A Question of Doom 1 Mapping

Would it be healthy to gameplay to change Barons to Hell Knights?

What? I thought you said Doom 1 mapping, and now you're wanting to change Barons to enemies that didn't even exist yet XD

To be serious though... in my opinion... uh, sure. Barons are kind of bullet-sponges and I think turning them into Knights would make for a little funner time. I think PSX Doom might have done just this in E4 a couple times...

Jaxxoon R said:

Barons are kind of bullet-sponges and I think turning them into Knights would make for a little funner time. I think PSX Doom might have done just this in E4 a couple times...

Not just the E4 maps, but across the entire game this happens frequently enough. PSX Final Doom takes it to excess, with only three Barons throughout 30 maps, the rest having been removed entirely or swapped out.

On occasion it also features Barons and Knights in the same area, which can be useful for infighting purposes.

BaronOfStuff said:

useful for infighting purposes.

Ugggh those sound effects

BaronOfStuff said:

Not just the E4 maps, but across the entire game this happens frequently enough. PSX Final Doom takes it to excess, with only three Barons throughout 30 maps, the rest having been removed entirely or swapped out.

On occasion it also features Barons and Knights in the same area, which can be useful for infighting purposes.

There's also literally only one map in PSX Final Doom with mancubi. I don't know if there was some sort of sprite or memory limitation issue, but I always thought that was bullshit.

Jaxxoon R said:

I thought you said Doom 1 mapping, and now you're wanting to change Barons to enemies that didn't even exist yet XD

He probably meant modding them to be Knight-like.

I think that changing Barons to Knights (e.g. the same thing but with lower HP) would not necessarily benefit gameplay in a PWAD for the original Doom, assuming that nothing else changes. Consider that using the basic shotgun/chaingun against HKs is something that's only really entertaining either in very small doses or when the scenario is set up with a lot of finesse, and what you're left with is a monster that's still far from being particularly versatile. On the contrary, if the 'Baron' having lower HP makes you feel like it's safer to just sprinkle him around indiscriminately, it's probably better not to make the change...

No, I think it's probably better to leave the Baron alone and just focus on making good/sparing use of him. He has fine virtues as an adversary, you just have to give him the opportunity to demonstrate them (read: make it so that it's difficult/dangerous to put any comfortable degree of space between you and him).

Yeah. It's a very poor idea to replace barons with knights in Doom 1. Virtually all the times you encounter a baron in Doom 1, you're equipped with the rocket launcher and plasma rifle. See E4M2 which has very many barons, which you're supposed to take out with lots of plasma, in quick succession.

By contrast, in Doom 2 you mostly rely on the double shotgun. Using it is less satisfying than the plasma rifle, so barons seem more boring there.

Inkie said:

Would it be healthy to gameplay to change Barons to Hell Knights?

Not necessarily universally. Let's keep in mind that D1 doesn't have the SSG, so that even the Knight's health is rather high. On the other hand, it might be healthy (or at least interesting) for gameplay to use DEHACKED to add wholy new custom monsters to custom Doom1 PWADs made specially with these monsters in mind. There are so many unused DEHACKED states and things in D1, and there are simple yet efficient tricks how to put them to work: Edit the Editor Spawn Numbers of D2 monsters, include custom sprites in the wad, write a code of entirely new behaviour or just reuse the code of D2 monsters, and that's it.