Sabreclaw



The Sabreclaw is a moderate-level enemy species in Heretic that first appears on episode 2. The Sabreclaw seems to be metallic, have no blood and explode when killed, though it is unknown how they came to be. It has a bladed tail, and axe-handed claws, which it uses to slice into enemies with.

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
Sabreclaws are harmless if you can keep distance or a barrier between you and them. They also have very low mass, meaning most weapon fire will knock them back; however, they are quick to recover. The Ethereal Crossbow is an efficient weapon against them, as anything less is risky and anything more is overkill.

If you're forced to use a melee weapon against them, use the Staff instead of the Gauntlets of the Necromancer. The Gauntlets will pull you towards the Sabreclaw, and its low pain chance means it will have the opportunity to attack back several times before you kill it. The Staff on the other hand will push the Sabreclaw back with each thrust and is fast enough to not let it remain close enough to try a slash; an agile player can use the Staff to eliminate Sabreclaws quickly and with impunity even if they are in groups of considerable size.

When killed, Sabreclaws explode and burn away, starting with their bellies and quickly moving to their arms and legs, and their armor collapses onto the floor. They sometimes drop Lesser Runes, so the Hellstaff is the choice weapon to deal with large groups of Sabreclaws at range.

Data

 * 1) 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.
 * 2) Hardcoded exception to infighting negates damage (excepting indirect damage caused by exploding puff pods).

Appearance statistics
The Sabre Claw is first encountered on these maps:

The IWAD contains the following numbers of Sabre Claws: