Banshee

A pair of banshees wailing at the player.

The banshee is a monster added to Doom and Doom II by the Legacy of Rust expansion and is further specified within the ID24 editing standard. Its graphics are based on scrapped Doom content; the original intent for the sprites is unknown.

Combat characteristics

The banshee behaves similarly to the Beheaded Kamikaze enemy from the Serious Sam games: while chasing the player, it is constantly screaming. Upon arriving within melee range of its target, the banshee explodes, destroying itself while inflicting damage. Killing the banshee will also trigger its detonation, potentially damaging other monsters and provoking chain reactions if other banshees or explosive barrels are nearby.

Unlike the custom "suicide bomber" enemy found in many mods such as Valiant, MAYhem 2018, or ZPack, the banshee is a flying enemy.

Tactical analysis

The banshee is relatively slow and also quite hard to miss, due to its constant wailing. Both its melee and death sequence trigger an explosion with a blast radius of 128 (same as a rocket), inflicting severe damage on any nearby creatures.

Notes

• The banshee's sound design was carried out by id Software's Chad Mossholder.
• The banshee's melee attack state triggers a small, 8-unit-wide explosion, small enough to kill the banshee but not damage any other nearby creatures, in order to send the monster into its death state (which triggers the proper explosion). This is done so that a melee-range detonation does not inflict double explosive damage, as it would if the melee state triggered a 128-unit-wide explosion instead.
• In Legacy of Rust, the banshee has an editor number of 3008 and uses the MT_EXTRA01 / Deh_Actor_151 slot. The data below corresponds to the ID24 specifications.
• The sprite for the banshee is similar in design to that of The Blob, which likewise went unused as an independent enemy concept.

Data

Banshee data
Thing type	-28671 (decimal), 9001 (hex)
Enum	0x9000 0001
Appears in	Legacy of Rust
Hit points	100
Speed	8 map units per frame (140.0 map units per second)
Radius	20
Height	56
Mass	500
Reaction time	8 tics
Pain chance	64 (25%)
Pain time	6 tics
Flags	4211206 (decimal) 00404206 (hex)
Flags list	1: Obstacle 2: Shootable 9: No gravity 14: Floating 22: Affects kill %

Sprites & sounds
Sprite name	BSHE
Alert sound	DSBANACT
Active sound	DSBANACT
Pain sound	DSBANPAI
Death sound	DSBANDTH

State	Frames
Idling	2 [AB]
Chasing	18 [AAABBBCCCAAABBBCCC]
Attacking (splash damage)	1 [D]
Hurting	2 [DD]
Dying	6 [DEFGH]+TNT1A

Appearance statistics

In Legacy of Rust the banshee is first encountered on these maps per skill level:

Single-player
Episode	1-2	3	4-5
The Vulcan Abyss	MAP02: Sanguine Wastes	MAP02: Sanguine Wastes	MAP02: Sanguine Wastes
Counterfeit Eden	MAP08: Second Coming	MAP08: Second Coming	MAP08: Second Coming

Multiplayer
Episode	1-2	3	4-5
The Vulcan Abyss	MAP02: Sanguine Wastes	MAP02: Sanguine Wastes	MAP02: Sanguine Wastes
Counterfeit Eden	MAP08: Second Coming	MAP08: Second Coming	MAP08: Second Coming

Legacy of Rust contains the following numbers of banshees per skill level:

Single-player
Episode	1-2	3	4-5
The Vulcan Abyss	49	62	75
Counterfeit Eden	13	21	24

Multiplayer
Episode	1-2	3	4-5
The Vulcan Abyss	49	62	75
Counterfeit Eden	13	21	24