I suppose we each have a differing 'set point' regarding challenge that is the 'just right sweet spot'. My (one and only) character is a no melee mystic archer so, naturally, her ability to kill with her bow is paramount. Her archery skill and damage-related perks are all taken to the max. I don't use any apparel or potions that boost archery. Where I adjust her 'challenge' is with the actual bow itself. Although I tend to use the CK to adjust her bow's damage to taste, the same is easy enough to do by the pure vanilla techniques of simply choosing a bow based on damage and, similarly, choosing how/if to enchant/temper the weapon. I find it hard to believe that somewhere between an unenchanted/untempered long bow and a dual enchanted legendary tempered daedric bow, one cannot find a weapon to support whatever challenge is desired.

Another thing I do as more of a fine point relates to the bow's speed and provides additional challenge in all scenarios except long range sniping. Individual mileage may vary depending on archery-related ini tweaks, but all things being equal, arrows fired from a slower bow have a flatter trajectory and fly farther. At very long ranges the effect is quite noticeable. Since my character is much more of a sniper than a 'skirmish archer' she uses a very slow bow (0.5 speed just like a daedric bow). Not only can she make wonderfully impressive very long shots, but I love the extra challenge the bow's slowness demands in closer quarters when being attacked - her bow is intentionally a lousy 'skirmish up close' bow. The feel of the weapon is very much that of a sniper weapon - large, slow, cumbersome, accurate and powerful.

Finally, one additional 'challenge' my no-melee archer faces is that she insists on traveling by horse. Horse archery is quite an art form / challenge that, over thousands of hours of practice, she has become amazingly good at.

Yes, I've long thought that the two-slider idea would be the best approach. I'd love to make weapons equally dangerous for both my character and the enemies.

Well, if things are getting in the way of a crossbow, you've got a problem...

You can't be serious? Any type armor covering the chest area would take care of any issues.

I used to fence in college and later recreationally, including some open competitions where there were male and female competitors of all shapes and sizes. Female competitors typically wear plastic chest protectors under their fencing jackets, and the same type of protection, whether made of leather or steel or some exotic TES material, would also work fine for archery.

There is no reason why any woman who is physically fit enough to draw a bow would not be able to use one. The whole Amazon thing is a total myth.

If you get around to trying Requiem, you will like the difficulty sliders in the MCM. Requiem disables the vanilla slider in Settings and replaces it with two sliders in the MCM.

I think he was joking.

I wish there were a mod that modified the bow drawing animation. As a recreational archer, the slow bow draw animation seems unrealistic to me and distracts from my immersion. I use Requiem which slows down draw time so the draw time takes about 3 seconds. In the real world, the time it takes to draw a bow is near instantaneous (well under a second), regardless of draw weight. Even a heavy draw weight bow should not take more than about half a second to draw. In fact, with a high draw weight bow, you are going to want to draw it quickly and probably are not going to want to hold your draw for too long, but drawing it slower would only make it harder to draw.

But it does take several seconds to draw an arrow from a quiver and nock it, and I could totally see that taking longer if you were being quiet and trying to take a sneaky sniper shot.

So, I wish there were a mod that changed the animation so the part of the drawing the bow involving nocking the arrow took more time but the draw happened nearly instantaneously. The way it works now with the arrow nocking happing instantly but the drawing taking time seems bass ackwards to me, like the people who designed it had never watched people shooting bows in their life, much less ever shot one themselves.

I hope so, he sounded sort of serious, but I was not really sure . . .

You forgot use only wooden hunting bows. Should take at least 3-4 arrows to down a deer, and if you ever come across a Dremora, run, Forest, run!

Hey ghastley, you don't like a one hitter quiter chick? I can appreciate that.

Yeah Davy,tracking them after i've already sniped them once is proving very difficult.

The suggestion about having some arbitrary reason not to use a bow was serious. Maybe RP a vision defect instead, if you prefer. That covers crossbows, as well.

I see. Depending on race and attitude of the character, another arbitrary RP reason could be that a bow is a cowardly weapon not suited for true warriors. I've had characters like that who refused to use a bow.

As the only character I play, Buffy the mystic archer and I spend lots of time thinking about TES archery.

[Tongue in cheek] As a b-cup bowgirl, she doesn't need worry about any mythical briast interference. [/Tongue in cheek]

There are several things that we roleplay to help answer some concerns that would otherwise concern me:

- Buffy is small, frail and weak; yet she wields a mighty longbow that is doubtless of much higher draw weight than the puny elf could manage on her own. Our answer is (imagination) that the bow is 'tuned' to her - almost alive as it were and the bow itself assists her to pull and maintain the heavy draw. While I certainly appreciate and understand Turija's desire for a faster draw animation, the slow draw animation works wonderfully for Buffy since we imagine that it takes a second or three for the bow to assist her with each draw. This fits in nicely with our desire for a weak elf with a big, slow powerful sniper bow.

- Arrows in TES seem quite effective against even the heaviest plate armor. Our answer is imagining that in the bottom of her quiver is a magic stone that imbues the arrows with the ability to magically pierce armor.

- When you equip any spell, your bow disappears (into your inventory). To make sense of this silly mechanic, we imagine Buffy's bow (and quiver) are summoned. That allows that aspect of the game's mechanics to make sense for me.

Yeah I just acquired the 5% recharge perk and with a elven bow or Skyforge 2 hand its working our ok.

ok Thanks for the help.

Yeah, I've used that one. My Oblivion character "Fitzie" is a Nearsighted Necromancer. She can't use any ranged attack at all.

It's still a bit of a "fudge," actually. I'm quite nearsighted, with 20/400 vision without my glasses. I can't make out detail of anything more than a few feet away from me, but I can see (blurred) objects at a long distance by color difference. I would have no trouble hitting a man-sized object 100 feet away with an arrow without my glasses, assuming that I was able to do so with glasses (a questionable assumption, given that I haven't drawn a bow in more than 50 years. )

My peepers svck also ,I dont even drive...because I can't.

I can only speak for Buffy, but she is indeed convicted by what she sees as the truth of your words. Among warriors, she considers herself a milk drinker. She would never boldly approach an orc bandit chief to declare her intent and demand his surrender. Rather, she makes a kill / no-kill decision from an unseen perch with plenty of range. Target identification therefore is sometimes a challenge but she has the divination magicks to not only locate unseen prey, but to help assess their nature/intent.

I believe she is too harsh on herself though. Barely bigger than the Nord children one sees in game and completely unable to use any melee weaponry, she willingly clears countless dungeons. I'm not sure what that mindset takes, but cowardice does not readily come to mind.

My last character was a complete coward. Karrl the Koward, a Khajiit who used only a bow, his claws, sneak, conjuration, alteration and speech. No other skills. Expert difficulty, DiD, with difficulty bumped to Legendary for a couple dragon priest dungeons just for fun. He was really fun to play and he ran away a lot before his sneak skill became good enough to disappear into shadows easily. He eventually became so powerful that he became not so much of a coward by level 25.

A previous post remarked that if you wait until level (I think) 50, the boss fight at Dimhollow Crypt is with a dragon priest instead of Drauger DeathLord. I just got to that boss fight at level 65 and the dragon priest is way easier to handle. The Drauger Deathlord had a nasty Disarm shout which always had my PCs scrambling around in the dark trying to find their gear while Seranna did most of the work. Dragon Priest crumpled pretty fast and dropped a couple hundred gold to boot.

I for one have no desire to stand "toe to toe" with a Deathlord or Priest...or any boss baddie for that matter,I am more into "get the job done with the least amount of drama" when it comes to battle. You can call me coward...and you may just get the words out of your mouth before my arrow takes you down and I move on without another thought. Deathlord indeed...PAH.

I'm short sighted, too, I can't make out detail more than 12 inches from my face. I could hit a man sized blur at that distance, I'd have no idea what I was hitting though. I figure I wouldn't have been use in the viking age (no specs around then)

I drive, nothing to stop you learning so long as you're of age and don't have a specific medical condition that prohibits it, just so long as you can find your specs, lol.

I actually like my ranged attack to be completely OP. Killing something like a Mammoth in one shot from so far away it cannot even detect me if I'm standing up in plain site is awesome.

The thing is, some of the objectively strongest opponents in the game, will (as far as I can tell) be difficult to one shot for various reasons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfT3XSzE5v4

Archary and non comabt characters are they only ones I regularly play on Legendary. Usually I find Legendary too tough and stick to master.