Armour played an important part in protection against arrows.

Medieval knights sometimes looked like pincushions, from all the arrows sticking out, but were still fighting.

Depends on what http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCE40J93m5c&feature=related you watch it seems . A single shot is not a very good test.

Well, I'll take a single shot in a controlled environment from a semi-reliable source than some bunch of dudes :tongue:

If OPs demands were true, then we'd have no ex-adventurer city guards anymore.

Upgrading your weapons is something you have to do in most RPGs... I will agree that the upgrading system does have it's flaws (it should allow for NPC smiths to upgrade your weapons, up to some extent, for a fee) but still, it's not really hard to put a couple perks in smithing so that you can have decent upgraded weapons. Just getting the perk to upgrade magic items i enough, since for a non-enchanter the best weapons are some special artifacts.
Besides, there would be no point to add enchantment and smithing if you could beat everything with unupgraded tuff, would it?

Now, as for the sneak perks: true, 3x is much less than the x6 of 1-h and x15 of daggers, BUT:

It's infinitely easier to sneak attack as an archer than as a melee. It's also infinitely easier to hide afterwards.
As a sneak archer, you can sneak attack someone among a group of people very easily. As a melee, it's much more difficult for the others to not spot you.
As an archer, you can chain up to 3-4 sneak attacks on the same target before they find you. As a melee, you can at most do one attack.
Daggers have no reason of existance except from that x15 sneak bonus, as they are pathetic otherwise.
Archers get slow motion, which let them sneak kill a whole group of enemies before being found out. Melee have to react in real time...

If you want headshots to be instant kill, then you need to expect NPC's to kill u with a shot to the head. That will be amusing watching all the babies QQ

It is already very easy to kill someone as an archer. It usually is an instant kill and if you are unlucky you'll need a second arrow. A lot of perks can help with this. The fun is getting them. After that archery can become a little boring if "sneak/shoot/hide/rinse-and-repeat" gets repetive.

What makes you such a good shot anyway? Without localized damage (headshots and so on) the only way to guage your damage is you archery skills. Increase archery and the perks with it and see the improvements. the hight percentages substitute for local damage and you'll get your one shot kills.

It's close enough. A dart will have less energy behind it, but it's concentrated on a smaller area. My point was that you can sometimes survive for quite a while after injuries that penetrate the skull to some degree, even though sepsis will likely kill you eventually without modern medicine.

Most wounds sustained in battle won't kill straight away anyway. IIRC, research done on remains found around medieval battlefields seems to indicate that the legs were the most vulnerable and often-hit part in a fight, while many people seem to have survived previous serious injuries, even to the head, before dying in that particular battle.

Being hit with an arrow and instantly dropping to the ground stone-cold dead is for Cowboy & Indian movies. Though we probably wouldn't want realism in the game to a degree where the enemies writhe around in pain for 3 days before expiring, begging for help from their mother and the gods the whole time...

I like killing enemies with the bow from sneak attacks, but i did get bored of it. Which is why i've added Sword & Board to my charatcers skills, so i can mix up the styles of combat. I've never played S&B before, it makes for very interesting & longer battles, albeit, it is also quite easy.

If you cant 1 shot enemies with the bow on assanation missions, from sneak with x3 damage, then you need to upgrade your gear or skills first. So much is in you advantage, Enchanted gear for added damage & weapons, Poisons amd sneak bonus, what more do you want ?! lol!

A guy in 1850 took a 2 inch steel drill bit through his head and lived for years with a hole you could see through. He was drilling a hole for railroad dynamite and the powder went off and shot the rod through his head, and out the other side. He lived. The human body is an amazing thing.

I strongly disagree. If this was a FPS game I would agree but its not, its a skill based RPG. If you could inta-kill regardless of your archery skill level that would be ridiculous and extremely unbalanced. The archery in Skyrim is done great in my opinion.

"you shouldn't have to worry if your arrow is going to do enough damage to kill the guy" - I dont even know how to respond to that.

I have done enough bow hunting deer and hogs to tell you that the dang things can still run off 1/4 mile away with a arrow thru the heart and lungs or behind the ear into the brain. My buddy hit one behind the left ear and the arrow was sticking out the right eye. It ran 500yds and jumped three fences. Thats with a 80 pound compound shot at 30yds and a 1.5" broadhead.

Um, OP? I can one-shot just about any NPC or creature, save for dragons, frost trolls and the odd levelled target. Dark Brotherhood cowl helps, but I got high archery and perks in the archery tree. If you don't have any perks in archery, that might help.

Why would sneak attack with a bow instant kill targets? Infact if it was realistic why would an arrow deal more damage when the target doesnt detect you? If you get shot in the head with an arrow it shouldnt really matter if you saw the guy shooting at you or not, you should die into it anyways. But I guess that would make the game too easy if you could kill everybody 1 shot arrow in the head, but it would be more realistic though

We all know smithing is what it is. That doesn't mean bows are weak just because you don't use smithing. You have the potential to double your damage with smithing, but if you don't do tha then your bow isn't as powerful as it could be.

It's a bow, not a sniper rifle.

Fyi...you can shoot an arrow into a skull. Even in real life. An arrow's tip is made of metal. This, coupled with velocity could put an arrow into the hardest part of a skull. When I shoot an arrow through someone's eye (in game) and they start looking for me and find me I say to myself "yea right". Who would be able to do that in real life? I know its a game but if you have low sneak then you are much easier to detect. If you can land a nicely placed arrow to the head without being seen then it should be no brainer.

Well, one of those puts you on permanent guard duty...

I think you are ridiiculous and a poor assassin

I just took out the whole hiiden valley redoubt on master difficulty yesterday

a good assassin know how to step back in the shadows. It s not bethesda s fault if you svck.

( That's what the sneak bonus is for)

no ! especially not if your prey is a pack of ancient dragons !!!
I am sorry, I cannot agree with you !
And taking down that pack was awesome .... for me anyway, you would probably be dead facing a pack of skeevers

Anyway, you made me laught a lot ! Everyone complain that stealth is overpowered , and you complain because you can t hit your mark, don t know how to brew poison or whatever

Oh and, yes, in morrowind you could fight vivec, a GOD. and YOU want to one-hit-kill a GOD !!!!!!! How ridiculous !!!!

Dagger 30x dmg is enough of an assasination

You should add a deadly poison to your arrow first if you want a clean kill like any good assassin would do.

The way I use my bow, it might as well be.

I'm also probably pretty lucky, since most of my shots ends up being in the shoulder, neck or head.


Such constructive criticism.

i disagree. in a game where you can not specify which part of a target you are aiming for (i wish you could and am surprised and disappointed you can't) it is, imo, false to say that instakillz should always occur.

It doesn't need to be a simulator have instant kill. Especially if you are limited to 50 health as well having both you and NPC have low health and die quickly actually adds more to the game then what is currently in. Sadly such is not in game or won't be added unless mods come with it.