The shotgun packs a deadly punch at close range, and the grouping of the pellets is tight enough to make the weapon useful for medium-range attacks. Unlike the super shotgun of Doom II, which spreads pellets in a rough cone, there is no vertical dispersal presumably this was a consequence of the game engine's predominantly planar design. Each pellet has the same random directional offset as a pistol shot, which gives an aggregate horizontal spread between 2.2° and 9.8° (the average is 5.9°, and the standard deviation 1.5°).
The player's shotgun fires seven pellets, each of which inflicts 5-15 points of damage (for a total of 35-105 points of damage per shot, provided that all pellets connect against the target).
