I tend to go on the hunter path, but to kill grander creatures I have to go with poisons, so alchemy is often an awesome companion skill. But I agree that bow and arrow on its own should be low yield like it is and not the only thing you focus on. Against soft armor, I'd like to have reasonable penetration possibilities. Not a constant "every hit does x damage", but instead "damage is fairly fixed by power of the weapon and your strenght and arrow material, and your skill determines possibility to find a weak spot".

Bow and arrow against plated or heavy armor is pretty much a rotten deal. Great skill should be required to find a weak spot, depending on armor material and armor type (chain, plated etc). An archer is a defender or a hunter, not an attacker. Ideally you should couple it with poison use (so that one arrow that does penetrate, does so greatly), combined with Dagger or Short Blade skills (if we had them), and/or some magic use.

We should also have short bows, long bows, and crossbows, with different effects on fatigue, aiming accuracy (skill vs weak spots), reload time, and arrow speeds (translates to concussion effects for heavy arrows). Arrows should also have balance between penetrating damage and concussion damage against heavy armor. Against some foes penetration is desired, whereas against others concussion is desired. Steel would be light arrows, daedric would be heavy. Daedric arrows against a thick skinned beast like a bear would not be the best choice. I would also like to have backtracking speeds associated with the archery skill, as at least currently it is way too easy to keep dodging incoming arrows.

marksmen shouldn't get a bigger bonus then melee in sneaking, because it is a lot harder to sneak up with a melee weapon than to just shoot them from forever away

I disagree. I liked having a thousand arrows sticking out of my chest and
my character still alive.

nope

a master marksmen should be able to one shot a guy.

neck, head, heart, dead center are usually kill shots, hell not even usually they ARE kill shots, BUT to offset such high damage the game should have armor, chance to miss if your not that good, harder to aim if you not that good, and a moving target should take cover/ maneuver if he sees you wielding a bow.

HOWEVER a dagger back stab should always be an instant kill.

THIS IS SPARTA.

Haha. It is annoying with bandits and such.

I hope they improve archers, it makes the most interesting characters, location damage is a must. It was a gripe of mine when i hit them in the armed and they died, although most of the time it was right between the eyes B)

Yes, because it only makes sense that a bow is an effective close-quarters weapon. What is wrong with using a blade or blunt weapon when pressed? It is more realistic, and adds variety to your play style.

I think the sneak system should be based on your level of sneak and the weapon you are using, for example if your high in marksman you should get a 6x bonus instead of a 3x

well arrows don't really kill goin in, its getting them out

unless arrows hit something major they will just stop the bloodflow, whereas a cutting weapon will just let it bleed

They need to make shooting someone with an arrow effective. If someone has no armor on and I shoot them in the head or chest with an arrow they better die. Also I think it would be cool if arrows had "Area Effects" So lets say you have a "Arrow of Blizzards" or something and you shoot it at the ground it should whip up some sort of snowy tornado type deal. If you hit someone with that it should cause even more damage to that specific person while still causing area damage. Same with fire it would be cool to shoot an arrow at the ground or in the general area of someone and have it throw fire all around catching people on fire.

Here are some nice fixes that I'd like, and mods from Oblivion also did this as well.


1. Faster arrow speed
2. More arrow damage
3. Stringing 2-3 arrows at once to possibly hit multiple attackers, a skill perk. Each extra arrow reduces damage.
4. This is wishful thinking, but the ability to create unique arrows in a similar fashion to spell creation. (paralyze, distraction, dot, elemental dmg, aoe dmg, etc)

Here is my 2 1/2 cents...

I am about to suggest something, so keep in mind that in absolutely NO WAY am I talking about VATS... but a similar feature to VATS, at the very least (or possibly the very most, so it is a unique feature for archers only) for archers who have the need to (depending on if the devs even add in vital points) aim for those oh-so-sensitive places on our sweet little targets bodies. I liked the VATS system in FO3, however I didn't like that it completely stopped time. I think this feature should be completely real time (if not, then slow time down VERY little, just enough for us to pinpoint which spot we want to aim for - head, heart, jugular, armpits for those weak places in our opponents' armor, crotch.... ouch). I think this could definitely be implemented to make being an archer worth while over a melee combat oriented character, or even a mage for that matter because hopefully mages will have awesome new spells in TESV:SR.

Nothing at all, but if I build an archer, I want to be able to rely on that weapon for most situations. My characters not a heavily armored fighter, so he has to be able to take them down at range. If he’s gonna end up going toe to toe most of the time anyways why build an archer at all?


You might catch hell for that, but really something like Red Dead’s target painting system might be cool. The purist will never go for it though haha.

Just make it nigh impossible to sneak around in heavy metal clinking clanking armor.

I never had these problems, except for in the beginning before my sneak and marksman skills were developed. I almost exclusively use bows, and enchanted wherever possible.

If anything, I feel like at higher levels it became too (unrealistically) easy to kill with a bow--unless an arrow is poisoned or it's a very lucky shot, one arrow shouldn't outright kill someone.

I used a mod to remove level scaling. Figure that plays in at higher levels. But I appreciated, at lower levels, having to isolate targets and stay hidden long enough to be able to kill them with arrows.

Marksman *

I think that they should beef it up, especially from TES IV when you could unload at least 20 arrows into one person, and still have them trying to kill as if nothing happened.

I hope they make the bow easier to use as I was terrible with it in Oblivion.

As its already been alluded to in this thread, they need to introduce specific anatomical damage to archer attacks. The player should be able to specify, with a button press, the intended target area of their shot:

'Crippling shot' that targets the enemy npc's legs, reducing his movement speed.

'Shattering shot' that targets the torso, penetrating armour and knocking back the npc

'Disarming shot' - self explanatory.

'Silencing shot' - targets the thorax of an enemy wizard.

As Lord Kaelin states, these attacks could be linked to arrow types or they could be unlocked as your marksmen skill improves.
The first two I've ruthlessly ripped off from other RPGs, but I'd love to see them implemented in TES.

yeah same here. I believe that if an arrow is shot into an enemy it should weaken the enemy severly. If you shoot an arrow into the arm of the guard, and he is using that arm to hold a sword, he should no longer be able to carry his sword.

If its a head shot/neck shot/heart shot, It should be an instant kill

Hmm... Enchanted bow + enchanted arrows + poison + 4x sneak damage.... Nope, don't think it's underpowered at all.

Arrows need to stick to where they hit as well. It was always a bit weird when I came out of a fight, looked at myself and realised I had a dozen arrows stuck through my wrist from where they had gone right through the shield.

My 4 cents:

1. The HP of higher leveled NPC's/creatures/everything really should go down quite a bit. Same goes for the player. If anything, combat should become more lethal at higher levels, not less lethal.

2. Severely reduce the running speed when you're running backwards, and increase the damage of bows to balance that out.

3. Introduce new type of bow (like a longbow or recurve bow) that has a high strength requirement for using it and does significantly more damage (+/-40%), and only has a 2x sneak attack multiplier.
This is to make warrior style archers more viable. After all, bows shouldn't just be sneak weapons.

4. If you've got your bow in your hands, the grab button (LB on xbox 360) is used to toggle between arrows. Allow the player to poison arrows before the fight, and switch between them whenever he wants to.

This.

Yeah that what I said too. Heavy armor would keep you safe, but you sure as heck couldnt sneak up on anyone in it. That way there's a real reason to use deferant armor types.



Bingo. I ciuldnt use mods, so Id end up "under leveling" my archers to keep them effective.



To each there own. I had all that stuff too, but when you have to use all that stuff every time you don’t wanna have to bust out a sword to kill a leveled bandit, it makes using a bow effectively extremely cumbersome, expensive and impractical.