Sawed-Off Shotgun (Fallout 3)

The sawed-off shotgun is a small gun in Fallout 3.

Characteristics
The sawed-off shotgun is a one-handed weapon and reaps the benefits of the Gunslinger perk.

This weapon has one of the largest spread of all weapons in Fallout 3, second only to the experimental MIRV. In order to get high damage, you essentially have to treat the gun like a melee weapon and fire it at point blank range so that all the shot impacts the target.

A fully-repaired sawed-off shotgun can fire 167 shots, or 83 and a half loads, before breaking.

Variants

 * The Kneecapper - Handled by Ronald Laren, The Kneecapper is far more powerful than a sawed-off shotgun or even a combat shotgun. It's also lighter and more accurate than the regular sawed-off, but fires slightly slower.

Locations

 * Arlington Library - in the children's wing, through the door in the media archives, on a bookshelf.
 * Megaton - Another that is in almost pristine condition can be found in a locked cabinet inside the Megaton armory.
 * It can be found on random characters around Capital Wasteland, mainly raiders.
 * Rivet City - both Brock and Shrapnel carry a sawed-off.
 * Despite the abundance of regular double-barrel shotguns in Point Lookout, only three sawed-off shotguns can be found; one each carried by Marguerite and Nadine, and another on the floor of room 1G in the Homestead Motel.
 * There's one in the raider camp to the southeast of Hallowed Moors Cemetery on a small barrel.

Behind the scenes

 * Mel wields a sawed-off shotgun in a random encounter in which he attempts to mug the Lone Wanderer, but the gun is not loaded. This is an homage to Mel Gibson, the actor who played Mad Max. In Mad Max 2, Gibson threatened the Gyro Captain using an unloaded sawed-off shotgun.

Bugs

 * The shells are never "ejected" from the sawed-off. The barrel is pointed down while reloading, giving the illusion that the spent shells have fallen on the ground, but the third-person view shows that the shells are simply cleared from the barrel, without being ejected.