How many pellets are fired from each kind of shotgun, and how does that relate to the displayed damage and damage reduction?
For instance, in the Borderlands series shotguns will often have a damage line something like "6 x 17", indicating that there are 6 pellets, each of which does 17 damage. I seem to recall a similar display in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but can't corroborate that right now. In Fallout 4, the shotgun damage just says a single number. Neither the double-barreled shotgun nor the combat shotgun appear to be shooting slugs, so we're missing some information.
In most games, shotguns are poor against armored targets because they inflict many instances of small damage. In Fallout 4, is a target's damage reduction calculated against the total damage, or against each pellet individually?
Best Answer
It seems like most shotguns, and the beam splitter mod, shoot 6 pellets. Based off several google searches on reddit and other stackexchange articles.
The damage per shot displayed is the total of all pellets, divide by 6 to get the damage per pellet. Damage reduction is applied to each pellet individually: so shotguns are very bad against high armor enemies. However certain damage adding legendaries (bleed, explosion) are also applied to each pellet, leading shotguns with these damage add effects to be extremely powerful against lower armor enemies, and even against higher armor enemies.