Cant you just set game on lower difficulty if you want one shot kills and harder if you want more of a challenge? Sneak attacks with bows were too easy to get in Ob... melee sneak attacks were often hard to intiate.

Yes but it would also be good if enemy archers were a threat which isn't the case if the difficulty is very easy. Which is why I want the amount of damage everything can sustain to be pretty low.

Oh so like the enemy can sneak headshot instakill you from a distance also? Not trying to be jerk jw.

Sure, that sounds like it would give me a reason to keep my eyes open when traveling. In fact having a deadly game of cat and mouse with a rival archer in some ruins sounds like great fun, trying to outwit them whilst also making sure I'm not being followed.

Yah sounds fun actually... I dont think I would play anything other than marksman if that was the case tho. Maybe for hardcoe or something.

...why would a bandit have an arrow fly by his head, look around, then go "huh, guess it was nothing"? He'd essentially look in every nook and cranny in the room and even in other rooms. Regardless, he'd still be on edge. I can see an argument for not removing sneak attack bonus under this scenario but it should probably be halved.

Regardless, I never had a huge issue in Oblivion with the bonus. I one-shot killed a good number of people in that game, especially with master sneak ignoring armor and multiplying my arrow damage by 3. I always loved sniping someone in the the face in Oblivion and watching them ragdoll fly away. Maybe they should increase the marksman multiplier to x4 for master (considering melee doubles from x3 to x6 but marksman only increases from x2 to x3 rather than doubling) but they'd have to playtest it.

I hate to sound rude but you are absolutley wrong. This is a myth perpetuated by movies and video games If you are struck by an arrow you cannot just break it off and keep fighting.

From looking a all of the arrows in TES games they have a metal point. This point is called a broadhead This depending upon desogn can either help penetrate had objects or increase wound cavitation even both.

I hunt all types of game from birds and squirrel to large game like deer elk and even bear with a recurve style bow. When the point enters it creates a cavity wider than the arrow to cause massive bleeding and shock, even if the arrow is stuck in the flesh of the creature you are trying to dispatch.
Now if the arrow contacts bone it will break the bone into fragments basicly making secondary projectiles, that in turn cause more tissue damage.

now add to theis the possiblity of conecting with organs which ill cover in tree parts the digestive tract, the circulatory/respatory system, and the nervous system

digestive- with a impact in the difestive system, the fluids contained inside these organs realease into the circulatory system or nervous system. These are all nasty in thier own way but usally cause shock because your body realizes its going septic

circulatory and respatory- an impact in these systems either causes massive blood loss or respatory failure either quickly causes the body to go into shock, then curl up and expire

nervous system- this includes your brain, nervous system and spine. an impact to any of these cause failure of either limbs or functions vital to life like breathing and heart beating. A hit to the [censored]ral nervous system perma-[censored]s an opponent

For those who dont know any medic will tell you that shock is the biggest enemy of any kind of trauma. It basically causes your body to give up the fight and you will bleed to death and expire.

now to armor
soft armors- this would include leather and cloth type armors. Now seeing as a arrow fired fromw a 60lb draw weight bow can pierce a skull [dont believe the deadliest warrior hype, the dont know tihs] this affords little protection short of slowing the arrow to decrase penetration
hard armor- this includes plate type armors. thes would infact did give the bow and arrow a run for its money at first. But broadheads were invented that where thin and hardened that aided in defeating both plate and chainmail armor. Now even if this did impeded the penetration of the arrow you would still have an impact force, that may not be fatal but would surely hurt. Along with this thes impacts would dent the armor impededing mobility and causing pain when you move.. Now factor into this equation that a plate armor wear already has a hot heavy suit that impedes his mobiility in the first place, you have a favorable situation for the bowyer.

Bows served as a military weapon well into the age of cannons and wheel locks and for a good reason, they are a jack of all trades and can be adapted to most situations.

Now on to stealth if a arrow is to fly by you it is honestly at first hard to tell it was an arrow. It sounds as if a large insect or bird flew by. The long bow has an added advantage that it dosnt have a twang when fired, unless you are close it you be hard for you to hear it. I have shot at deer and elk withing 20 yds and they with their hightened sense could not hear my shot or even tell it was an arrow that flew by them, they dont even seem to notice

In sumation sorry for the long windedness but i truly dont believe that BOWS CAN DO MORE THAN YOU THINK was a good enough awnser

thatnk you and i hope you go buy a longbow

Yeah, I almost never played a marksman character because the shooting in Oblivion svcked, IMO. I could never get into pumping arrow after arrow into an enemy while backpedaling after my sneak-attack failed to kill them.

I'd like a good reason to pick up a bow in Skyrim, please.

Just a reminder of what I posted a few pages back. Not necessarily one it kills all the time, but sometimes yeah.



Because that would be lame. And yeah you could get the sneak bonus easy, but it didnt amount to much.




Word.

Yeah marksman was only good for stealth characters... If they added some kind of targeting system where you could like "lock on" to enemies, then it would be muuuuuch more useful. Not anything overpowered, somelike like Two worlds 2's archery maybe, but in first person

Killing off a high level bandit means he has strong armor. It's like killing a tank with a rifle - it just won't work. One of the main purposes of armor is to protect from arrows (yesterdays indirect fire - archers were the artillery of the time). Expose the crew (take away the armor), and you should get pretty good damage. Certain armor like fur and leather should let the arrow stick, and pose just little damage. While other armor like steel and glass etc should just deflect the arrow and the skill should determine how fast you reload, how accurate you shoot, and far you shoot, and a percentage roll if that strike is a critical strike. So at low levels you need to get close and personal, but at higher levels you get more effective at a distance. However, at this point the enemies have probably scaled too, so a more modern and improved glass armor may have fewer weak spots than an older leather variant.

The biggest problem of being an archer is when you have no speed and room to maneuver. I'm now a lvl 25 expert marksman, and the knockdown perk is really starting to pay off. Poison will work while the foe is down. But get cramped up like in the Shrine Quest against necromancers, and you'll face problems. A marksmans key asset is keeping distance, and sometimes there are situations where you're just unable to do it. Relying on one fighting skill is not a good idea. You always need something to fall back on.

I'm sorry, but arrows penetrate steel easily.

yah that's a mod I'm using in OB the better stealth attacks its great.

combined with OOO, MMM, and thief arsenal and attack and hide I can really use archery as a main skill

fully automatic explosive tipped crossbows.

poisonous explosions pls...

I agree.

The Marksman in Oblivion was terrible.

+1. The English Longbow was feared for a reason. When used in great numbers even heavily armored cavalry had to think twice. There's a reason why infantry now-in-days fights in lightweight and long-ranged fashion. The refined use of the bow (along with the discovery of gunpowder's potential) was a turning point in warfare.

What we need is a more realistic reaction to being hit with an arrow (or other projectile/thrown weapon and even every other type of weapon, but that's a different topic). Even if a player shoots a bandit or what-have-you, and the bandit doesn't die from the shot, he should take pretty severe penalties. For instance, the bandit should take a huge blow to his fatigue (and have it permanently capped at the new, low level for the rest of the fight), his mobility should perhaps be affected, especially if the shot hit the legs or other joints(slowed speed/limping/etc.), etc.

The problem with Oblivion's marksman skill and archery in general, isn't just that it can be rather underpowered and unrealistic (I just shot you in the back of your head and you're still alive... what?), it's that nothing reacted to being shot. You shoot some person or animal and they just continue charging at your character like nothing happened (even if they end up with tens of arrows in them, as was unfortunately too often the case).

I htink Marksmanship was fine, even with the lower Sneak damage. The problem is that, apparently it was designed in such a way that you HAD to use it in Sneak mode to get its power, while some builds do not necessarily call for excessive sneaking (Hunter, Ranger, etc...).

Using strong poisons and sneak the arrows became deadly in the hands of my cute, fragile assassin.

I didn't have problem with Marksman, used it a lot in both Oblivion and Morrowind. The only problem I had was in Morrowind where I had Marksman as minor skill so I used crossbow, but I corrected that in Oblivion, where it was my major skill. The trick was to learn how to attack with bows, or better to say, how to move and attack while fighting opponent who uses ranged weapons. When fighting melee opponent, just run and shoot, if you are faster than him, if not, I combined it with my sword, worked fine.

I agree, marksman was my favorite skill to level up. I hope they totally revamp the ranged part of the game, maybe even make it a main thing like warrior/mage/thief/archer.

Also, they should make it so that you can recover arrows more often. Like if you hit the enemy, you should be able to recover that arrow. Two things should limit arrow recovery:

1. If he dies and falls on the side that the arrow is on, it should break.
2. If you use melee weapons on him (hit him with a sword, club him, ect.) there should be like a 90% chance of breaking your arrow.

It would also be cool if broken arrows became an actual item, leading to a fletching skill where you could fletch and repair your arrows.

I hope the combat system is improved so that it takes less hits in general to kill someone--putting more emphasis on blocking and overcoming an enemy block. I also would like backwards movement to be more restricted during fighting so that there is less backpeddaling (a random gripe I have of many sword combat games).

For bows/ranged weapons, I would like it to take less hits to kill an enemy. However, a sheild should block 100% damage from an arrow (I dont think it always did in OB), but degrade the shield. It should not take more than 3-5 arrows to put down any normal enemy. Since bows provide a distinct advantage of range, they should be more difficult to use than in OB. At low levels, you should only be able to draw the bow back for 5 seconds before releasing (at which point it would auto-undraw the arrow so you dont waste it---this would factor in with fatigue, which would increase this time). When the bow is drawn, the arrow should waver slightly, making ranged kills more difficult and requring more precision--this of course would get better as a factor of marksman. Area body damage should be used--so torso and headshots do more damage. Another thing--when drawing a bow, you should run backwards and sideways more slowly--which is realistic.


Generally, bows would be very powerful, but are difficult to master and hard to get hits with unless you have patience. However, they can do damage at range, which is a distict advantage over melee weapons.

I loved Oblivion as a battlemage, mostly because you had unlimted ammo at range to keep firing when you'd miss with the first shot and when they charged, I'd switch to melee. I'd pick up a bow and put it right back down because it was too hard to kill anything with it. Then along came fallout 3 and the V.A.T.S system and i was like "oh yes, oblivion with guns!" and never ever once used the melee weapons. i would definitely use a ranged weapon in oblivion if they has some sort of slowed down choice of shots similar to V.A.T.S. Not sure how that would go over with the purists, but it would be awesome.

of course, i did become such a high level that i had glass armor that made me 100% invisible; so using a bow became super easy cause i could stand inches away from the enemies and shoot them and they would just panic for a few seconds and then resume whatever it was they were doing until i shot them again. lol

I agree with most of this. The one thing I would add is that arrow materials (steel, Daedric, glass and such) should affect how much damage enemies take. An iron arrow should barely scratch glass armor, but Daedric arrows should shred most materials. I'm just not sure about how balanced that would/could be...


Cities would burn.

I wouldn't say easily. It's definitely possible. They would generally punch right through chain, but could be stopped by quilted armor.