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Definitely possible. It irks me that nearly all DK NPCs fall into HURRR I'M DEAD AND SO ANGRY group. I was pleased to see Thassarian want to return to his sister above all else.
I made nice clothes.
I died.
I make nice clothes. Sometimes I have to sew a ghoul's arms back on. :c

But if all you did was make nice clothes, why would you have originally beeb selected to be a Champion of the Undead in the first place?
This is a problem i see with several DKs that spring fom Humble Origins-they go from being Bob the Baker to an Acherus Knight and then Back to being Bob the Undead Baker.

I'm reading what you are saying and I find myself agreeing. I think that doing that is unrealistic because death knights aren't like that. But you know what I also find myself thinking? This is a game which people want to play for fun. Most people aren't going to care what we say or think and will just continue to do what they want. Just live and let live.

True 'nuff, I suppose.

Hi Tadkins!

Of course a Death Knight can be good or lawful good. Their whole game's about atonement as much as it is revenge, so they are penitent toward preserving life. Boom, that part's cake. The other personality and motivations are the trickier part.

Remember the episode of Futurama where the Professor gets bent to stare at the sky and develops a whole new outlook? My stance is basically that Death Knights are the opposite - their physical status as undead shapes their attitude and outlook as much as their horrific experiences have. I wouldn't underestimate the combination of factors in adjusting the personality of even the most bubbly person. Anyone too happy as a DK is gonna be seen as unrealistic IC and OOC.

IMHO, go watch some MASH. Pretty good depiction of how you deal with horror. Maybe don't roleplay the full-on maudlin parts, but the rest.

Hey Varendil. :)

I mainly asked this question because I've recently started playing DnD.

In that game, raising the dead is inherently an evil act. There is just no two ways about it. Most cultures find necromancy to be a disturbing, disgusting and disgraceful act. If your character is good, but summons undead and uses other similarly evil spells, the character's alignment shifts from good to evil. I was thinking it could be the same with Death Knights.

Prehaps a Chaotic good alignment, but that would be a very rare case imo. I think the memories of death and over loss in life + the grasp of the lich king twisting and controlling someones mind so severely would have a great impact on personality and views on what is good and evil. I'd say majority of them would be in a Neutral Neutral or C Neutral.

If your character is good, but summons undead and uses other similarly evil spells, the character's alignment shifts from good to evil. I was thinking it could be the same with Death Knights.

Well, there's the argument that's gone on since warlocks were in vanilla over the "using bad methods for good deeds" or the "using evil against evil" attitude. If your character believes undeath is inherently evil, they might kill themselves, or they might have had their attitude changed by their undeath. If you, OOC, on the other hand feel that undeath is too big of a hurdle to overcome morality-wise, that it's defiling the planet, et cetera, then simply don't play a death knight and remove that OOC hurdle to your enjoyment. It's only after you answer that question that you can figure out if you want to play that character. Even if you don't mind DKs, you still might not want to play it.

I had intended for this guy to have been a mercenary in Lordaeron during the First and Second War. During the Third War, he had planned to assassinate King Terenas while Arthas was away and claim the throne, but the stupid prince returned and killed the king first...then destroyed everything. Stupid boy.

I was intending for him to be bent on killing Arthas and then returning to claim Lordaeron for his own once the Horde were kicked out. Or at least, such was his motivation behind why he did what he did.

He wasn't good nor evil, per se. He was a cold, calculating tactician that was firmly intent on getting what he set out to get.

I just never found the motivation to play through Outland again since my warrior and mage bum rushed through shortly before Wrath launched.

Hey Varendil. :)

I mainly asked this question because I've recently started playing DnD.

In that game, raising the dead is inherently an evil act. There is just no two ways about it. Most cultures find necromancy to be a disturbing, disgusting and disgraceful act. If your character is good, but summons undead and uses other similarly evil spells, the character's alignment shifts from good to evil. I was thinking it could be the same with Death Knights.

If your alignment changes for using Necromancy, your DM is a %#@#. The Evil tag on Necromancy merely means you've performed an evil act. A Chaotic Good character can follow the laws if he feels it'll help him, and it won't switch him over to Lawful.

It -does- depend on the setting, but still...

Definitely possible. It irks me that nearly all DK NPCs fall into HURRR I'M DEAD AND SO ANGRY group. I was pleased to see Thassarian want to return to his sister above all else.

I made nice clothes.

I died.

I make nice clothes. Sometimes I have to sew a ghoul's arms back on. :c

But if all you did was make nice clothes, why would you have originally beeb selected to be a Champion of the Undead in the first place?

but she makes nice clothes thats a definet candadate for undead champion

My main RP death knight is pure evil. I mean PURE evil. Her story is that she's not totally happy with this freedom from the Lich King. In fact she didn't want to be free, but Mograine ruined that for her with his betrayal. She was biding her time, helping against the Lich King up until now, hoping that at some point she'd be able to return to his service. Even feeling that maybe she'd be rewarded for doing so. However now that the King is dead, she finds she's not sure where to go or what to do. So now she's just wandering somewhat, not someone the Alliance like having around, but by the same token someone they need. "The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend" being the going theme there.

Well, if we take the DK starter chain as lore, this is technically possible... but very very unlikely, and let me explain.

The quests are there to immitate what is the transition from a risen Hero, under the control of the Deathknight -> Deathknight whose soul and mind have been corrupted and overwhelmed by the acts (through quests) they have committed by the Lich King's will.

Basically, the DK starter chain quests are your journey through all of the torture of the Lich King, and coming out of it mentally freed... but still with the memories of the hatred and massacre's you have commited. Infact, your memory of living supposedly barely returns to you when you meet the prisoner.

So, at lvl 58, you enter SW as a being who really only knows death and destruction... massacre and genocide. If you think your character is lighthearted enough, even in undeath to overcome that then.... more luck to you

my .02.

As it's been said already, good and evil are subjective. What's good to someone might be evil to someone else.

Case in point, my Kaldorei DK.

Saev was a former Cenarion Guard (Warrior). Never married, had no kids, was your typical Elune-worshipping, honorable Kaldorei. Was shipped out to aid in the assault on Icecrown with a whole group of his fellow Guards. His battalion was sent to Jotunheim to assist in establishing a foothold there (base camp, if you will, from which to expand operations), and subsequently buried in an avalanche. The ones who weren't buried, were picked off by Vrykul trying to get back to the incoming reinforcements. Rather than put some to defense and try to recover the lost, Saev and his brethren were left to die. Succumbing to frostbite, hypothermia, and eventually suffocation, he was raised as an initiate and served Arthas. Insert time as being a truly evil harbinger of death here.

He gets out, still holds a grudge at the fact that they were left to rot. While not exactly angry, he's not happy with it either, but what can you do? Past is the past. He picks up Inscription to improve the coordination in his frozen hands and fingers, sets himself to the mentality that while most living people hate his class and everything it stands for, they're capable of being just as heartless and cynical as he is. He's not good, he's not evil. He's indifferent. People will die, wars will happen, he will have to kill people, and people will be out to kill him. It's the way of the world. He's cynical, sarcastic, and pretty much a bastard to everyone on first encounter, because he has no tolerance for idiots and goodie-two-shoes people. He knows he's killed people. He remembers it pretty vividly, but if you're going to sit there and condemn him for it, you better have never slain a single creature out of anything but self-defense in your entire existence, because he's going to throw it right back at you.

To many people, he seems like an evil, cold-hearted bastard. To a handful who know why, he's simply making the best of the situation fate's put him in, and isn't evil at all. He's not going out to defend the honor of every hapless maiden he crosses, or saving kittens, or rescuing kids from the SW canal (though he would if he came across it), but he's not going around randomly slaughtering people either. He tries to adhere to the same code of ethics he had in life, if only a little bit more sarcastic and lax at times.

So yes, being "good-aligned", while subjective, is perfectly viable for any class that plays this game. Just as being "evil-aligned" is obviously the same. Someone made a reference once to the Scarlet Crusade. Evil to us, but to them, -we're- the evil ones. It's all in how you look at it.

Scenario: You've got a death knight, a relatively good person. He died a hero, raised by the Lich King, broke free, all that good stuff. He was a carefree person who took the bad things in stride, and despite the best efforts of the Scourge, did not drain that from him completely.

No one goes through death without their mind being altered a bit, but this was a guy who was relatively stable and content. Even in undeath, with his new dark powers, he still fights the good fight and remains an honorable person, battling against evil.

Would this be a possible thing?

That's almost what the Ebon Blade does against the lich king. Cept it's more of revenge and being neutral...


But ya, totally possible to do and a lot of my death knights go through with that.

The recurring theme of the Death Knight as someone who has already committed mass murder, even if they were literally mind-controlled, is definitely a good starting point. With the exception of reanimated Paladins, it's enormously unlikely that a future Death Knight was a "good" individual to begin with, and after what you've done in the Lich King's name you can certainly be excused for being sociopathic or otherwise unstable. If it doesn't affect you somehow, I'd be worried. As a matter of fact, that overabundance of cheerfulness will be a major point for Gradivius (as created on a role-play server, obviously), who is in reality a manipulative bastard who signed his soul away consciously and now has to hide that behind helpfulness and kindness while he builds his own power base behind the scenes.
On the other hand, even if you do come out in a sincerely "good" mentality, remember that no one else is going to forget what you did. They may accept it, they might even forgive you for it, but they'll always remember it. The Death Knights, Koltira and Thassarian excepted, are still mostly unwelcome even after directly contributing to the destruction of their former master . . . contributing even more than the Alliance and Horde combined (excluding the actions of ten or twenty-five people, obviously). And that endless hostility and base ingratitude will wear you down over time. My other Death Knight character, Renarcise, died in exile shortly after a heroic action in the defense of Silvermoon, and now that he's back he's pledged his swords to his home's defense once again. But he made that pledge in secret, because he knows he's a monster and cannot bring himself to face his kin. No one, not even his fiance, knows that he's still alive, but he continues to serve them as a faceless, silent sentinel.
So in the end, yes, Death Knights can be "good," but they'll never be liked and it takes heroism vastly beyond what any knight or paladin could ever muster to hold to their morals and their honor in the face of that. Chances are the "good" will be less of the peace-loving puppy-saving knight-in-shining-armor variety and more of the evil-slaughtering war-winning badass variety. If you can manage more than that in the face of eternal hatred and animosity, then you are truly worthy of veneration.