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Heretic-Gargoyles

Gargoyles in Heretic E1M1

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 ? ? ? ?

  1. 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.
  2. 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 ? ? ?
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