What are considered regular rounds for shotguns? Shot or Slugs?

Also, are there dodge penalties for shotgun blasts? In my mind there shoud be a penalty on the dodge out beyond the first spread iteration.

This assumes a choke setting of 10.

1m wide path for 10m
2m wide path for 10m - Penalty
3m wide path for 10m - Penalty
4m wide path for 10m - Penalty

Anyone else looking at it this way?

Personally, I leave regular up to the player. you buy 50 rnds of shot ammo, just tell me how much iis shot and how much is slug
Haven't thought too much about the dodging mods but it makes sense on some levels

Regular rounds are slugs. Depending on GM, shot may be regular as well. There already is a penalty to dodge, equal to the TN mod on the shot from spread (generally topping out at +9 to dodge/-9 to hit).

~J

Thanks folks!

Actually, since most of the shotguns listed in the Cannon Companion show damage not being flechette and even those that do list flechette damage list it second, I would have to say that the standard ammo for shotguns in Shadowrun is slugs not shot shell.

However, I and every GM I have ever played with have just said that shot shell and slugs are purchased as standard ammo and the player just has to keep track of the number of each seperately, just like Nikoli said.

SR3, p. 116: "Damage codes for weapons are calculated using regular ammunition."
SR3, p. 117: "Shotguns described in the Street Gear section (beginning on p. 277) fire slug rounds. Characters can load them with shot rounds [...]"
SR3, p. 278, Defiance T-250 and Enfield AS-7 have 10S and 8S Damage Codes in the tables, special mention is made in the descriptions of shot round use and the Damage Code with shot rounds.

I couldn't find the bit where it discusses the pricing of slugs vs shot rounds. In any case, the above clearly suggests that, at least for the non-pistol core book shotguns, slug = regular. The only difference that makes is for notekeeping.

I s'pose I was misremembering then.

I think that since shotguns can only use shotgun rounds, they're limited, and all things limited count as being geased, so they should only be usable in the day or at night!

Oh, wait, I'm not insane, so I don't think that.

But, yeah, regular rounds for some shotguns are slugs. Shot rounds deal flechette type damage and have +1 to the damage level, which indicates that the Remington Roomsweeper employs shot rounds by default. I think that they should have used a slash-notation to show both potential damage types:

Defiance T-250(fullbarrel): 10S/10D(f)
Defiance T-250(sawed-off): 8S/8D(f)
Franchi SPAS-22: 10S/10D(f)
Mossberg CMDT: 8S/8D(f)
Remington Roomsweeper: 9M/9S(f)

Like that.

I've always just done it that slugs are "standard" ammo at 20¥/box and shot rounds are "flechette" that cost 100¥/box. You're getting the all of the benefits of flechette when you use shot (and more!) and should have to pay for it.

If you can get tungsten shot for that cheap, you are probably better of cracking open the shotgun shells, melting the tungsten, and selling it as raw materials... Tungsten is sorta pricy stuff

It seems all tungsten other than some tungsten heavy metal powders is traded in very large amounts, with a price decided separately for each transaction. There is no spot price for tungsten to be found like there is for gold, platinum, silver etc. The closest you can get is the ~$10/lb of tungsten heavy powder (99%+ tungsten).

Malleable tungsten matrix shotgun ammunition goes for ~1.5-2x the price of steel shot these days, and probably has a pretty low tungsten% (since the allou is generally around 40% heavier than steel, around the same density as lead).

So there's no way it could be profitable to sell the raw tungsten from shotgun ammunition, even if you get the ammunition very, very cheap. Assuming 50% tungsten content, you'd need to get a 10-round box for ~$8 (you'll probably pay more for 10 rounds of steel shotgun ammunition) to break even, and that's assuming you can extract the tungsten for free.

US Patent 6112669: Projectiles made from tungsten and iron

Oh no, Mr Kagetenshi your fatal beating has already been delivered. You just don't know it yet. Your brain eating zombie rampage will provide us with the much needed 'Halloween run' material.

Yeah, right, like I haven't heard that one beforoaaaaaagh! *Stomp stomp stomp*

What? Brains? No, I said pains! I'm paining for chicken!

~J

It actually ruins the rifling? I thought it just made the spread hopelessly wide.

~J

and after you beat Kage to death I would be next on the list. Many have tried to kill me. I still live.

I'm a bit embarrased to say I'm not completely sure whether the shot generally stays completely inside the plastic wad while in the barrel or not. If it stays in the wad, there will be no damage to the barrel because the only thing it contacts with is the plastic wad. If the pellets touch the rifling, then obviously the barrel will have a whole lot of wear.

The shot pattern will be hopelessly wide in any case. As in, the kind of pattern you get with canon SR choke rules...

According to a site on shotgun patterns I've read, the wad separates from the shot slowly enough that it often still ends up pushed into the target along with the shot at 5-10 foot ranges.

Yeah, I got that much. I was wondering more about whether it's common for some pellets to be pushed out of the wad as it makes its way out of the barrel, so that there's a small cloud (or just a few pellets in case of larger shot) scraping the sides of the barrel. That could lead to ruined rifling.

Thinking more about it, it shouldn't happen. The wad is constantly accelerated as its moving in the barrel, so the pellets should be firmly inside the wad all the way out. So I'd expect there's no damage to the rifling from firing shot.

Any kind of lead shot (buckshot included) won't do any significant harm to a shotgun barrel other than normal wear, even if it comes in direct contact with it (and it often does as the wad used is often just a plastic piston and a piece of compressed fiber cushion that sit between the powder charge and the shot column and does not encase the shot). The lead alloy used is much, much softer than barrel steel. The shot will deform long before any permanent damage is done.

Steel shot (or other steel projectiles, like flechettes) will damage a barrel if it repeatedly comes into direct contact with the barrel. The steel used if often hard enough to dig gouges out of the barrel steel (and yes, it does happen, especially in older shotguns). Also, being harder, steel won't compress through chokes like lead does, so there's a possibility of ruining chokes and barrels that way. As has been said, most steel shot loads are encased in a plastic cup or sabot that's designed to discard from the shot after the package leaves the barrel. It minimizes the risk of barrel damage.

Any kind of shot load fired through a rifled barrel is going to have an effect on the rifling, and will eventually round off the corners of the lands. Rifled barrels are not designed to fire shot loads at all. As Aus suggested, centrifugal force imparted by the barrel rifling will cause shot pattern density to suffer (not that that matters much in a room-to-room fight if that's what you're thinking about). Probably not to the extreme of SR's rules, but still not very good.

I can't remember my sources- but I do seem to recall reading that buckshot did something funky to the rifling of a barrell. Maybe I confused it with a type of buckshot. I'm too unmotivated to look it up. I was also told during shotgun training at the academy it's not a good idea, either, but damned if I can remember why they said right now...

As for the plastic staying on the wad... it's supposed to stay on until the round leaves the barrell.

maybe i'm missing something about how shotguns work, but wouldn't keeping the shot encased in anything render choke settings useless? i mean, if the shot isn't released from its configuration until after it leaves the barrel, the choke setting isn't going to be able to shape its spread pattern--it won't start spreading until after it's passed the choke.