All about Arrow Mind

[Rackhir]

I certainly wouldn't allow it continuously, it takes away the one limiting factor that using a bow has. If you have Arrow Mind up all the time, why ever bother with a melee weapon again? Archery becomes the superior style in just about every aspect.

That's absurd. In most situations a 5' step backwards will give you the same effect. IE. no AoOs. In addition I don't see or hear everyone wanting to run an OoBI which gives you a similar no AoO ability. Futhermore there are numerous feats and class skills that either have no counter part for missile weapons or specifically forbid their use with missile weapons. Cleave, whirlwind attack, power attack, fighting defensively, smite, etc. Bows also have to be customized to a users strength, a very expensive process. If your strength goes up you need a new bow, if it goes down you are at a -2 to attack. This doesn't happen with melee weapons. blah, blah, blah.

Does archery have it's strengths, sure. Can it be very effective, yes. Is it the be all and end all of combat skills. Don't be silly.

 

[Krelios]

It also lets you threaten and take AoOs with a bow. That opens up a whole variety of feat chains that were never meant to be used with a bow. The Power Attack -> Cleave tree is a good example of one that doesn't benefit from this, but most feats were not written to specifically prevent ranged weapon use, because there was no way to threaten with a ranged weapon at the time.

 

[Rackhir]

It also lets you threaten and take AoOs with a bow. That opens up a whole variety of feat chains that were never meant to be used with a bow. The Power Attack -> Cleave tree is a good example of one that doesn't benefit from this, but most feats were not written to specifically prevent ranged weapon use, because there was no way to threaten with a ranged weapon at the time.

Such as what feat chains? I don't have all my books so I can't tell you the exact phrasing for all the feats. However, most feats in the 3.5 SRD do specify that they are for melee only, which both Power attack and Cleave do.

Yes it does let you threaten with a bow. So? An archer is going to give up one of his major advantages, the ability to get in a full attack in most circumstances. So that they can move to be next to an opponent so they can threaten them. Sure. Sounds like a wonderful idea. Especially now that you are in melee range of them.

The ablility to threaten might be interesting if the 3.5 OoBI still had sneak attack dice, but they don't. They have that useless "Precision attack".

Don't forget that Archers are very feat intensive. To be a good archer you are going to need at minimum : Precise Shot, Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, weapon focus. That's 4 feats or all the feats for a non-human rogue for the first 9 levels. A rogue being the type of class that would benefit the most from the ability to threaten. Most likely if you are archery focused, then you are also going to want : weapon spec, multishot, imp rapid shot. This doesn't leave a lot of room for other feat chains. Taking some fighter levels will help obviously, but fighters don't benefit from being able to threaten nearly as much as classes like rogues which have situation (ie. Flanking) dependent abilities.