Blunderbuss / scatter weapon homebrew rule and hotfix

[doc the grey]

So this gets bandied about at my home table a lot and I felt like it should probably get brought here for overview and to see if it would help anyone else.

So I know for me and my tables the damages listed for blunderbusses and shotguns always felt off. Why is it that a 12 gauge shotgun is somehow less deadly than a musket at point blank range or hell even a greatsword if it's critting? Hell why is it that if I want a good Scatter weapon that a pistol sized scatter weapon is somehow better than ALL the other scatter options and has double the crit multiplier?

Well for our home games we've started working with this until we see some other change from Paizo.

Blunderbuss', Shotguns, and Double Barrel Shotguns all have a crit multiplier of x5

Scatter: In addition to all other abilities a scatter weapon may be loaded with improvised ammunition instead of pellets (nails, debris, etc) and fired as normal. Firing improvised ammunition increases the misfire chance by 1, reduces the damage size by 1, and reduces crit multiplier by 2.

So read it through people and tell me what you think.

[Idle Champion]

The damage reflects the fact that rather than hitting one target with a pellet spread, it spews a cone like a baby dragon's breath weapon.

Also, rather than a very high crit multiplier (limited chance of an extremely deadly wound), somehow the pellet spread seems to me more like a high chance of a fairly deadly wounds - I houserule scatter weapons as having big crit ranges, like 16-20x2 rather than 20x5. Still, floats and boats and all that.

As for the idea of loading a blunderbuss with gravel or copper coins or whatever's handy, seems totally reasonable.

[Cyrad]

An increased critical modifier sounds ridiculous when firearms already have a really high one.

[Alex Trebek's Stunt Double]

I guess there's two ways too look at this.

The Blunderbuss which has the VERY unusual scatter weapon quality where the cone of effect is 90 degrees wide.

And on the other hand:

Actual shotguns which have a very narrow spread with a cone spreading out at an angle of about 1-2 degrees.

Shotguns are powerful because... they are. They have a very large charge of powder. And the effect of the shot isn't to hit multiple people side by side but to spread the damage over a single a target. A regular hunting rifle bullet has more energy (larger powder charge operating at higher pressure) but tends to pierce right through the target.

But the Blunderbuss in PF is a weird weapon which somehow spreads all its power over an EXTREMELY wide are compared to how narrow the muzzle is. Each individual pellet would have to be very light and despite the velocity just lacks the mass. Even hitting the head it's in the same ball park as a lead sling bullet.

Which uses a x2 multiplier.