Are you asking about nerfing them or buff them.
Well its both a nerf and a buff at the same time.
Dynamic pretty much would follow:
Only 3 shotgun pellets, each represents 1/3 of what the shotgun can do. The armor multiplier is increased, and it adds a little bit of stun damage because its painful. In Exchange the Spread is narrowed so it doesn't make it improbable. And in exchange for a tighter spread... Snap Shot accuracy is decreased (to about 90-110%).
The nerfy parts of it is the total damage output is reduced by about 1/4 to 1/3 so at point blank range itll be slightly less effective against zombies, etc. Also made it 50-150% damage so it stayed reliable, but because of the armor buff that means its still less likely to blow through armor.
Example: Birdshot (23x3, +40% armor)
One benefit would be it can blast walls and doors better, like you'd expect it to.
I did something like this for the Shotgun Sergeants in GZDoom, made them fire the same spread as the player's shotgun but they randomly swiveled around just before firing so that the whole blast might veer off and miss you completely, or hit another monster for good damage (I gave the player a 30% damage resistance to it since they only do about 20ish normally).
Basically, imagine 3 musket shots in a sorta tight group, for a good shotgun like the sawed off. Im not really bothering with techy-shotguns like the scatter lasers and flechettes, figure they're not really shotguns but shot-hoses that intentionally sputter off in random directions.
@legionof1
Thats what I figured. Reminds me of the BFG Spray ray-traces.
I thought it did things differently, guess not
(as in, target every tile within radius, now draw a line from that tile back to origin, check what is in the path, etc. Starting with the closest first).
For years I thought there were also advanced blast mechanics in OG game too, for blast reflection and echoing off of walls and around corners.
