
I love shooting skeet in the real world so shotguns have always held an attraction to me in video games and any rpg setting that has them. SR4 shotguns I simply can't bring myself to use. My gm has had a total of one PC actually use one in combat, despite having had 20+ sammies wander through town during his career so apparently I'm not alone. I also read the errata for the BBB and it's tweaking of several ammo types including flechettes. I actually like the changes for the most part, but the AP change to the flechette rounds basically makes shotguns useless while using them. I ran the numbers while I was in bed one evening and came up with the following:
CODE
IA FCMAV FCLD HCMAV HCLD OCMAV OCLD
1 5 8.3 7 6.3 9 4.3*
2 6 8.0 8* 6.0 10 4.0
3 7 7.6 9 5.6 11 3.6
4 8 7.3 10 5.3 12 3.3
5 9 7.0 11 5.0 13 3.0
6 10* 6.6 12 4.6 14 2.6
7 11 6.3 13 4.3 15 2.3
8 12 6.0 14 4.0 16 2.0
FC = Full Choke
HC = Half Choke
OC = Open Choke
MAV = Modified Armor Value
LD = Likely Damagel
* = Marks the lowest armor value that converts the damage to stun
Likely Damage factors in raw DV, +2DV for flechette ammunition, +1DV for one net hit, average hits on armor resistance as well as simply adding .33DV for each die subtracted from the defender's reaction test due to the choke setting.
When used on full choke, the weapon is still pretty effective. It does solid damage and can pierce light body armor up to but not including an armor jacket. With a half choke the gun's effectiveness plummets: it can only inflict physical damage on a naked troll or someone wearing nothing but shin guards. With an open choke the gun is quite nearly worthless: you need five net hits to do physical damage to someone with one point of impact armor! You should consider yourself lucky to cause a wound penalty with this gun on anyone wearing the slightest bit of impact armor.
When used with slugs the shotgun is inferior to an assault rifle due to the general lack of automatic fire, total lack of concealability and much shorter range. Automatic shotguns are problematic because their uncompensated recoil counts double: without heavy modification autofire is damn near useless.
Why is there an AP penalty associated with the choke settings in the first place? A shotgun fires multiple projectiles much like a burst from an automatic. If more rounds hitting the target makes it more effective at breaching armor, why does the extra DV from a narrow burst specifically not apply to the test to breach armor?
Shotguns seem pretty broken to me and I have a couple of house rules that help the problem that I wanted opinions on.
First, let the shotguns use whatever ammunition type they like. I found it very funny that you could load a holdout with gel rounds but not a a shotgun.

Second, ignore the AP penalties for choke settings as the DV reduction and flechette ammo take care of the diminished effect against armor quite well by themselves.
If these two rules are used, flechettes are actually worth using against multiple lightly armored targets. The extra ammo types also give the gun enough versatility to be used as a primary weapon. I might even see people carrying them in my games soon. Sorry this ended up so long. What do y'all think?