to have been outside Horde society so much it doesn’t really got close ties with the Forsaken faction and has more mixed between other Kalimdor based Hordies.
My character, Blondie, was a last-gen Forsaken with amnesia about her past. Because of this she instantly migrated to Kalimdor and became the mixed bag she’s today, being a bit more Hordier than other Forsaken.
What I’m saying is that you don’t need to roleplay the typical Forsaken type (unless you really want to) but you can also go for a Zombie Mountain Man Fur Trapper kek (or whatever you can think of.) Use some creativity!
I own a musket for home defense, since that’s what the Desolate Council intended. Four Alliance goons break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my spiky helmet and forsaken rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors darkhound. I have to resort to the blight catapult mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with plague, “Tally ho lads” the plague barrel vaporizes two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off meatwagon alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the Deathguards to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the Desolate Council intended.
Definitely have a look at the relevant quests and characters Shogganosh has linked above. It might also be useful to play through the Stormheim questline and/or the Battle for Azeroth war campaign on a Horde character.
Dark rangers tend to wear black, grey or mute colours, with a hooded cloak. Whilst it is by no means mandatory to use this one, there is a pre-existing dark ranger set that you can easily obtain ingame as a reward from the Return to Lordaeron questline (the top comment on the Wowhead page has a step-by-step guide on how to unlock it):
I have gotten plenty of mileage out of the Scourgestalker Battlegear sets from Ulduar, myself. All of those look very nice with a dark cloak and hood thrown in and they’ve got a classic undead skull motif to them.
There are lots of player-made sets you can get inspiration from here:
https://www.wowhead.com/outfits/hunter/name:dark+ranger#outfitgallery
To add to that, the Sanctum of Domination LFR(or normal) set combined with the Hood and shoulders from the Dark Ranger set posted above also make a very nice looking set!
Playing a Dark Ranger does seem interesting but perhaps a bit generic.
I guess making a character that’s more rooted in the hunter aspect of things, like a skinner/leatherworker or a meat gatherer/seller would be nice, although I’m not sure how such a character could fit into a guild, being a forsaken.
There’s always the option of making one a hunter who either was so in life, or became one in undeath. They do not need to eat, but leather is useful to them, and meat can always be sold to the other living members of the Horde, especially in the Eastern Kingdoms, where folks such as the Revantusk and the Frostwolf Clan are relatively isolated.
There’s also the angle of trying to balance the wildlife of Lordaeron, but not necessarily in a ranger or druidic way. After all, if wild packs of darkhounds, murlocs, undead fauna, and minions of the Scourge devour all the few wildlife that is left, what will be there left to hunt? This would afford your character both a motivation, and a reason why they might see fit to join a guild that does combat with anything other than animals.
Depending on what you are after, you can go with anything between militaristic Forsaken ranger, to Lordaeron “survivor” clinging to his old life as a hunter/ranger or embracing such a new lifestyle for the survivalist trope.
It’s a versatile race/class combo so you have plenty of freedom.
On your remark about guild, if Forsaken military isn’t your thing, there are some civilian or neutral alternatives, depending on what sort of RP you imagine for the character.
That sounds interesting, could you suggest such non-militaristic guilds?
If anything, the Forsaken Dark Rangers trained by Nathanos are anything but generic and hardly RP’ed or shown ingame!
They aren’t on the level of Elven Dark Rangers, their use of Crossbows instead of normal Bows make them stand out and I doubt they’re trained in Necromancy to fill in the hole that Nature-attuned left in the Elven Dark Rangers!
If anything, they’re a more specialized Crossbow-(wo)man who received trained from a proper Dark Ranger.
Imho I feel like the Forsaken and Elven Dark Rangers are as different as a Knight of < insert race > or a Death Knight.
Both are Knights, but one is way more deadly alone while the other is capable of overwhelming by better technology/gear and numbers…(thats how I always felt about these 2th generation Dark Rangers compared to the normal Elven Dark Rangers)
Hi! Main undead hunter here. Have you figured things out yet?
Both factors give a wide range of options, I personally am a Kul Tiran undead, and his story is that any human would have had before dying to the plague, with his particularities and profession and so on. The hardest part to grasp I found was the whole Sylvanas arc, and how your character positioned himself, reacted to events and so on.
When it comes to the hunter class I’ve gone on one side for the gloomstalker archetype from D&D. Overall he is a character that is now centred on exploring and learning, as he is a scholar that actually goes out to do fieldwork, coupled with working as an expeditionary quartermaster to pay the expenses and boom, perfect for quest RP and to join a variety of guilds.
The real sticky part is the Sylvanas topic, how you reacted to her actions and certainly being a loyalist will make it a hard time to adapt into a lot of the communities.
EDIT: look up D&D resources on wikidot for ideas and inspiration. Ranger class will give you a variety of archetypes to think about.