The Pulverizer

Now that I can regularly measure the life expectancies of my characters in weeks instead of just days, I’ve begun experimenting with the weird and wonderful collection of craftable custom melee weapons Cataclysm has available for an inventive survivor (the Rising Sun/Napalm combo is a personal favorite). After playing Killing Floor 2 for a bit yesterday one of its weapons caught my attention. The Pulverizer. It’s basically the lovechild of a Sledgehammer and a Shotgun. You get all the pluses of hitting something with a giant hammer, with the added bonus of being able to also deliver a point blank shotgun blast into whatever you just hit! And honestly that just screams something your average survivor would build in a drug-fueled crafting binge. It could be functionally identical to a sledge hammer, but you could load it with your choice of shell and have an incredibly short even for a shotgun (one tile/pointblank) ranged attack for when you really want to ruin someone’s day.

So, would anyone consider using something like this?

Edit: Idea, maybe you could craft them using the underslung/masterkey shotguns or RM121 aux shotgun to create variants that can use either regular or caseless shells.

I’d be cool with a spring-loaded pneumatic nail board. Or a bayonet? Nothing says usability like a pointy thing on the end of your crossbow that’ll stab things for you when they waddle too close. Trigger A fires the bolt, trigger B fires the bayonet.

Something simple yet creative and somewhat steam-punky, for survivors with random crap laying around and a burning need to weaponize them all in clever ways. Lots of spring-loaded stuff that reaches out and smacks stuff. (Or stabs it.)