Sabreclaw
From DoomWiki.org
The sabreclaw is an enemy in Heretic that first appears in the second episode, Hell's Maw. Sabreclaws seem to be metallic, have no blood and explode when killed, but no information is given about their origins. They have no ranged attacks, but use their bladed tails and axe-bladed hands to slice into enemies; combined with their speed and the fact they are often encountered in groups, they can be dangerous to careless players.
Description from the manual: These hideous abominations of the dark world move bloody fast and possess deadly sharp blades for appendages. They can't fly and they can't shoot, but in close combat they'll tear you to ribbons.
Tactical analysis[edit]
Sabreclaws are harmless if you can keep some distance between you and them, or a barrier. They also have a very low mass meaning most weapon fire will knock them back, however they are quick to recover.
Sabreclaws have a very low pain chance (just over 10% on each hit), and will probably get a few slashes in if you use Gauntlets of the Necromancer against them. They can also be hard to stop if they corner you, so remain aware of your surroundings when fighting them, especially in confined spaces.
When killed, they have a ~33% chance to drop lesser runes.
Data[edit]
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| Slashes needed to kill1 | Mean | Standard deviation |
Min | Max |
| Player (100% health, no armor) |
? | ? | ? | ? |
| Player (100% health, silver shield) |
? | ? | ? | ? |
| Player (200% health, enchanted shield) |
? | ? | ? | ? |
| Player chicken | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Bad guy chicken | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Gargoyle | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Fire gargoyle | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Golem (normal and ghost) | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Nitrogolem (normal and ghost) | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Undead warrior (normal and ghost) | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Disciple of D'Sparil | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Sabreclaw2 | ||||
| Weredragon | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Ophidian | ? | ? | ? | |
| Iron lich | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Maulotaur | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| D'Sparil's green chaos serpent | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| D'Sparil | ? | ? | ? | ? |
- These tables assume that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, impact animations, backfire checks, and smoke trails 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.
- Hardcoded exception to infighting negates damage (excepting indirect damage caused by exploding puff pods).
Heretic + Hexen changes[edit]
In Heretic + Hexen re-release when using the "Enhanced Enemies" modifier the following changes (defined in the EX_ECLNK lump) are applied to the sabreclaw:
- the chance to drop lesser runes upon death was lowered from ~33% to ~11%, and these runes now grant 10 charges instead of 20 (15 instead of 30 on skill levels 1 and 5);
- its mass was increased from 75 to 150;
- a new mobj flag was added, NOMELEEGHOST, but it is unknown what exactly it does because the source code is not available.
Appearance statistics[edit]
In the IWADs the sabreclaw is first encountered on these maps per skill level:
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The IWADs contain the following numbers of sabreclaws per skill level:
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| Monsters from Heretic |
|---|
| Disciple of D'Sparil | Fire gargoyle | Gargoyle | Golem | Nitrogolem | Ophidian | Sabreclaw | Undead warrior | Weredragon Faith Renewed: Chaos serpent | Draugr | Troll Bosses: Iron lich | Maulotaur | D'Sparil Other: Chicken | Ghosts |
