Baron of Hell

Barons of hell are enemy monsters. Barons of hell resemble minotaurs or satyrs, with pink torsos and brown legs.

A pair of barons, referred to internally by id Software as the "bruiser brothers," star as the bosses at the end of Knee-Deep in the Dead, the first episode of Doom. Barons also appear as regular enemies in the later episodes and in the sequels.

They are described in the Doom manual as "tough as a dump truck and nearly as big, these Goliaths are the worst things on two legs since Tyrannosaurus rex"; the Doom II manual later described them as follows: "''The Hell Knight was bad news but this is Big Daddy. These bruisers are a lot like the Knights, but look somewhat different and are twice as tough to kill.". The original baron of hell description was given to the hell knight in Doom II's manual instead.

Combat characteristics
With 1000 hit points, barons are the strongest of all creatures in Doom except for the cyberdemon and the spiderdemon. They attack the player by scratching when close or throwing green balls of plasma when distant.

Tactical analysis
Baron attacks are easily dodged, but can do very heavy damage if they hit the player. Because barons take very heavy beatings before going down, and because their pain chance is low, use of the rocket launcher, plasma rifle, or chaingun is preferred. However, provided that the player can get at sufficient range without being hit, the shotgun and super shotgun will also work well. Melee attacks are risky, as they put the player at risk of being clawed.

To kill them requires about five rockets, 50 plasma cells, 100 bullets, 67 cacodemon gasballs, 34 baron plasma balls (although by normal Doom logic, they are immune to their own shots) or Mancubus flame bursts, 25 revenant missiles, 10 seconds with the chainsaw, or 15 shotgun shots. The BFG9000 at close range can kill a baron in a single shot, however.

Despite their endurance, barons often pose a lesser threat compared to some of the weaker monsters: they are slow-moving and, given sufficient space, their slime balls are relatively easy to dodge (especially by circlestrafing). In confined spaces, however, they are hard to move around and can be more lethal.

Inspiration and development
The barons were known as the "bruiser brothers" internally to id because of the first encounter with them and as a parody of the Hammer Brothers in Super Mario Brothers.

There complaints that the Baron of Hell was unbalanced. The Baron had too many hit points yet moved slowly, which made it a "tanking monster", so the level designers could only use it sparingly. Consequently, a very similar monster called the Hell Knight was made, with halved health but everything else essentially the same. The Knight could be used far more frequently, and it gave the player a more realistic chance of taking it down with small arms fire such as the shotgun or chaingun.

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

The IWADs contain the following numbers of barons:

Doom RPG
In Doom RPG, the baron of hell and 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.