4 shotgun shells

The shotgun shells ammo pickup provides four shells for the shotgun or super shotgun (eight at the I'm Too Young To Die and Nightmare! skill levels).

Operation of the shotgun is somewhat inconsistent. A sergeant's shotgun produces three pellets when fired, but the player fires seven pellets when using the shotgun. Furthermore, the super shotgun fires twenty pellets, potentially causing nearly three times the damage as the shotgun while using only twice the ammunition.

Each pellet does between 5 and 15 hit points of damage (determined using Doom's pseudorandom number generator), the same as a bullet fired by the pistol or chaingun.

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of 4-shell pickups:

Doom RPG
The shotgun shell pickup appears in Doom RPG. It gives the player either 4 or 10 shells.