How strong are the Forsaken?

[GreenJesus]

Can you cut off their arm and they just shrug, laugh, and put it back on and keep going? If you shoot them with a gun does it just go straight through them and they laugh? Pretty sure they don't need to eat either. Can they move around if they only have skeleton left? Since they were raised by necromancy shouldn't that be how they work? It seems like in game they are portrayed a lot weaker and are just humans with a second wind and no emotion. I think stressing their nigh invincibility should be a focus.

[Zuben]

There's a guy in Deathknell freaking out about his arms not being his originally. So you can at least fix a Forsaken more than you can fix a living being as long as they haven't taken fatal damage. What that fatal damage amounts to is anyone's guess. According to the Nathanos short story, the Forsaken do rot, so there's that going against them.

[Contego]

I'm guessing they're like every other undead? Weak to fire and holy damage, decapitation, and blunt force to the head. At least according to the R.A. Knaak-series. Cutting off other limbs would only slow them down in that case. Although, the scourge in his series hungers for flesh though, so I'm guessing forsaken need to eat also?

[Golden Yak]

Strong as ten grinches. Plus two.

[zlygork]

Death and mutilation seems to be just as real for them as for any other race. The bigger advantages are that, as previously stated they can indeed add pieces of different people/reattach their missing limbs with magic/science (and a specialist) and that they do not feel pain unless affected by the light

[Zuben]

I'm guessing they're like every other undead? Weak to fire and holy damage, decapitation, and blunt force to the head. At least according to the R.A. Knaak-series. Cutting off other limbs would only slow them down in that case. Although, the scourge in his series hungers for flesh though, so I'm guessing forsaken need to eat also?

They can cannibalize humanoid corpses as a racial skill, though I'm not sure if that's something they have to do. I don't think I've ever noticed anything related to eating with the Forsaken.

[GreenJesus]

Death and mutilation seems to be just as real for them as for any other race. The bigger advantages are that, as previously stated they can indeed add pieces of different people/reattach their missing limbs with magic/science (and a specialist) and that they do not feel pain unless affected by the light

So at what point do they "die"? Since Forsaken are brought back by necromancy, their soul shouldn't even need a brain to operate.

Do they need to be purified in order to officially die?

[KrakHed]

So at what point do they "die"?

They can survive being chopped in half.

[Zuben]

So at what point do they "die"?

Sylvanas died when Godfrey shot her in the head, so maybe their soul is attached to the cranium. Though we must remember Sylvanas is different than your typical undead, being a banshee, who "reacquired" her body.

[GreenJesus]

Sylvanas died when Godfrey shot her in the head, so maybe their soul is attached to the cranium. Though we must remember Sylvanas is different than your typical undead, being a banshee, who "reacquired" her body.

Yeh that never made sense.Since she is a banshee she shouldn't even need her body to live. Why would a gunshot to her physical body kill her?

[Tanthoris]

I'm guessing they're like every other undead? Weak to fire and holy damage, decapitation, and blunt force to the head. At least according to the R.A. Knaak-series. Cutting off other limbs would only slow them down in that case. Although, the scourge in his series hungers for flesh though, so I'm guessing forsaken need to eat also?

Eeew, don't bring that name up ever please. Horrible writer who blew up the characters power levels more than any Dragon Ball series ever has.

Undead are not as strong as a human due to the rot, but like most undead those that they kill can be brought back as more soldiers. Holy and Fire damage them more than weapons would. We've seen in the demo from blizzcon(if you had the Virtual ticket) that you can reattach undeads limbs so hacking them apart may not do much.

[Zuben]

Yeh that never made sense.Since she is a banshee she shouldn't even need her body to live. Why would a gunshot to her physical body kill her?

Maybe the extra vulnerability is mandatory to take possession of a body to such a degree. Compare to a dragon in humanoid form, Garrosh made short work of Kairoz with a piece of glass when he got the jump on his humanoid weak spot. You'd still except a banshee to just "disengage" when the body can no longer function, but this isn't exactly established science. A wizard did it and thus it is so.

[Mormolyce]

They're 233% stronger than normal.

[GreenJesus]

Maybe the extra vulnerability is mandatory to take possession of a body to such a degree. Compare to a dragon in humanoid form, Garrosh made short work of Kairoz with a piece of glass when he got the jump on his humanoid weak spot. You'd still except a banshee to just "disengage" when the body can no longer function, but this isn't exactly established science. A wizard did it and thus it is so.

I guess that makes sense. In order to control the body she has to completely bind to it and thus she gains the vulnerabilities of it as well.

[sam86]

They can tolerate pain insanely high, they are - lore wise - immune to any form of CC except the specific undead ones like Shackle and Turn Undead, shadow heal or at least does little to no dmg to them, poison has no effect on them, etc
But they aren't strong, in fact they maybe even weaker than average human, because they can't 'build' muscles, against living creatures they are extremely dangerous because for them the living are walking meals (literally, they can cannibalize them), also they are 'hyper' sensitive to holy based abilities spells, while shadow harm a normal living human, holy extra harm them
At least that how undead were described lore-wise back in rpg books in general, so take it with grain of salt
TLDR: They can resist most form of attacks, but they are more sensitive to holy-based attacks (don't remember wow zombies were sensitive to fire, in fact Stratholme had zombies on fire and they still walking like normal), Paladins are their nightmares, anything else isn't
Another note since it is stated that mages need to rest to eat/drink to regenerate mana to be able to use spells (that part is official, mentioned in cycle of hatred), undead don't need to do that, making them as casters in general able to cast a lot more than again any living one
And they can pretty much 'repair' any lost body part from any other creature, doesn't even need to be human (there is undead who replaced his hands with paws of a bear before)

[Deleted]

Can you cut off their arm and they just shrug, laugh, and put it back on and keep going? If you shoot them with a gun does it just go straight through them and they laugh? Pretty sure they don't need to eat either. Can they move around if they only have skeleton left? Since they were raised by necromancy shouldn't that be how they work? It seems like in game they are portrayed a lot weaker and are just humans with a second wind and no emotion. I think stressing their nigh invincibility should be a focus.

this is a complicated question because magic but as some one whos looked into wow zombies alot during wrath ill try to explain. forsaken and in the same sense gouls arnt any stronger or weaker than a human but they are different.

forsaken are undead and undead dont heal. they cant just put an arm back on but they can sow it back on. any damage the receive is pretty permanent out side of what can be stapled or sown back, they are pritty fragile compared to a human, bits can a do just fall off, taking ones arm of could take as littel effort as a good tug depending on how far into decomposition they are. that another point they arnt immortal they rot eventually they will be just skelingtons held together with necromantic magic skellys seem to be shown as weaker than ghouls and a tad stupid unable to have true free will like forsaken

but they dont feel pain, they dont feel very much including emotions so like all undead in wow have no remorse, guilt, love that they can feel except as whisp of a feeling like a memory of how they should feel but dimmed. they are essentially all borderline sociopaths.

think the wights in game of thrones. fearless, without pain but easily smashed by gendrys hammer. they were the zombie hord of the scourge not its death knights the death knights were the unkillable elites of the undead

- - - Updated - - -

They can tolerate pain insanely high, they are - lore wise - immune to any form of CC except the specific undead ones like Shackle and Turn Undead, shadow heal or at least does little to no dmg to them, poison has no effect on them, etc
But they aren't strong, in fact they maybe even weaker than average human, because they can't 'build' muscles, against living creatures they are extremely dangerous because for them the living are walking meals (literally, they can cannibalize them), also they are 'hyper' sensitive to holy based abilities spells, while shadow harm a normal living human, holy extra harm them
At least that how undead were described lore-wise back in rpg books in general, so take it with grain of salt
TLDR: They can resist most form of attacks, but they are more sensitive to holy-based attacks (don't remember wow zombies were sensitive to fire, in fact Stratholme had zombies on fire and they still walking like normal), Paladins are their nightmares, anything else isn't
Another note since it is stated that mages need to rest to eat/drink to regenerate mana to be able to use spells (that part is official, mentioned in cycle of hatred), undead don't need to do that, making them as casters in general able to cast a lot more than again any living one
And they can pretty much 'repair' any lost body part from any other creature, doesn't even need to be human (there is undead who replaced his hands with paws of a bear before)

its worth pointing out in exchange for all of this they suffer from rotting, are physically weaker and rely on numbers in a battle like traditional zombies.

[Contego]

Eeew, don't bring that name up ever please. Horrible writer who blew up the characters power levels more than any Dragon Ball series ever has.

Undead are not as strong as a human due to the rot, but like most undead those that they kill can be brought back as more soldiers. Holy and Fire damage them more than weapons would. We've seen in the demo from blizzcon(if you had the Virtual ticket) that you can reattach undeads limbs so hacking them apart may not do much.

Agree that his writing is a little bit too much "this and this and this and this"-esque, but he still depicted the undead pretty good in the well of eternity-series, and forsaken is pretty much scourge with their own free will, so they would have the same physical traits. And he wrote the same you just wrote, that fire and holy deals alot of damage to them, and severing limbs doesn't do much.

[Cammi Killswitch]

In the Horde dailies in Krasarang Wilds back in MoP. Kiryn mentions that if she were to be decapitated that wouldn't kill her. She'd just need to have her head reattached. Forsaken like the guy from Deathknell mentioned before, as well as a Forsaken who was bisected on Zandalar from the Blizzcon demo floor have been mended by replacement parts or just realigning them so they reconnect. So I think it's kinda subjective. Sylvanas threw herself off of ICC in order to kill herself, and took a bullet to the skull in Cataclysm. But she's a "hero character" so the rules are always iffy there.

[Friendlyimmolation]

Sylvanas got killed by a cursed bullet too, not some random one as far as we know. Physically they can't be wounded fatally, like a human could and they don't need to eat, sleep or breath making them one of the best marching armies you could ever have. Any commander would do terrible, terrible things for an equipped army of Forsaken.


Rot wise, they rot very.... very slowly, to the point where man that had been dead for 10 years is only now visibly showing his signs of rot.

[Deleted]

Which could go terrible for them, considering they're a dying race. =/

that lost alot of people and fleet in stormhiem and the broken shore

the hord are very week in game at the moment which makes me wonder what slvanas is thinking starting a war now.

the orcs lost alot during the sige of org
the tauren lost alot from the grim totem uprising
the troll lost alot in the siege
the blood elves are a nearly dead race after Quelthas on the back of the scourge
the forsaken lost there fleet and many men in legion + they lose lorderon

the strongest militerys left in the hord are the goblins, there allied races out man them.