Pistol

The pistol in the initial view on entering MAP01: Entryway.

The pistol is the player's default weapon, and fires bullets. Each player enters the game with a pistol, fifty bullets, and his fists, with the pistol selected as the active weapon. None of the monsters carries a pistol, though the trooper appears to be armed with a rifle that fires pistol bullets.

The pistol fires individual bullets, each inflicting 5-15 points of damage. If the player holds the fire button down, the marine fires the pistol repeatedly. As with the chaingun, the initial shot accurately strikes the object in the centre of the screen, but if the player continues to hold the fire button down, subsequent shots have a dispersal (roughly 7 degrees). Accurate fire is only possible if the player repeatedly taps the fire button, and the pistol is, together with the Chaingun, the prefered weapon to hit very distant targets.

The pistol is an extremely weak weapon, doing damage at a rate barely 10% greater than the fists, and generally should not be used if any better weapon is available.

Notes

The images for the pistol in Doom were most likely created from the Beretta 92FS pistol, which is currently the standard service pistol of the U.S. military.

Because neither players nor monsters can drop a pistol, it is the only weapon (apart from the fists) that does not have a "pickup" sprite. An icon for the pistol can be seen in the Doom Collector's Edition and Final Doom instruction manuals, but this graphic does not appear in the game.

Data

Pistol data
Weapon number	2
Damage	5-15
Included ammo	50 (at player spawn time)
Max ammo	200 (400 with backpack)
Ammo type	Bullets
Shot type	Hitscan
Shots / minute	150.0
Sound	DSPISTOL
Appears in	Shareware Doom Registered Doom Ultimate Doom Doom II/Final Doom
Sprite	PISG (wielded) PISF (firing) PUFF (impact, miss) BLUD (impact, hit)

Damage done by a single bullet

Shots needed to kill1,2	Mean	Standard deviation	Min	Max
Barrel	2.34	0.56	2	4
Trooper	2.34	0.56	2	4
Sergeant	3.23	0.78	2	6
Wolfenstein SS	5.19	0.92	4	8
Imp	6.14	1.03	4	9
Chaingunner	7.10	1.11	5	10
Lost Soul	10.00	1.34	7	14
Commander Keen	10.00	1.34	7	14
Demon	14.84	1.63	11	19
Spectre	14.84	1.63	11	19
Boss Brain3	24.49	2.08	20	30
Revenant	29.34	2.29	25	35
Cacodemon	38.90	2.46	33	45
Pain Elemental	38.90	2.46	33	45
Hell Knight	48.58	2.43	44	54
Arachnotron	48.58	2.43	44	54
Mancubus	58.21	2.47	52	64
Arch-Vile	67.84	2.39	62	74
Baron of Hell	96.84	1.77	93	101
Spider Mastermind	290.14	2.42	285	297
Cyberdemon	386.65	2.23	381	393

1. 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.
2. The target must be close enough to compensate for the weapon's recoil.
3. Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.

See also

• UV Tyson
• Pistol (Doom 3)