Help with balancing gameplay?

[Dandu]

Archery is one of the weaker combat styles because there are so many ways to shut it down.
1) Disabling the archer (Glitterdust, Blindness/Deafness, Hold Person, Charm Person, etc)
2) Removing LOS (Obscuring Mist, Silent Image, Invisibility, etc)
3) Hard counters (Protection from Arrows, Wind Wall, Wall of Ice, etc)

 

[thatryanguy]

Well, the Scout: Sniper variant from Dragon Magazine 346 is exactly the same as the scout, except rather than Skirmish, they get Sniper Shot

(as a Full Round Action (that does not allow a 5’ Step), make a single shot with a projectile weapon. If it hits no matter what the range, it does+Nd6 damage. The target must be alive, corporeal, vulnerable to Critical Hits, not benefiting from Cover or Concealment, etc.)

The thing is, optimized or not, Scouts/Snipers only generally get 1 skirmish/sniper shot a round, due to the movement requirement (unless they have ways to get in a full round action as well as moving) so unless your other melees are running around with +nothing daggers, they should be able to hold their own =/

As pointed out above, bringing melee to him to keep him busy can be useful, providing the enemies with cover and limited-LOS environments will also help. You could even put them up against evil monks or anything else that can catch arrows, not to mention creature types that are invulnerable to crits.