Let's improve barons.

[Jimmy]

Barons are objectively awful monsters. Let's fix that.


(note how the cyberdemon is not doing anything here)

Kamikaze. - Barons cast dishonor on the nobility of Hell with their mere existence. They aim to rectify this now, in quite the spectacular fashion. (see screenshot)

Seppuku. - As above, but less splodey.

Or alternatively, make them what they are.
Doors with health. - Deal with them quickly and effectively by hitting "use" on them.

Let's discuss! How else, and how drastically, can these woefully inadequate creatures be objectively improved?

[Alfonzo]

Keys.

"You need a red key card to activate/kill/explode this baron."

[Jaxxoon R]

The door barons need to close again after a while.

[Jimmy]

Alfonzo said:

Keys.

"You need a red key card to activate/kill/explode this baron."

Question: are the barons invulnerable until the key is acquired? :O

[Varis Alpha]

Jimmy said:

Question: are the barons invulnerable until the key is acquired? :O

are doors invulnerable until the key is acquired?

[scifista42]

To me, the obvious way to improve Barons is to make them fire a volley of 3-5 projectiles instead of 1 (with a "semi-slow" rate of fire), and/or change their walking animation duration from 3 to 2 tics per frame (making them more aggressive), and/or reducing their health to something like 700 (one SSG shot tougher than Hell Knights). Actually, I probably wouldn't consider it an improvement unless not just 1, but at least 2 (or all 3) of the abovementioned changes were implemented.

[Obsidian]

Erm, does the Doors With Health one actually work? Cause I just tried it and I ended up with a healthy sized wad of Baron bleach to the face for my troubles.

[Azazel Bloodfucker]

The way to improve Barons is remove them and replace them with a more interesting monster.

[Jimmy]

Doomhuntress said:

are doors invulnerable until the key is acquired?

They're a persistent obstacle until that point.

Obsidian said:

Erm, does the Doors With Health one actually work? Cause I just tried it and I ended up with a healthy sized wad of Baron bleach to the face for my troubles.

It's working for me. You're hitting 'use' right?

[Azazel Bloodfucker]

Doomhuntress said:

are doors invulnerable until the key is acquired?

are keys invulnerable until the door acquired?

[GoneAway]

I always felt like the 2nd variation of hell knight should be more of a glass cannon, lower health but more firepower.

[Varis Alpha]

Azazel Bloodfucker said:

are keys invulnerable until the door acquired?

they're more like tricksters, sitting in an inconspicuous space out in the open, and then closing the doors around you and swarming you with enemies. those bastards!

[Azazel Bloodfucker]

Doomhuntress said:

they're more like tricksters, sitting in an inconspicuous space out in the open, and then closing the doors around you and swarming you with enemies. those bastards!

Keys were Doom guy's true enemy all along.

I Knew it.

[Obsidian]

Jimmy said:

It's working for me. You're hitting 'use' right?

I'm hitting Space, which is my Use key. Did you set it to E or something?

[joe-ilya]

Give them flying ability and three projectile attack. Also cut down the health by half.

[Jimmy]

Obsidian said:

I'm hitting Space, which is my Use key. Did you set it to E or something?

Nope.

What version of ZDoom are you running? Try a later build or something.

Granted, I've been trying to get Alfonzo's idea to materialise but for some reason the code just stopped working. Could be the shoddy way I set it up, or something. :x

[raymoohawk]

Jaxxoon R said:

The door barons need to close again after a while.

this idea is to awesome :)

[Jimmy]

I think I fixed it. Obsidian, redownload please D:

[BouncyTEM]

I made a quick and dirty thing, too.

Berzerker Barons.

Barons are a fuckton more aggressive and have a chance of unleashing an attack to hit circle-strafers, but their health is reduced considerably (400, same as a cacodemon). They gain in strength what they lose in fortitude.

[Spectre01]

Increase their HP to 2500, make them fly and fire a combo of Mancubus fireballs and Revenant missiles... But seriously, I liked the Bloodstain Baron which quickly fired two projectiles as well as the winged one in Nihility with it's wacky projectile attacks that I sucked at dodging.

[DooM_RO]

Make them like in Doom 2016. In fact, make all classic Doom monsters like their 2016 counterparts (but keep the Revenant's homing missles). Do you guys think it would be possible to make imps jump to ledges, Mancubi propell themselves to your position and Revenants flying in classic Doom?

[scifista42]

DooM_RO said:

Do you guys think it would be possible to make imps jump to ledges,

Brutal Doom. (if they were made to jump higher, although they still couldn't detect ledges to jump onto them on purpose)

DooM_RO said:

Mancubi propell themselves to your position

Volacubi on Realm667.

DooM_RO said:

and Revenants flying in classic Doom?

Brutal Doom.

[DooM_RO]

scifista42 said:

Brutal Doom. (if they were made to jump higher, although they still couldn't detect ledges to jump onto them on purpose)
Volacubi on Realm667.
Brutal Doom.

The imps in BD are not as interesting as in Doom 2016. They can really fuck you up if you underestimate them. They climb pillars and ledges and are very agile and just when you think they are running away from you they throw a fireball in your face. I'd like to see something similar in Doom. Not a half-assed shoe-horning but rather an adaptation.

[MaxED]

Jimmy said:

Doors with health

[Arctangent]

Here's something. It reduces Baron health to 66.7% of their normal value.

The catch? While Barons have a target, they give all other demons in their line of sight and within 640 range 66.7% damage reduction ( meaning effectively 50% more health ) and immunity to pain, including other Barons ( but not themselves ) but excluding the target of any Baron.

While a lonesome Baron is still pretty much a beefed up ( albeit, less so ) Hell Knight, the Bruiser Bros themselves now boast an immunity to pain while they can see each other ... meaning they're still not threatening, but now you can play with line of sight to make them go down quicker. On the other hand, Barons are now a far higher kill priority when with other demons, and now an interesting problem comes forth when you're against a single Baron and any number of Archviles: do you focus the Baron so you can stun the Archviles and kill them faster, or do you still take down the Archviles first so they don't revive the Baron?

tl;dr Barons are squishier but are now actually tanks by making them draw your fire towards them by making other enemies tankier

[Salt-Man Z]

scifista42 said:

To me, the obvious way to improve Barons is to make them fire a volley of 3-5 projectiles instead of 1

The first few "Innocence" episodes have barons that fire 3 fast projectiles, plus their sprites have been upsized. (There may be other changes, I don't remember.)

[baja blast rd.]

I like scifista's suggestions.

I would prefer a fast volley, however -- five shots in a second or so.

A semi-slow volley will be just as trivial to dodge as a fast one. But with a quick burst, there is a legitimate threat of getting wrecked if you don't pay attention, particularly in open space, which is normally where simple projectile monsters are at their weakest. It'd make them a lot more intimidating.

[scifista42]

rdwpa said:

I would prefer a fast volley, however -- five shots in a second or so.

A semi-slow volley will be just as trivial to dodge.

Funnily enough, "five shots in a second" (which means delay of 7-9 tics between individual shots) was exactly my idea of what "semi-slow" means.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Revenants can fly in Brutal Doom? Really?

[baja blast rd.]

scifista42 said:

Funnily enough, "five shots in a second" (which means delay of 7-9 tics between individual shots) was exactly my idea of what "semi-slow" means.

Hah, that works then.

kraflab said:

I always felt like the 2nd variation of hell knight should be more of a glass cannon, lower health but more firepower.

Yeah I agree. It has always struck me as a bit weird that the jump in HP with ground-based simple-projectile monsters is the imp's 60 to the HK's 500. A monster with around 200 HP* that uses the nobles' attack would be a lot more versatile, even with minimal other changes. I wouldn't give this monster the HK/baron sprite, however -- it would be incongruous given the low HP.


*Or 160-170 -- whatever is needed so that a single well-placed SSG blast is nearly always enough.