Gargoyles and Fire Gargoyles are small, red and have wings, allowing them to float and fly around the map.
Normal Gargoyles at close range slash at the player with their claws and can dive at the player from range to quickly close the distance. They have 40 Hit points.
Fire Gargoyles instead of both the above attacks, throw small fireballs at the player. Fire Gargoyles also have 80 Hit Points, the same as the regular Golem.
Gargoyles appear on almost every level of Heretic.
Description of Gargoyle from the manual: Half-demon and half-bat. these wicked red beasts are the Order's guard dogs of the sky.
Description of Fire Gargoyle from the manual: As if flying demons wern't enough, Fire Gargoyles toss balls of fire down on their unsuspecting enemy.
Tactical analysis[]
Gargoyles are smaller than other bad guys making them harder to hit. The ability to fly and their small size grants them a high level of mobility and ability to access small areas. In some ways, fighting them is like fighting Lost Souls in Classic Doom. (They were actually introduced as a new enemy in Doom Eternal, where the Lost Soul is a single-use, kamikaze enemy.)
The Fire Gargoyle doesn't possess either the ability to dash or attack the player in melee like the standard Gargoyle.
While Gargoyles may be easy to dispatch individually, they often appear in large groups where they can potentially overwhelm the player. A single Gargoyle of either type can be taken out easily with the Staff, although the Gauntlets of the Necromancer are preferable, and small groups can be dispatched with the Elven Wand. For larger clusters, the Ethereal Crossbow is a surprisingly good suppression weapon, as its projectile spread means at least two Gargoyles will be hit when firing from afar, and the damage of each arrow means the Gargoyles will go down in scores.
When killed, Gargoyles fall to the floor and break apart into a pile of gore. They are one of only two enemies in Heretic that can be gibbed, in which case the pieces are smaller and what looks like the Gargoyle's ribcage is visible.
Note that the game engine does not consider regular Gargoyles and Fire Gargoyles to be the same kind of monster. Therefore, it is in fact possible for a regular Gargoyle and a Fire Gargoyle to harm each other, and to infight.
Data[]
| Attributes | |
|---|---|
| ID # | 66 (Regular Gargoyle decimal), 42 (Regular Gargoyle hex), 5 (Fire Gargoyle decimal and hex) |
| Hit points | 40 (regular), 80 (fire) |
| Speed | 10 map units per frame (116.6667 map units per second) |
| Width | 32 |
| Height | 36 |
| Reaction time | 8 |
| Pain chance | 200 (78.13%) |
| Mass | 50 |
| Bits | ? |
| Bits list |
|---|
|
Obstacle Shootable Affects Kill % Float Nogravity Spawn Float Pass Mobj |
| Sprites & sounds | |
|---|---|
| Sprite name | IMPX |
| Alert sound | IMPSIT |
| Action sound | IMPACT |
| Pain sound | IMPPAI |
| Attack sound | IMPATK |
| Death sound | IMPDTH |
| Gargoyle melee attack | |
|---|---|
| Damage | 5-12 |
| Sound | IMPAT1 |
| Fire Gargoyle fireball ranged attack | |
|---|---|
| Type | Projectile |
| Speed | 10 map units per tic (350 map units per second) |
| Damage | 1-8 |
| Width | 16 |
| Height | 8 |
| Sprite name | FX10 |
| Swipes needed to kill1 | Mean | Standard deviation |
Min | Max |
| Player (100% health, no armor) |
15 | ? | 9 | 20 |
| Player (100% health, Silver Shield) |
29 | ? | 18 | 40 |
| Player (200% health, Enchanted Shield) |
? | ? | ? | ? |
| Player Chicken | ? | ? | 3 | 6 |
| Bad Guy Chicken | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Gargoyle | ? | ? | 4 | 8 |
| Fire Gargoyle | ? | ? | 7 | 16 |
| Golem (normal and ghost) | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Nitro Golem (normal and ghost) | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Undead Warrior (normal and ghost) | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Disciple of D'Sparil | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Sabreclaw | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Weredragon | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Ophidian | ? | ? | ? | |
| Iron Lich | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Maulotaur | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Green Chaos Serpent | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| D'Sparil | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Fireballs needed to kill1 | Mean | Standard deviation |
Min | Max |
| Player (100% health, no armor) |
? | ? | 13 | 100 |
| Player (100% health, Silver Shield) |
? | ? | 26 | 100 |
| Player (200% health, Enchanted Shield) |
? | ? | 34 | 100 |
| Player Chicken | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Bad Guy Chicken | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Gargoyle | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Fire Gargoyle2 | ||||
| Golem (normal and ghost) | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Nitro Golem (normal and ghost) | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Undead Warrior (normal and ghost) | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Disciple of D'Sparil | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Sabreclaw | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Weredragon | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Ophidian | ? | ? | ? | |
| Iron Lich | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Maulotaur | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| 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.
- Fire Gargoyles are immune to eachothers fireballs and hence can not damage each other excepting indirect damage caused by exploding puff pods.
Appearance statistics[]
The Gargoyle is first encountered on these maps:
| Game | TNAWN and YRU | BTO | TAASM and BPPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode 1 | E1M1: The Docks | E1M1: The Docks | E1M1: The Docks |
| Episode 2 | E2M1: The Crater | E2M1: The Crater | E2M1: The Crater |
| Episode 3 | E3M1: The Storehouse | E3M1: The Storehouse | E3M1: The Storehouse |
| Episode 4 | E4M1: Catafalque | E4M1: Catafalque | E4M1: Catafalque |
| Episode 5 | E5M1: Ochre Cliffs | E5M1: Ochre Cliffs | E5M1: Ochre Cliffs |
The Fire Gargoyle is first encountered on these maps:
| Game | TNAWN and YRU | BTO | TAASM and BPPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode 1 | E1M3: The Gatehouse | E1M3: The Gatehouse | E1M3: The Gatehouse |
| Episode 2 | E2M1: The Crater | E2M1: The Crater | E2M1: The Crater |
| Episode 3 | E3M1: The Storehouse | E3M1: The Storehouse | E3M1: The Storehouse |
| Episode 4 | E4M1: Catafalque | E4M1: Catafalque | E4M1: Catafalque |
| Episode 5 | E5M1: Ochre Cliffs | E5M1: Ochre Cliffs | E5M1: Ochre Cliffs |
The IWAD contains the following numbers of Gargoyles:
| Game | TNAWN and YRU | BTO | TAASM and BPPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode 1 | ? | ? | ? |
| Episode 2 | ? | ? | ? |
| Episode 3 | ? | ? | ? |
| Episode 4 | ? | ? | ? |
| Episode 5 | ? | ? | ? |
The IWAD contains the following numbers of Fire Gargoyles:
| Game | TNAWN and YRU | BTO | TAASM and BPPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode 1 | ? | ? | ? |
| Episode 2 | ? | ? | ? |
| Episode 3 | ? | ? | ? |
| Episode 4 | ? | ? | ? |
| Episode 5 | ? | ? | ? |
| ||||||||