Shotgun Guy (Doom)

"Same as the Former Humans, but much meaner, and tougher. These walking shotguns provide you with a few extra holes if you're not careful!"

― Doom instruction manual

The Shotgun Guys (referred to as Former Human Sergeants in the game manuals, or just Sergeants) are a second type of zombified Human the player encounters in the games.

Physical Appearance[]

The Shotgun Guys look almost similar to their Zombieman counterparts. The main difference is that they appear as red-eyed bald men wearing bloodstained, gray-black clothes, armed with a shotgun.

Combat characteristics[]

Friendly fire — The Shotgun Guys are prone to infighting due to their large blast radius.

Shotgun Guys emit the same sounds produced by the Zombiemen when alerted. They will make one of the three animalistics roars when spotting the player, a pained groaning sound when taking fire, and a quiet moan while it is active.

The Shotgun Guys are overall, similar to the Zombiemen, but are slightly faster, have more health, and do much more damage from their shotgun blasts than the Zombiemen's rifles. Their shotgun, however, is less powerful than the player's shotgun: one round produces only three pellets instead of seven, and each pellet inflicts slightly less damage on average. When the Shotgun Guys attack, they aim their shotgun at the player for ten tics, or about 3/10 of a second, and fires off three pellets from their shotgun. Each pellet has the same dispersal as a Zombiemen's bullets (standard deviation around 9°, to a maximum of ±22°); this is calculated independently for each pellet, so multiple hits are occasionally scored even at very long range, giving the monster a threatening attack even at medium distance. After firing, the monsters move again, though sometimes they may attack almost immediately afterwards. While Shotgun Guys do not have an animation for pumping their shotgun (they do have one in Brutal DOOM though), it is assumed that they do so, as they produce a shotgun-cocking noise immediately after shooting.

When killed, the Shotgun Guys let out the same death cries emitted by a Zombiemen - assuming they are not gibbed, which is common, considering their relatively low number of hit points. Their death animation is in the same fashion as the Zombiemen: chest and abdomen bursting open in a bloody mess, lower jaw partially torn down, corpse falling abruptly on his back. The enemies drop their weapon, which contains 4 shells (or 8 on ITYTD and NM). If they subsequently respawn or are resurrected, the shotgun remains, which can produce the strange effect of a repeatedly-resurrected Shotgun Guy dropping a potentially-infinite amount of shotguns.

Tactical analysis[]

Due to the dispersal of the pellets from their shotguns, the Shotgun Guys are only a marginally greater threat than the Zombiemen at long range. However, at closer ranges their shotgun blasts can damage the player significantly, as they are notable for having a very wide potential damage range- they can do anything from 9 to 45 damage if all three pellets connect, though on average they do about 20 to 30 damage. Many stock levels create ambushes by placing Shotgun Guys on ledges and around corners. They are notable threats at medium range due to their attack firing three pellets to the Zombiemen's ones.

The spread from the Shotgun Guys' weapons would make the pistol become ineffective to take them down. Instead players should rely on their own shotgun at most, as one shot is generally sufficient to kill an individual Shotgun Guy at medium and long ranges, two or more will fall at close range. Weapons like the super shotgun and the chaingun work excellently against Shotgun Guys, especially when they come in groups. Other weapons like the plasma gun should only be reserved for more threatening enemies like the Imps. Melee combat is ill-advised for inexperienced players, due to the high risk of being shot at point-blank range. Experienced players however, can take advantage of their high pain chance with the chainsaw, and a berserk fist will often gib them.

The Shotgun Guys' contribution to monster-monster battles makes them a weak contributor like their fellow Zombiemen. While they have a slightly higher health pool and wider hitscan from their attacks can generally allow them to dominate a Zombieman, they also fire much less frequently than a player would, preferring to circle their target in an irregular pattern which prevents them from attacking at close range every time. They are also not immune from their own hitscan attacks, making them prone to turning against each other, instead of working together in groups to take down a stronger monster. Thus they can be defeated by a healthy Imp more often than not, and most often by a Demon, though the Shotgun Guy can cancel a Demon's attack with their blast, which gives them a slight chance to overpower them, albeit not by much.

Data[]

ID #	Hit points	Speed	Width	Height	Reaction time	Pain chance	Pain time	Mass	Bits
9 (decimal) 9 (hex)	30	8 map units per frame (93.3 map units per second)	40	56	8	170 (66.41%)	6 tics	100	4194310

1:	2:	22:
Obstacle	Shootable	Affects Kill %

Sprite name	Alert sound	Action sound	Pain sound	Death sound
SPOS	DSPOSIT1 or DSPOSIT2	DSPOSACT	DSPOPAIN	DSPODTH1 DSPODTH2 DSPODTH3 (normal) DSSLOP (gibs)

Melee

Damage	Sound
N/A	N/A

Range

Type	Speed	Damage	Sprite name	Sound
Hitscan	10 map units per tic (350 map units per second)	3-15 (per pellet)	PUFF (impact, miss) BLUD (impact, hit)	DSSHOTGN

Shotgun damage

Shots needed to kill¹	Mean	Standard deviation	Min	Max
Player (100% health, no armor)	12.29	2.16	4	19
Player (100% health, security armor)	17.86	2.79	13	26
Player (200% health, combat armor)	44.18	6.03	37	59
Barrel	2.93	0.83	1	6
Zombieman	2.93	0.83	1	6
Shotgun Guy	3.91	1.04	2	7
Wolfenstein SS	6.37	1.39	4	11
Imp	7.43	1.53	5	13
Heavy Weapon Dude	8.80	1.74	5	15
Lost Soul	12.29	2.16	9	19
Commander Keen	12.29	2.16	9	19
Demon	17.86	2.79	13	26
Spectre	17.86	2.79	13	26
Boss Brain³	29.78	4.39	25	42
Revenant	35.44	5.22	30	50
Cacodemon	47.41	6.88	40	64
Pain Elemental	47.41	6.88	40	64
Hell Knight	58.95	8.61	50	82
Arachnotron	58.95	8.61	50	82
Mancubus	70.57	10.22	60	96
Arch-vile	82.52	12.01	70	114
Baron of Hell	117.61	17.02	100	159
Spider Mastermind	351.57	51.06	303	473
Cyberdemon	468.91	68.19	405	631

These tables assume that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, impact animations, and backfire checks are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
Hardcoded exception to infighting negates damage (excepting indirect damage caused by exploding barrels).

This table assumes that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, and bullet dispersal are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
The target must be close enough to compensate for the monster's inaccurate aim.
Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.

Appearance statistics[]

In Classic DOOM, the Shotgun Guys are first encountered on these maps:

Game	ITYTD and HNTR	HMP	UV and NM
Ultimate Doom	E1M3: Toxin Refinery	E1M3: Toxin Refinery	E1M1: Hangar
Doom II	MAP02: Underhalls	MAP02: Underhalls	MAP02: Underhalls
TNT: Evilution	MAP01: System Control	MAP01: System Control	MAP01: System Control
Plutonia	MAP01: Congo	MAP01: Congo	MAP01: Congo

The IWADs contain the following numbers of Shotgun Guys:

Game	ITYTD and HNTR	HMP	UV and NM
Ultimate Doom	271	451	656
Doom II	203	382	483
TNT: Evilution	638	894	1041
Plutonia	282	312