How to Fight an Iron Golem (Logically) 

I feel like swinging a melee weapon at an iron golem at full strength from horseback would do significantly more damage to your own wrist, elbow, and weapon than it would to the golem.

Forget Rambo. Ewoks are the experts at taking out giant metal monsters.

"And golems are everywhere. Maybe not at the local grocery store..." Now you've made me imagine a reclusive wizard sending his golem to do the shopping. Standing in the checkout isle, plastic bag pinched in his fingers. So, thanks for that.

“Listen and understand, that iron golem is out there. It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, it doesn’t feel bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. And it absolutely will not stop until you are at zero hp”

In a world where iron golems exist you fight one with a steel golem, simple as.

"Humans can't swing things at super sonic speeds" **Castlevania theme starts playing** (This is a joke, though a discussion about the Chain whip would be awesome)

"Gravity always the solution, aim for the leg" Black iron Tarkus

Pre-video guess: pit trap. Even if they're only human size, they're roughly 8x as dense assuming they're solidish. Even if they have other internals, or are hollow, they'd still be very heavy. Also, iron golems generally aren't know for their climbing ability, and they'd have trouble climbing at all with their density since the walls of the hole won't support their weight, possibly even if they were trying to scale solid rock. They'd have to basically excavate their way out, and that's not going to work if it just fills back in on them and/or their range of motion is limited. Dig a hole, put a floor over it strong enough to support a person, but not a giant mass of iron, lure them across, backfill it in, done. They won't be easily able to move, definitely not get out, and all the abrasion will cut through any protective coating and moisture can rust them out over time. Sand content could get in the joints and wear them out too as they struggle.

"Use gun and if that don't work use more gun" Some Texan

Skalla: You can't sweet talk a golem Me: *R O L L S T O S E D U C E*

"If you accelerate something high enough, it will damage another material." So artillery?

C’mon people, we all know the solution. Iron Tarkus. Won’t even break a sweat.

Dwarf Fortress taught me that the best way to fight creatures made out of pure iron is to just not fight them. Get them to fall into a trap or to walk down a shooting gallery with a ballista at the end (and even that's quite risky). But sending dwarves to deal with him is how you end up with crushed dwarves

You've missed the fact that to scale something 3D to twice the size, you have to x8 the weight, not x2. So if a human-sized solid iron statue is 600 kilos, the one twice the height but the same proportions would be 4800 kilos.

just imagine playing D&D with Skall and listening to multiple ways to defeat whatever come across the party.

- Show the core on the golem's head to the thief and tell him : look at this huge ruby ! - Prepare a trap and make it fall - Attack only during a thunderstorm and lure the golem outdoor - Splash acid and glue till it can't move - Bring a rust monster

"They can't be intimidated" I swear if there's one Nat20 story where someone manages to actually intimidate a golem...

Skallagrim: talks about someone on horseback might injure the golem Golem: sees horsemen *WHACK*

"If all else fails C-4" - Adam Savage

5:44 actually, if you double height, you'd expect 8 times as much weight, as a rule of thumb. Imagine if you have a 1cm x 1cm x 1cm cube of water, which weighs 1 gram. If you doubled one side of the cube, but kept the same proportions, it's now a 2 cm x 2 cm x 2 cm cube, which weighs 8 grams. You could also take a BMI approach, which doesn't assume proportions remain exactly equal. Scaling up a person's BMI to 12 feet using a calculator predicts that a 12ft giant would have a healthy BMI of 20 if they weighed 600 pounds. Now factor in 8x increase in density, and you have 4,800 pounds. Notice that this is right where the D&D weight estimate is.

When it comes I feel that this quote is appropriate "While nothing is truly unbreakable, I am convinced that it would take an act of extraordinary violence to break" LPL

Hope you folks liked this one. It was a crazy week of working on almost nothing but this video with all its editing. I can't do something that labor intensive too often, but hopefully it was worth it. :) By the way, I was completely ignorant of the square cube law. Apparently when doubling the size you have to quadruple the weight. In other words, based on the weight the iron golem must indeed be at least partially hollow.

Skall: "There's a video by Kentucky Ballistics..." Me: *sweats nervously* yeah there is

Skall: What could possibly hurt this? My mind: Berserk Guts theme

just to be the "but ackthually" guy, if you were to double a person's size, that would actually increase their volume by factor 8. So if a 1.8m iron person weighs 640kg, then a 3.6m iron golem with the same proportions but bigger would weigh 5120kg

How to fight a Golem: You throw Pommels at it, very hard

"How to defeat an iron golem" Get some of those magical bugs that turn shit into rust and then eats it.

Going a bit nutty here as you are forgetting the Square Cube Law. It's weight does not increase linearly with the scale, it is cubed instead. "When an object undergoes a proportional increase in size, its new volume is proportional to the cube of the multiplier and its new surface area is proportional to the square of the multiplier." The main way to beat these if anti magic or heavy cannons are not available would probably be to lure them to soft ground where they would sink and get stuck due to their weight compared to the surface area of their feet.

Quiiick correction. When you determined by weight the golem would be solid by doubling the height and weight of a humans worth of volume. Considering iron golem are *roughly* of human proportions you would run face first into the square cube law. For a doubling of height your weight would increase eight times if you match proportions. I suppose this actually supports your interpretation of them being hollow; so thats good.

Whenever I think about fighting haunted or magically animated, empty suits of armor I think of the battle at the end of "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (one of my favorite movies btw), where Nazi invaders are fighting the historical artifacts of a British museum. There this one suit of armor that got filled with so many bullets that it actually started to slow down, so it had to take its foot off and dump them out before continuing onwards.

Bring a battering ram, chains and weights to secure it to the floor and a blacksmith to reuse all that iron?!

Skall: Makes a whole video about how to fight a golem Wizard with Shatter: *Observe*

The words "RPG Campaign" take on a whole new meaning when you talk about fighting iron Golems.

Iron golem: entering earth universe Kentucky ballistic: "let see how many 50 BMG bullet it can take, before it dead" Hope Scott recover soon

Skall: "...powered by magic..." Me: Dispel Magic Golem: Wait, that's illegal...

As a person who is trained in Oxy-Acetylene welding, I would say that even if you had time to sit there and try to melt it with an Oxy-Acetylene torch, you wouldn't be able to do much. It is truly incredible how much a difference of not just the thickness of a metal piece, but the overall size of it makes a difference in the amount of heat it takes to melt even a small section of it. You could probably get a spot to be red hot if given some time, but that still doesn't actually do damage by itself unless you liquidize the metal. You could to it with a cutting attachment, but if the metal is decently thick, you would likely be just spraying molten metal back at you. Also the cutting torches need a lot of preheating when dealing with thick metal. You would be better off using a plasma torch, but you would have to figure out how to get it to stand next to a special high voltage outlet, and let you hook up a wire for the ground, before starting to cut it. In a weird way, it actually makes sense that iron golems are healed by fire, because most dnd fire spells are quick powerful flash burns, and something like that wouldn't be able to conduct the heat fast enough to get that far into the golem. At worst, such spells may just melt some of the exterior cracks back together. If hit with constant fire spells eventually it may have absorbed to much, but it would likely take a lot.

Correct strategy: charge straight towards the Iron Golem, hit the legs with your strong attack or Great Combustion a few time until it starts wavering, and then keep doing it until it falls off the platform, easy 30 seconds. If you ant to make it even easier, just summon Black Iron Tarkus, sit back, relax and enjoy the show!

Definitely do more of these crazy fantasy "what if"s. This was fun to watch.

When upscaling, you forgot square-cubic law of sizes. With statue as reference, I get 2823 kilos for 3,7m cast iron golem.

If u are twice as tall u are about 8 times as heavy. So a iron golem version of a 90kg person would weigh about 90kg x 8 x 8 = 5760 kg. Since golems are depicted bulkier than humans this number is on the low end.

"How to Fight an Iron Golem (Logically)" - Answer: Lure them into the ocean and wait? EDIT: On the fly alternative...Dig a pit, fill it with beer and lure it to that, then fill it with concrete and let it churn itself into a tomb.

This video never once touches on the most important question here: what actually KILLS a golem? If it functions like in traditional folklore, then all you need is to find where the incription is and deal just enough damage to deface the marking giving it life. But...the thing about how the D&D-style golem is statted out? The magical abilities you explcitly said not to think too much about? Especially how it implies that its magic protects it from being reshaped? That bit suggests that D&D-style golems are EXACTLY like the T-1000 example you brought up, so them being unkillable by non-magical means makes sense. This, on top of it being healed by temperatures hot enough to melt iron, suggests that it functions by forcing metal to flow in a roughly human shape, hence it explicitly resists magic that would directly counter what force is animating it, and why making it molten would make it it hold together even better. Because trying to melt it is literally just making it easier to reshape itself. So my headcanon here is that a D&D-style iron golem is basically only killed by disrupting whatever magical field is making the metal move. Presumably, if a golem can be harmed by non-magical weapons but otherwise has no weakpoints, nor any ability to impair it by disabling limbs, then it'd still be a T-1000 style golem. The only functional difference there is that implies that the field animating the golem has to expend energy to correct any physical damage, so killing it through brute force is basically just a matter of forcing it to burn out its energy reserves faster than it can replenish (however it accumulates energy to be self-sustaining). This also implies that going full liquid-metal mode, or potentially extreme physical exertion, might also deplete the effect animating it, thus allowing the potential for killing a golem basically through exhaustion (though presumably constant minor reshaping of its rigid components would be taken into account when determining how hard the golem can afford to push itself). And if there is the risk of a golem overtaxing itself through excessive movement, then that would be a very good reason to incorporate joints in the design, instead of making it a single monolithic piece of material that moves by reshaping itself. That would presumably expend a lot less energy on movement.

"If one of them...ended up in real life history what would you do?" I would quit drinking.

I'm glad someone's taking the golem menace seriously

The use of Castlevania assets reminds me of how you dealt with Iron Golems and Iron "Impervious" Threats. Harmony of Dissonance had the Guardian enemies. Talos was the first you encounter(though one can argue Talos is a giant skeleton in armor), you simply ran away from it and retracted the drawbridge of the castle to make it fall into the underground. You later encounter Talos in a proper boss fight with the armor compromised and you can actually deal damage to them. The second, but miss-able one, is unlocking the earliest shop. You can't damage it, but you can make it flinch by smacking it with you whip enough. You kill it by sending it over an edge as it comically rolls down to destroy a boulder revealing the first shop. The third one, you cannot damage it once more, but once more you can make it flinch by smacking it enough. You kill it by pushing it into gears of the clock tower. Which rewards you pieces of its armor for you to equip. The fourth one, same story but there's no immediate hazard for you to kill it. Instead, you lead it to a trap, once it's on position, you spring the trap causing a comically-sized hammer to swing from the ceiling, slamming onto it. Crashing through a wall revealing the path forward. Aria of Sorrow had literal Iron Golems. But unfortunately, you deal with them using magic-- eventhough there's like handguns, handcannons and positron rifles in the game. You kill Aria of Sorrow Iron Golems through the Astral Veil (the Killer Mantle soul ability), in-game functionality states that it switches the target's HP and MP stats and dealing at least 1 damage AFTER. So in essence, you siphon out the magic to destroy the iron golem.

The gist of what he was saying about artillery and ballistic weapons in D&D terms is that if something is moving fast enough, it won't just deal bludgeoning or piercing damage, it will also deal Force damage, which an Iron Golem isn't immune to.

Simplest answer is gravity. Lure the golem to a mountain area and use his weight to your advantage, see him roll from the mountain, repeat if necessary.

15:00 most seage weapons are designed to attack unmovable walls. The golem moves between each of your shots.

Reminds me of a quote, "You can't sit there forever", "I'm game, we'll see who rusts first".

If an iron golem appeared, I would never have been so glad to live in “mustard gas” proximity to a chemical plant that makes Chlorine.

When you increase golem height twice, you increase its weight 8 times.

"Sometimes they're more like a possessed suit of armor." *Alphonse Elric has entered the chat*

The most important thing, dont get hit, they literally hit like a truck.

Skallagrim: goes into depth about how to fight an iron golem logically Me an intellectual: just stack up 3 blocks and punch it with your fists.

Modern times? Lure to wrecking yard, pick up with electromagnet, drop in crusher, turn into cube.

D&D nerd here. The golem is only immune to Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing damage from *non-magical weapon attacks*. It is assumed that without magical aid, humans could not put a dent in this thing. However, should you push one off a cliff, it'll take every single point of that Bludgeoning damage. I am definitely sure a modern weapon could destroy a golem with moderate difficulty. There's also corrosives to consider.

I believe the magic that powers golems really does just flex the solid iron. It turns the iron into a malleable material for the purposes of movement while retaining its hardness and strength as if it was not malleable. And even if it did have mechanical joints, they would be made extremely robust, such as the joints on heavy equipment like front loaders and excavators. Pins that are 2-4 inches in diameter, tabs that are 1.5 to 3in thick, etc. Even on horseback with a lance, you aren't going to damage that.

3:07 "This Golem is extremely dangerous and can attack at any moment, so we must deal with it !" - HYDRAULIC PRESS !

The only logical way to fight an iron golem is to run and hope it gets stuck on something, these things are litterally like a monster from a child's nightmare completely unstoppable and essentially industructable with the ability to one hit kill you. Without modern artillery or some sort of magic you simply aren't going to do anything to what is basically solid iron.

5:43 You forgot the scare cube law, so when you double the height you will have around a 4 times bigger surface and a 8 times bigger volume, which would put you closer to 5.120kg which means there must be some hollow space.

I think the Tower Knight from Demon's Soul is quite possibly the most logically sound golem fight in fantasy, since the only way you can damage it is by attacking and destroying its feet, which were heavily damaged to begin with. There's also the colossi from Shadow of the Colossus, which could only be damaged by attacking special magical symbols on their body.

16:22 "I'm not an expert on artillery, dont quote me on that!" ~Skallagrim 2021

The stone Talus golems are my favourite enemies in Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild because they have a weaker ore deposit somewhere on them that is easier to 'sap' or 'mine' than just hitting the stone body. I find it fun because you're motivated to use specialized mining weapons instead of your regular weapons and you have to maneuver yourself into a position to attack the ore deposit, by climbing the golem's body. I like the tactical approach to fighting them.

4:26 square-cube law error; unless the iron golem is spagetti-noodle thin, you have to scale in all 3 dimensions, which would make the iron golem 2.8 metric tons, which is very close to the 2300 kg estimated by the iron golem stat sheet. EDIT: Otherwise good video, but the math error bugged me enough to stop and point it out lmao

Ring ring: Hey Magneto, I know you're not fond of Humans, but in this case we have a common foe and _we would owe you a favour._

Dark Souls players know how to fight Iron Golem - summon Black Iron Tarkus :)

I think most golems in fantasy settings will have some weak point. Magic gem or plant cores is very popular for a golem. Identify the weak point is the whole concept about fighting a golem.

Next: how to defeat an armored vehicle with just your shoe strings and a bit of wood!

A pack of pet rust monsters. "Good Boi's!!" 😁

You did the math wrong my dude. A Golem that is twice as tall as a steel human would have 2^3 times the weight. So around 5560 kg.

When you scale weight by height you seem to be doing it linearly when weight actually scales with the cube of height (when proportions are constant). This is because we live in 3 dimensional space, so for example making something 2x as tall but keeping it to scale also makes it 2x as wide and 2x as thick, meaning 8x the volume and so 8x the weight.

I never thought about Golems being so broken in a realistic medivial setting.

I'm reminded of a scene from Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. At one point in the movie this old busted up robot gets accidentally activated by the main character. This thing, which I should mention was already a bit beat up and missing some limbs after it fell out of the sky, proceeded to tear its way through a military base (tech level analogous to WW2, but with airships) and just completely shrugged off every use of normal smallarms fire, flamethrowers, etc. Eventually iirc it took 2 cannon shells from an airship flying overhead to bring it down. Honestly, the whole robot scene was really freaking good.

Magnets. The answer to magic is magnets. Electrical Engineers realized this a long time ago.

At that weight and density wouldnt is main weakness be what it can walk on?

Thank you for the inspiration! I would use 3 things available in medieval times. 1. A large group of brave lads at minimum 20 or preferably 50 men. 2. Buckets/barrels of tar or glue probably at least 100kg or even a ton. 3. As much and as thick hemp rope as possible. If possible use the high ground to pour the tar on the head of the golem. It will reduce its ability to see and even move if enough tar is used. Then the lads can swarm the golem and use the rope to restrict its movement ( one can be surprised how tough rope can be). Even if the golem is strong enough to lift a person like a leaf, enough lads acting as a team will be able to spin enough rope around it before it has the time to react to further restrict the movements of the golem. The key here is to keep distance from the golem and let go of the rope if the golem attempts to pull it. When they stack enough rope on the golem to immobilize it, continue with the mentioned burial part and the feast after the hard labor.

"In HESH we trust" High explosive squash head tank rounds. Okay as a person or group of people, here's to hoping you can bait the thing into a quary pit or quagmire in a swamp ang bury the metal Boi. Another option would be some heavy machinery, some adequate operating skills and beating the thing or burying, again.

My first thought on this was "pit trap" and I'm kind of surprised it was the last thing you mentioned. If you can fight without getting near the enemy, that should always be the preferred option.

"How would you fight an iron golem? Ideally you wouldn't." Well... yeah, but that's kind of a universal of any and all fights.

"It's a rock monster, it doesn't have any vulnerable spots!"

Now I'm interested to see "How to fight a huge vampire lady" video...

I'd try going with "Good evening Sir, sorry for the bothering, would you mind considering the possibility that you are not mandated to obliterate me? No? Sh*t. "

Skall: How screwed would you be if you had to face one of these? Me, a gamer: Not very, you just need 5 blocks of dirt and patience.

Fair warning: long comment. So what you're saying is, if the local lord or archmage has an iron golem stationed inside their gatehouse, with strict orders not to pursue enemies, and cleverly hidden out of line of sight so you'd have to get with a half dozen meters to fire and/or cavalry charge at it ... you are screwed. Even, probably, with modern weapons, unless you plan on leveling the entire structure it's in. Or sacrificing yourself to plant a high explosive charge on it. Iron Golems are fascinating to me. They aren't monsters, not really. Whatever agency they have is second-hand; they are precisely as clever as the one issuing their orders - or programming - was. Considering this person probably built a 2,250 kg articulated, magically animated construct, I'm going to guess that person is extremely clever. I pray that the golem is not hauling a cannon, or in possession of "posion breath", for which Greek Fire or a chemical agent could be substituted. Maybe the creator dabble in alchemy, after all. Another example: they heal from fire, and (in older editions) are slowed when struck by lightning. So placing one in a pit of oil, ready to ignite - or a flaming inferno - next to a lightning rod - or grounded out - makes it a pain to deal with. Or perhaps you could shroud a room in eternal darkness, give it a gigantic bow, and order it to use it's massive 120ft darkvision to pick off attackers ... only Drow could possibly see at that kind of range ... come to think of it, a Golem or unit of them can fight at night, and you can't blind them in the same ways as we can infrared. And that vision is vastly longer ranged than a human's sight. Yikes. It also doesn't breathe, or tire. So you can expand on it's own poison breath weapon, placing it in say ... a room full of poison. A particularly nasty trick would be to generate carbon monoxide via combustion, possibly from the Golem itself, and fill a poorly ventilated space with the stuff. By the time you figure out what's wrong, it's likely too late. Flooding a room with water would produce much the same effect. In a magical setting, the resistance to spells and immunity to polymorph expand even further on this template: namely, hit the Golem and who is fighting it with something nasty, to which the Golem is completely immune or insanely resistant. In a non-magical setting, I'd imagine this would take the shape of detonating shrapnel-filled munitions adjacent to the construct, deploying napalm on top of it, or deploying a chemical agent on top of it. What I'm getting at is an Iron Golem is more akin to a trap than a combatant. A highly sophisticated trap, to be sure, but a trap. You're not really fighting the Golem. You're fighting the mind behind it ... and as I said, that mind is likely formidable if it created the golem. Or, perhaps, if deployed in support of traditional armies, the Golem would be akin to the mother of all shocktroopers, or perhaps it would be used as mobile artillery. With it's darkvision and tireless nature, it would make an insanely good nighttime skirmisher; granted, you could hear it coming a mile away, and it won't be able to cross a lot of terrain, but in an ambush or chasing exhausted troops, those weakness are nullified. Additionally, I think you may be underestimating the force required to damage a Golem. It's not a tank: it's going to roll with any punches you throw at it, and certainly won't do you the favor of bracing against a large attack. On the plus side, at least it's sheer weight will work against it mitigating any blows through it's own motion .... or perhaps not, it would be slower, and so likely couldn't disperse high velocity impacts - honestly, I'm not sure this matters much, because merely several hundred kilometers per hour is so fast as , but it's sheer mass would let it dampen ridiculous amounts of momentum. Unstable, rough, terrain or that which can't support the construct's weight is key. Also, when it comes to the charge, I'd suggest either jousting lances, or blunt-tipped javelins ... any impact with 2,250 kg of unyielding steel will shatter the implement used, and unseat or injure the rider. Better to avoid that. Finally, have you ever seen Bedknobs and Broomsticks? Animate armor may actually be far, far, far worse, because while it might be less resistant to blunt forces ... they're no underlying mechanisms to jam. So piercing through it might do absolutely nothing, rendering it all but immune to gunfire. And depending on the way in which it is animated, say if it posses limited levitation abilities like the items created by the "Animate Objects" spell, even damaging the armor in such a way that a human couldn't move properly might not stop it from pummeling you.

As in real life, the most effective way to deal with golems in many d20 TTRPGs is the humble Grease spell, or any other way of causing it to lose its footing/traction. Something that big and heavy very well may damage itself while falling and be unable to get back up.

Modern single use anti armor weapons are quite good at penetrating steel. Light ones can pierce about 20cm, while heavier ones can get through more than half a meter of armor. Aiming at joints would be most efficient. Luckily golems are a lot slower and higher targets than tanks. Regular infantry squad carries two heavy bazookas and 8 light ones, and would have quite a decent chance against iron golem. But with medieval technology, this would be a lot more difficult opponent than a modern tank. Not nearly as fast or destructive, but practically unstoppable.

*Me, writing a Magitech Mecha setting*: "Well, and off to the References playlist this goes!" Like, really, it's uncanny how useful this is.

As an aspiring Pillager, this video will be useful.

heat is pointless when you have such a large heat sink in the form of literal tons of metal.

"They can't be bribed" FFX: Hold my gil

Fun fact: adamantine is only a requirement for hurting an iron golem only because it has a high enough hardness/density. Not because adamantine is some kind of magic material.

Imagine hitting a tank with a sword

​Easy, place three blocks of dirt under you and hit the golem until it's dead

16:44 we should use "hijacked plane" projectile against iron golem. It has a lot of kinetic energy. And it can home into a golem if it tries to run away or hide.

How would you fight an iron golem? Me: *getting on the horse* Yall have fun, i like living XD Hyah!

If there is a known critical spot which will stop the golem from functioning, HEAT round should do the trick (almost) regardless of the thickness of the armor covering this spot. Armor penetration of a HEAT round depends (almost) solely on the diameter of the shell and not the armor thickness/material. You still need a gun, though it's technically possible to make a sticky explosive having (almost) similar characteristics which you will be able to attach to the golem manually

Eh, we're all just flesh golems.

I would use "Flouroantimonic Acid" shot through a pressure soaker. I just wouldn't step in the Iron Golem Puddle when I'm done.

Just unscrew the nail in its heel and let the ichor flow out, or erase the "E" of the word "emet" written on its forehead. Otherwise, we're dead. >_

honestly... I know I'm late... but I always imagined the magic being able to warp the metal itself since that's a thing some spells already do... but hearing this... that genuinely means it is more terrifying than I imagined...