Hell Knight/Doom II

"Tough as a dump truck and nearly as big, these Goliaths are the worst things on two legs since Tyrannosaurus rex."

- Doom II instruction manual.

The Hell Knight is a monster introduced in Doom II. It is a weaker version of the Baron of Hell, with tan rather than pink skin, and different sounds when alerted or slain. These monsters first greet the player in MAP05: The Waste Tunnels.

Background
The Doom II manual describes the Hell Knight as follows: "Tough as a dump truck and nearly as big, these Goliaths are the worst things on two legs since Tyrannosaurus rex". In the manual for the original Doom, this was the description used for the Baron of Hell. The Official DOOM FAQ uses "Slightly easier to kill than our friend the Baron, but appear in larger numbers. " instead. The manual for the early versions of the PlayStation port refers to them as "Knights of Hell".

The guardians of the Castles of Hell lay on as much firepower as the Barons of Hell, but also can't take quite as much damage.

Combat characteristics
A Hell Knight emits a loud high-pitched trumpeting cry, similar to an elephant. It overall behaves identically to the Baron of Hell, attacking opponents by scratching when close or by throwing green comet-shaped fireballs from range.

When killed, they emit a gurgling scream (some believe they are screaming "Coward!", though the sound is really just a cougar sound effect from a sound library with synthesized effects added). Since it uses the same sprites as Barons, only palette-swapped, a Hell Knight's death sequence is the same as the Baron's (having it's upper body split apart and collapsing with their intestines and green fluids spilling out).

Tactical analysis
The Hell Knight overall, is functionally equivalent to the Baron of Hell, except for having only half as much health. Therefore, the weaker Hell Knight serves better as a medium-strength monster, falling more quickly to small arms fire such as from the shotgun or chaingun, or offering some resistance without slowing the action down, against heavier weapons. While it is much easier to kill, it makes up for this by appearing in larger numbers, and its attacks are just as potent as a Baron's.

Hell Knight attacks are easily dodged, as they make a single attack without special effects and, given sufficient space, their unswerving fireballs can be avoided through circlestrafing. However, their fireballs are faster than those of Imps or Cacodemons and can do very heavy damage on a successful hit. Because these monsters take relatively heavy beatings before going down, and because their pain chance is low, use of the rocket launcher, plasma gun, or super shotgun is convenient. However, provided that the player can get at sufficient range without being hit, the chaingun and shotgun will also work well. Melee attacks against them are hazardous, as they put the player at risk of being clawed, although five berserk powered punches will generally take them down. To avoid damage, the player needs to move in, deliver a punch and quickly move away before it counterattacks.

To kill them requires about 3 rockets, 23 energy cell shots, 50 bullets, 6 seconds with the chainsaw, 8 well-placed shotgun blasts, or 3 point-blank super shotgun blasts. The BFG9000 at close range can easily kill a Hell Knight in one shot, but the moderate threat an individual Hell Knight poses makes this weapon a wasteful overkill unless if they come in packs.

Although they don't possess the same amount of health as their Baron of Hell brethrens, Hell Knights are still better than average in monster infighting, being able to easily take on lesser enemies up to a Revenant, but falling quickly to higher-tier foes like the Mancubus. As they often come in bigger numbers than the Baron of Hell, a group of Hell Knights is likely to turn the tide on their own favor if fighting against other groups of monsters.




 * 1) These tables assume that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, impact animations, and backfire checks 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.
 * 3) Hardcoded exception to infighting negates damage (excepting indirect damage caused by exploding barrels).

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

The IWADs contain the following numbers of Hell Knights: