Hell knight

Introduced in Doom II, the hell knight is a weaker version of the Baron of Hell that has a tan rather than pink torso. The manual for Doom II describes it as "tough as a dump truck and nearly as big, these Goliaths are the worst things on two legs since Tyrannosaurus rex", the same description previously used for the baron in the original Doom manual.

In terms of gameplay, the Hell knight is identical to the Baron of Hell, merely with less hit points. As a result it is a medium-strength monster that is more vulnerable than the Baron is to small arms fire (eg. shotgun or chaingun). Unlike the Baron that can require significant ammo from heavier weapons (eg. rocket launcher), the hell knight offers resistance without slowing the action of the game.

Combat characteristics
Hell knights emit wake-up and death cries similar to those of the baron of hell, though sped-up and louder. Carrying 500 hit points, hell knights present a significant challenge to the player, although less than that of a boss monster. Hell knights have both melee and distance attacks, scratching at close range and throwing green fireballs from a distance.

Tactical analysis
Hell knight fireballs are faster than imp and cacodemon fireballs and inflict heavy damage. They have a low pain chance that makes the rocket launcher, plasma gun and super shotgun the most effective weapons against them. The chaingun and shotgun are also effective at close range. It is not recommended to use a melee attack due to their own scratching melee attack; however, five punches from a player powered up by a berserk will usually kill one. A player attempting such an attack must move in quickly to attack and quickly withdraw to avoid the counterattack.

Roughly speaking, killing a hell knight requires either 50 bullets, 6 seconds with the chainsaw, 8 close range shotgun blasts, 3 point-blank super shotgun blasts, 3 rocket hits or 23 energy cell shots. A single close range hit by the BFG9000 easily dispatches hell knight but it is usually a waste of ammo unless attacking several simultaneously.

Hell knights are less of a threat than weaker monsters because attacks are simple and generally easier to predict. With sufficient distance, the projectiles can be dodged without much difficulty, but at closer range they can be more difficult to avoid and potentially lethal.

Hell knights and barons of hell throw the same projectiles and cannot be injured by them. As a result, the only way that the two can be triggered to fight one another is if one catches the other in a barrel explosion.

Trivia

 * The hell knight death sound is a jaguar sound effect with extra effects added. The hell knight death sequence is identical to the baron's.

Data





 * 1) These tables assume that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, impact animations, and backfire checks are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
 * 2) Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
 * 3) Hardcoded exception to infighting negates damage (excepting indirect damage caused by exploding barrels).

Appearance statistics
In classic Doom, the hell knight is first encountered on these maps:

The IWADs contain the following numbers of hell knights:

Doom 64
Though overall similar to the standard hell knight, the variant found in Doom 64 is less pale in color, and more closely resembles Doom's baron of hell.

One quirk of the game is that they can deal and receive missile damage to and from barons of hell, so infighting between the two monsters is possible.

Doom RPG
In Doom RPG, the baron of hell and the hell knight both belong to the "baron" monster class. There are three variations, identified by color:


 * Ogre (green torso, red hands, brown legs)
 * Hell knight (brown torso, brown hands, pink legs)
 * Baron (pink torso, orange hands, brown legs)

As in the original, the hell knight is not as powerful as the baron, though both are more powerful than the new "ogre" variation. This class of monster is especially weak against attacks from shotguns.