The Terrible Shotgun

The Terrible Shotgun is a unique shotgun in Fallout 3.

Gameplay
The Terrible Shotgun is a unique variant of the Combat Shotgun and has the second-highest damage of all weapons in the Small Guns category. The weapon has a far larger spread than normal shotguns, and full damage is only done if all pellets hit, making it most effective in close-quarters.

Critical hit damage with this weapon is applied to each individual pellet the Terrible Shotgun fires (outside of V.A.T.S.). If all nine pellets sneak attack critical at the same time, the weapon's total critical damage is 360. Paired with the Better Criticals perk, it can go up to 540. Add in the base damage of the weapon, and then double the damage because of the sneak attack bonus, and the weapon's total damage increases to 880 or 1240, capable of one-shotting every enemy in the base game and its add-ons.

Durability
The Terrible Shotgun can fire a total of about 146 rounds, the equivalent of 13 reloads, from full condition before breaking. Even so, the weapon will not jam until 120 rounds are fired. Given that one does not reload until the current magazine is expired, they will have 10 reloads before the gun begins to jam, but the gun will only have three chances to jam before it breaks.

Variants

 * Combat Shotgun - the standard variant.

Location
This gun is carried by Smiling Jack, the non-hostile raider merchant in Evergreen Mills. He can be killed for it, with no Karma loss, or it can be reverse-pickpocketed.