Doom Roguelike Enemy Analysis: Baron of Hell

HP: 60

Protection: 2

Ranged Accuracy: +5

Melee Accuracy: +5

Ranged Damage: 4d5 Acid

Blast Radius: 2

Melee Damage: 1d3 (+8) Melee

Speed: 100%

Inventory: Nothing.

Experience: 320

Danger: 10

Minimum floor: 12/9/6

Maximum floor: Infinite

Experience per Danger: 32

Can open doors, equip Armor, and pick up and use Medpacks, Phase Devices, and Homing Phase Devices. 50% Acid resistance.

Evasion: Base of 50%, +3% per tile of distance, making for a maximum of 74%

Attack chance: 40%

Barons of Hell are, of course, largely Hell Knights But Better, with more HP, more Protection, more damage, a larger blast radius on their shot, and less susceptibility to Dodges. That last one is a particularly unintuitive surprise that is pretty easy to not be aware of and so not account for, exacerbated by the fact that Tactical Boots are so obviously a great pick and Hellrunner is a very strong Trait; for a midgame or especially late-game Doomguy, Hell Knights and Barons of Hell may well be laboring under the same Dodge problems for long-range fire because they're both at the Dodge cap of 95%. But early in a run, this distinction matters quite a bit; for example, Hell's Arena has its final wave be 2 Hell Knights if you're on Hurt Me Plenty, but 2 Barons of Hell if you're on Ultraviolence, and weaving for Dodges is generally much more protective against the Hell Knights than the Barons of Hell. (By 'generally' I mean 'unless you've gone straight to Hellrunner ranks')

As such, most of what I said about Hell Knights being nasty opponents applies to Barons of Hell, generally with 'but more so' attached.

That said, there are several things I should cover regarding Barons of Hell in specific.

First and most obvious is their usage of Acid damage. This is nearly unique to Barons of Hell; only two Unique weapons give the player access to it as a damage type, and only one other enemy uses it, where said enemy is basically a Baron of Hell but in boss form. I didn't describe Acid's Distinctive Mechanic when covering weapons, because for player purposes Acid is usually only importantly different from Fire damage by virtue of enemies resisting one or the other, never both, but in enemy hands Acid is a very distinct type of nasty: it removes Armor durability twice as fast, removing 2 durability for every point of damage delivered to the wearer.

As Barons of Hell can hit for upward of 20 damage, this means they can in fact take an Armor from 100% durability to below 50% in just two attacks if they roll high and Doomguy's overall damage reduction is still low. That can be a nasty surprise if there's other enemies about the Armor is heavily protecting against until it suddenly isn't! More generally, open combat with Barons of Hell wears away at one's Armor alarmingly quickly, potentially leaving Doomguy in a bad position for later combats; if you're got eg just 1 Blue Armor on you, it may be worth considering just... not wearing it, since it barely affects the damage Barons of Hell do and will be crippled and then annihilated in no time flat.

That Barons of Hell use Acid is also subtly nasty on the level of how Acid-specific resistance doesn't really exist: outside exactly and specifically the Acid Spitter, all non-Boots effects that provide Acid resistance to Doomguy are a general package against energy damage types. For example, Lava Armor is near-immunity to Fire and good resistance to Plasma, and gives no resistance to Acid at all. As such, a run may be doing okay on resistances overall (eg you're playing a Malicious Blades Technician and are wearing Blue Armor) and find that Barons of Hell are a disproportionate threat, whereas the reverse is almost impossible. (That is, if you can shrug off Baron of Hell ranged attacks, you probably shrug off all energy damage attacks)

Second, Barons of Hell having such high base damage makes them one of the earliest enemies that's likely to destroy items on the ground with their attacks. Imps, Hell Knights, and Cacodemons can do this, but unless you're playing on Angel of Max Carnage, the overwhelming majority of the time items will survive being caught by their blasts. This is an aspect of Barons of Hell that's particularly easy to get killed by without really understanding what one did wrong: running to eg a Berserk Pack with intent to use it is often a pretty safe plan when multiple fireball/plasma ball attackers are about in the early game, but with a Baron of Hell this is dangerously likely to get the item you're after destroyed. By a similar token, prior to Barons of Hell you generally don't need to pay much attention to what's behind you: a Large Medpack up against a wall behind you will usually survive a Hell Knight plasma ball you Dodge. With Barons of Hell, though, this suddenly becomes very important to pay attention to!

Less dramatic (most of the time) but also worth noting is that Barons of Hell are much more reliable about doing damage to walls, and can in fact annihilate a wall segment in one shot. (Though this will happen only rarely... unless on Angel of Max Carnage) Running to cover without keeping this in mind can backfire quite badly, getting your desired cover destroyed, especially if multiple Barons of Hell are about to stack shots into an area.

Third is that Barons of Hell have a slightly larger blast radius than Hell Knights, which is easy to overlook in actual play, between the explosion animation playing out so quickly and it actually often not mattering... up until you're Running with a two-tile gap between you and a wall behind you and so get blasted by a Baron of Hell shot you did in fact Dodge.

Fourth is that Barons of Hell are a much more significant source of knockback than Hell Knights, virtually always shoving Doomguy if he lacks knockback protection, and able to in fact shove him two tiles semi-regularly. Packs of Barons especially result in very chaotic conditions where Doomguy can take a turn and then next turn find himself shoved to a location he couldn't even see last turn.

Fifth is that entering melee with a Baron of Hell is generally a better idea than with a Hell Knight. Unlike a Hell Knight, their average damage doesn't actually go up from getting into melee range; their average damage for melee and range is actually the same, at 10, and of course the melee attack eats through Armor at half speed. Angel of Max Carnage of course makes this particularly dramatic, causing their damage to drop to just over half. (20 at range vs 11 in melee)

Sixth is that Barons of Hell are not above-average on Speed, and so won't ambush Doomguy with double-attacks and whatnot. Hell Knights are mostly less dangerous than Barons of Hell, but their ability to abruptly spike two turns back-to-back can make a usually perfectly safe plan unexpectedly result in death. ("I have the HP to survive even if the Hell Knight rolls maximum damage, so I'll wait until next turn to use my Large Medpack." And then it does over its maximum damage roll by virtue of attacking twice between turns, surprise!)

Seventh is a weird bit of difficulty-based jank. Barons of Hell having 1 less Accuracy than Hell Knights makes them notably more likely to miss at long range than Hell Knights; in conjunction with their comparative resistance to Dodge, combat is tilted a bit more toward sitting there and trading blows with them... on lower difficulties. Once you're up on Ultraviolence or Nightmare! this distinction essentially goes away: at line of sight, a Hell Knight is still capped on hit chance, but a Baron of Hell dropping to a little over 95% chance to hit is far too tiny a change to care about.

Overall, Barons of Hell work pretty well as a well-rounded apex threat. I particularly appreciate that Doom Roguelike does not follow in classic Doom's footsteps regarding the durability difference between Hell Knights and Barons of Hell: Barons are tougher than Hell Knights, but only modestly, where classic Doom Barons are a bit tedious to fight due to how absurd their HP is.

Oh, and the two graphics are because 0.9.9.8 updated the Baron of Hell sprite. The left sprite is the old sprite, while the right one is the new one. This is appreciated largely for making Bruiser Brothers more distinguishable from Barons of Hell: in a standard run, this isn't important, but in Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666 it was easy to see a Bruiser Brother and mishandle it because you think it's a regular Baron, as their old sprites were only slightly different; the old Bruiser Brother sprite was just a slightly darker shade of red, basically. Now they have different colors for the glow around their hand. (Among other differences)

I wish this had been done with more of an eye toward visual communication, mind. That Barons of Hell and Hell Knights originally both had a green glow around their hand was one of those things that contributed to a learning player being unlikely to assume they did different damage types, and while the new Baron sprite breaks that piece, the color intuition points toward guessing that Hell Knights do Acid and Barons of Hell do Fire damage, which is not at all the case.

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Next time, we cover Former Commandos.

See you then.