- For information about the Spectre enemy from Strife, see Spectre (Strife).
A spectre about to bite the player in Doom II MAP08: Tricks and Traps.
Spectres are the partially invisible counterparts of demons. Except for their blurry appearance, they are exactly the same in behavior and attributes, and thus may be thought of as demons who have a permanent partial invisibility power. In the Doom and Doom II manual, their description is: Great. Just what you needed. An invisible (nearly) monster. And in the PlayStation, Saturn and Doom 64 manual adds, These beasts will eat your face off, did you expect a walk in the park?
Spectres do not have frames of their own, as the Doom engine uses the same information used for demons to account for them, which means the monsters share sprites.
Spectres appear as "shimmering" beings, like a lens which distorts and refracts the area seen through their translucent bodies, making them hard to spot in darker areas or against certain textures (such as grey speckled walls). However, in bright areas, they are noticeably visible and "spotty".
Notes
- The spectre does not appear in the Doom II cast sequence at the end of the game.
- If a spectre's corpse is crushed, the pool of gibs left behind continues to display the partial invisibility effect.
- In a ZDoom-based source port, if the player is killed by a Spectre (monster is credited with delivering the blow that reduces player's health to 0%), an obituary message is displayed at the top of the screen: "[player name] was eaten by a Spectre".
- In Doom95, the spectre's sprite will reflect nearby objects like oil drums or corpses.
Data
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Damage done by a spectre's bite
| Bites needed to kill1 | Mean | Standard deviation | Min | Max |
| Player (100% health, no armor) | 5.16 | 1.20 | 3 | 9 |
| Player (100% health, security armor) | 7.32 | 1.33 | 5 | 11 |
| Player (200% health, combat armor) | 18.86 | 1.60 | 15 | 22 |
| Barrel | 1.50 | 0.66 | 1 | 5 |
| Trooper | 1.50 | 0.66 | 1 | 5 |
| Sergeant | 1.97 | 0.77 | 1 | 5 |
| Wolfenstein SS | 2.98 | 0.95 | 2 | 7 |
| Imp | 3.29 | 0.99 | 2 | 7 |
| Chaingunner | 3.84 | 0.99 | 2 | 8 |
| Lost soul | 5.16 | 1.20 | 3 | 9 |
| Commander Keen | 5.16 | 1.20 | 3 | 9 |
| Demon | 7.48 | 1.31 | 5 | 11 |
| Spectre | 7.48 | 1.31 | 5 | 11 |
| Boss brain2 | 12.15 | 1.59 | 8 | 17 |
| Revenant | 14.31 | 1.57 | 11 | 18 |
| Cacodemon | 18.86 | 1.60 | 15 | 22 |
| Pain elemental | 18.86 | 1.60 | 15 | 22 |
| Hell knight | 23.52 | 1.50 | 19 | 27 |
| Arachnotron | 23.52 | 1.50 | 19 | 27 |
| Mancubus | 28.15 | 1.35 | 24 | 32 |
| Arch-vile | 32.84 | 1.30 | 30 | 36 |
| Baron of Hell | 46.72 | 1.79 | 42 | 51 |
| Spiderdemon | 139.43 | 2.32 | 134 | 144 |
| Cyberdemon | 185.64 | 2.97 | 180 | 192 |
- This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, and blood splats 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.
- Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
Appearance statistics
In classic Doom, the spectre is first encountered on these maps:
The IWADs contain the following numbers of spectres:
| Game | ITYTD and HNTR | HMP | UV and NM |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Ultimate Doom | 51 | 102 | 183 |
| Doom II | 37 | 93 | 175 |
| TNT: Evilution | 83 | 150 | 224 |
| Plutonia | 95 | 102 | 111 |
- May be encountered earlier if the secret level is played.
See also
| Monsters from Doom and Doom II |
|---|
| Arachnotron | Arch-Vile | Baron of Hell | Cacodemon | Commander Keen | Cyberdemon | Demon | Heavy Weapon Dude | Hell Knight | Imp | Lost Soul | Mancubus | Pain Elemental | Revenant | Shotgun Guy | Spectre | Spider Mastermind | Zombieman | Wolfenstein SS | Final Boss |
