LE A total overhaul for bows: bleed damage, armor performance, bad in cqc

[Deleted7922709User]

Archery is a really strong skill. It should be. It gives you the ability to fire on dragons without getting up close and risking being eaten in one hit.

 

 

So here's the thing with bows: they aren't perfect weapons. Contrary to what the NPCs in Skyrim may make you think, a bow is a bad weapon for close quarters due to the difficulty in using something so complicated in an enclosed space, and the fact that you'd be trying to fire an arrow at someone when they're in your face with a weapon swinging at your head.

 

A lot of the game's difficulty overhauls are nice. Unfortunately, I consider most of them broken because sadly, AI archery is insanely OP. Nothing takes me out of a fight (figuratively and literally) more quickly than dramatically pushing through a group of sword-and-buckler or two-handers...only to die in one hit to a high leveled enemy who's using iron arrows and a longbow.

 

...which leads me to the following suggestions for a mod:

 

1. Major penalties for use in CQC: No archer, no matter how tough, has a near 100 percent chance of stagger and a nearly as high chance of disarmament (via shield bash) when the bow is equipped. It's almost impossible to draw a bow when someone is trying to knock the bow out of your hands. This would force enemy archers to fight in melee with melee weapons if confronted so closely.

 

2. Bleed damage: I know this has been done, but the main strength of archery should be DoT rather than damage up front. It should do damage up front, but it should be reduced overall. But lodged arrows cause bleed damage regardless of armor, when they hit. Damage which of course would stack.

 

3. Reduced up front damage against heavy armor: IRL, arrows from bows aren't the best thing against a heavily armored foe. They shouldn't be useless, but heavy armor should probably resist 50 percent or so of any arrow's immediate damage, to reflect the fact that plate armor and the like are substantially tougher to break through than leather, hide or cloth.

[Valkasha]

Use skytweak and make their accuracy worse. (up their miss chance from vanilla to say 32 for a realistic miss chance)

An arrow is supposed to be deadly, if you get a direct hit with an arrow in real life, your armor better be reaaaaaly thick or else you are going to have a destroyed organ.

Combine this with a mod like SkyRe, locational damage or deadly combat so that full plated armor takes far less damage while light armor (which shouldn't really stop any arrow at all especially crossbow bolts) takes almost full damage.

Especially the skytweak is nice because it allows the player to actively dodge arrows by side stepping and staying mobile, rather than the enemy npc aiming perfectly in the middle of where your body will be one second after firing making it near impossible to dodge unless you constantly strave left right left right. Hitting fast moving opponents is difficult for the player so it should be for npcs too :)

Edited August 8, 2014 by Valkasha

[Deleted7922709User]

Use skytweak and make their accuracy worse. (up their miss chance from vanilla to say 32 for a realistic miss chance)

An arrow is supposed to be deadly, if you get a direct hit with an arrow in real life, your armor better be reaaaaaly thick or else you are going to have a destroyed organ.

Combine this with a mod like SkyRe, locational damage or deadly combat so that full plated armor takes far less damage while light armor (which shouldn't really stop any arrow at all especially crossbow bolts) takes almost full damage.

Especially the skytweak is nice because it allows the player to actively dodge arrows by side stepping and staying mobile, rather than the enemy npc aiming perfectly in the middle of where your body will be one second after firing making it near impossible to dodge unless you constantly strave left right left right. Hitting fast moving opponents is difficult for the player so it should be for npcs too :smile:

 

I'm kind of late through a playthrough, I don't want to kill it by a mod maybe messing up the load order. Skytweak is definitely interesting, I've looked at it before and I'll probably be using it on my next game for sure.

 

My problem with archery is that archery is better for the AI to use in melee combat than two handed or one handed weapons, since at least swords and axes and whatnot can be blocked (arrows go right through the shield if you're up in their face). That feels so broken. Really, really broken.

[Valkasha]

SkyTweak is compatible with any mod because all it does is read out certain values in the MCM and it allows you to edit them. For example if you have a mod that increases accuracy the mod will recognise this and show the adapted value in the MCM, you can then change that value to anything you want it to be, vanilla or worse than vanilla etc, even better than the mod does, any value really. Because of this it is compatible with anything.