First of all the bow is an elegant and beautiful weapon.
I agree it is good because it is a combat “Path” rolled into a discipline. After playing an Archer for a while now, I do believe this rule set does a significantly better job with archers the most other games. I would like to see some more Passive damage for Archer, possibly by making Trueshot a passive +2 or I would prefer the increasing of the base amount for use bow by 2. Now I feel this way for many reasons. My argument for use bow being a passive 3 stems from the question of what if you want to be an Archer but you do not want to use the entirety of your first discipline to do it. Say you want to be a full bureaucrat but you also want to use bow. Well you are going to shoot for 1 vorpal and 1 vorpal from a bow is terrible for reason I will outline soon. Now 3 vorpal, from a bow, is still mediocre but it is all of a sudden at least good enough to play and have fun with, and for 20xp what do you expect. Now why do I believe it is mediocre, well it takes about 6-7 seconds (we Guthrie have timed it) to fire an arrow and get another nocked, and that is moving at full speed with perfect conditions; not combat speed which I have noticed takes a little longer (8-9) because of the mixture of fatigue, the need to stay alert, and the possibility of needing to move away from attackers. Next it takes about 4-5 seconds to find a shot, which yes can be part of the charge time but while charging the battlefield does change and you might have to spend 4-5 seconds in addition to the charging of true shot to find a valid target (which is moderately difficult because it is easy for many to dodge a LARP arrow they see coming). Some other reasons is because archers have a limited to the number of arrows in their quiver. We Guthrie bring in about 12-15 arrows each which seems to be on the higher end of arrow complement many archers bring in, and we run out of ammo, often. I only shot critical shots now because of my arrow complement. And yes empaths have limited packet amount too but one can make 50 packets and store them in a satchel which can double as a type 1 container(and if it does not double as a type 1 container they still have 50 packets) for like $20. It takes about $150 to make 15 arrows. Another reason 1 vorpal is not good is because the standard NPC is running around with 150 soak and when you are shooting an arrow every 12 seconds you are not really doing a lot to contribute to the encounter (yes I mean 12 vorpal over 2 and half minutes IF every arrow hits, assuming a 12 arrow quiver).Now many of you will say well you guys are doing pretty good. Well, yes I think we are, and no matter how we are doing we are having a BLAST being Archers. But much of our success is stemming from large amounts of money and time spent into arrow design and building to create the best arrow that fires thefarthest and the straightest when fired from a 25lb bow with a big ol’ boffer head on it. We also spend alot of time practicing general shotting, and an additional bonus that is not really accounted for is their being two of us which makes it much more difficult for our opponents to watch both of the archers, increasing our effectiveness.
In summary I think 3, 5, 10 from an archer is reasonable. Especially when considering rogue dodge, the use of shields, the lengthy Physical reload time(not the game mechanic), lack of quiver compliment, high hit points of NPCs, about 50 seconds of combat time for every 10 vorpal and the real world monetary investment into archery. And a static 3 is good enough for someone who wants to invest 20xp into archer that spends the money on arrows and a bow to feel like they are contributing. I would also be ok with getting rid of the bonus of having two use bows.
