Revenant

Revenants are monsters introduced in Doom II. Easily recognized by their high-pitched shriek, they take the form of walking skeletons.

According to the manual:
 * Apparently when a demon dies, they pick him up, dust him off, wire him some combat gear, and send him back into battle. No rest for the wicked, eh? You wish your missiles did what his can do.

Combat characteristics
Revenants fire two sorts of missiles: unguided and homing. The homing missiles can be identified by their smoke trail. They can also use a short-range punching attack that resembles karate, complete with an exaggerated punching sound effect.

If a Revenant is within 196 units of its target, it won't use its projectile attack unless attacked and hurt, which makes it counter-attack with its missile.

Tactical analysis
Revenants' fireballs are very powerful and when homing, nearly impossible to dodge when out in the open. Fortunately, the pain chance of a Revenant is rather high, so a chaingun will generally suffice against a single Revenant and prevent it from attacking. When fighting larger groups, it is useful to use a plasma rifle, BFG or rocket launcher. It is useful to keep moving, as this will prevent the non-homing missiles from reaching the player. Homing missiles are very difficult to outrun, but if the player is able to run to the side and then forward just before being hit, the fireball may not be able to come around again. Another way to dodge them is to slide behind an obstacle or around a corner. Also, their missiles can only turn on a horizontal plane, not a vertical one: if a Revenant fires from above, all the player needs to do is move backwards and the missile will eventually impact on the ground. Revenants are very fast, so the player must be sure to keep their distance. The Revenants' punch attacks are fiendishly powerful and can easily down the player with a few punches. If pillars, walls, or other obstacles are available, then they will be useful as barriers for blocking homing missiles.

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of Revenants:

Doom RPG
In Doom RPG, the Revenant appears as a class of monster. There are three variations, identified by color:


 * Ghoul (normal but with green "pants")
 * Fiend (blue)
 * Revenant (normal colors)

Interestingly, the designers of Doom RPG must have believed that the Revenant was wearing pants (see comments above).