Demon

The demon (also known as a pinky or pig in the Doom community, or demon sergeant in the Doom Bible) is a pink, bulky, simian monster with small horns, dinosaur-like legs and feet, and a large, bloody mouth, complete with underbite. Demons, and their invisible counterpart, spectres, are unique in their exclusivity to melee attacks, requiring the monster to be near the player in order to deal any damage. To make up for this, the demon's fast speed and zig-zag motions allow it to cover more ground and dodge the player's fire.

The Doom II manual refers to it as: ''Sorta like a shaved gorilla, except with horns, a big head, lots of teeth, and harder to kill. Don't get too close or they'll rip your fraggin' head off.''

Combat characteristics
Demons let out a sort of growling snort when spotting a player. Demons do not have a ranged attack, so they are no threat at long range. However, they have a huge speed advantage over many of the lower-ranked enemies. They can outrun any monster except the charging lost soul, the cyberdemon, the revenant, and the arch-vile. Due to its speed, the demon closes distances very quickly, often running towards the player in a zig-zag pattern, making it harder to hit, and helping corner the player. Under Nightmare! or with the fast monsters setting, the demon moves and attacks twice as fast, thus becoming the fastest monster in the game, and the second quickest to attack, after the cyberdemon.

In the original Doom, demons were usually found alone or in small numbers, but in Doom II, which offers the player the powerful super shotgun, they are often found in larger packs, and are quick to swarm and overwhelm the player from all angles if they are given enough running room. They emit a loud gurgling sound and spit up some teeth and blood when they are killed.

Tactical analysis
A very useful weapon against demons is arguably the chainsaw; the demon is unable to attack the player when being damaged with the chainsaw, and the chainsaw does not use up any ammunition. This strategy is especially effective if the player is able to lure the demon(s) into a tight corridor, as they will be able to cut them down without having to worry about being swarmed from all directions. However, the shotgun is also effective since it can cause damage at longer ranges, and the super shotgun can kill a demon at close range with one blast. Another quick way of killing them without wasting ammo is to punch them to death when in berserk mode (generally taking anywhere from one to three such punches). The chaingun is also substantially effective if the player lacks a chainsaw, but has a hard time dealing with them using a shotgun.

In monster infighting, healthy demons are able to make short work of former humans and, in tight spaces, imps, and are generally the easiest monster to trick into attacking other enemies. However, it must be noted that Demon's bite attack is rather slow (and Demon stops moving when it bites), so it may take quite a while until provoked demon successfully retaliates against its assailant (even slow one, like an imp or a cacodemon), thus starting commotion. Demons actually appear to be considerably less intelligent (or more oblivious) than imps, as they often run around for quite a long time aimlessly before attacking the player. If provoked by an unreachable monster, they will run around helplessly under their target, and effectively will be out of combat for a while.

Groups of demons on thin, distant ledges tend to run back and forth in formation and can easily be plucked away with a shotgun.

Inspiration and development


The Demon's legs were drawn using a digitized Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus toy as a reference model.

Data



 * 1) This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, and blood splats 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.

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

The IWADs contain the following numbers of demons:

Doom 64
Doom 64 includes the demon, occasionally called a "bull demon", giving it a more menacing appearance, with black horns, smaller red eyes, and accentuated teeth and claws.

Doom RPG
In Doom RPG, the demon appears as the "pinky" class of monster. There are three variations, identified by color:


 * Bull demon (olive green)
 * Pinky (normal colors)
 * Belphegor (blue)

A pinky will attack automatically the moment the player steps into an adjacent square, even if it has already moved that turn. They are resistant to rockets and susceptible to shotgun attacks.

Doom II RPG
In Doom II RPG the demon appears as the "pinky" class of monsters. There are three variatons:
 * Pinky demon (like the normal demon)
 * Bull demon (similar to the pinky demon, just a bit smaller)
 * Belphegor (blue colors)

Also in Doom II RPG when a "pinky" class monster attacks the player, the player is knocked back.

In Doom II RPG the demons are created in embryos by the pinkinator.