ThatGuySteve
Explorer
Can't say I've ever seen an entire party of archers. But if players all make the same archer character to maximise effectiveness, that's fine by me for them to do well in open field ambush. I think it will be up to the DM to come up with challenging encounters for that party.Flip it around... why would the players not take advantage of all their strengths when making a plan rather than vice versa. The ability to effectively conduct drone warfare from a quarter mile away is most certainly a strength. You also seem to be thinking it's "an" archer as if the rest of the party is in melee.
Lets not pretend that being able to attack from range iis not an advantage over melee attacking from melee & suggest that advantage should not be taken into accont when designing ranged combat. Adding penalties that make sense for ranged combat to have is not making it "worse", it's simply accepting that it should not be "better" I've yet to see someone make a plan that involves swinging a melee weapon 60-100 feet away from an ambush target let alone up to nearly a quarter ,mile from it. Finesse weapons don't require a feat & give +dex to damage so it's not like a ranged attacker would be crippled by MAD to be capable of hitting in melee if ranged weapons went back to sane range increments & that ranged attacker had to switch to melee.... It would even make all those flaming/shocking/etc weapons reasonably useful rather than silly since they'd be swapping +4/+5 damage from dex to +1/+2 from strength & a d6 of elemental damage.
Adding penalties to something is making it worse, regardless of the reason. Raising up the alternatives would stop archery being better without the need for penalties.
I think outside of archery, there are also some good options suggested to tone down Dex. Making initiative skill based like PF2 sounds good to me in theory, although I've never played it so don't know how it works out in practice.
I'd also like to see skills not being set as default to one ability score, let each individual situation determine the ability check required, then add appropriate proficiency. Need to sit perfectly still for 3 hours waiting in ambush? Roll Con (stealth). Need to apply just the right amount of force with a crow bar? Str (thieves tools).
Ps, I'm still not sure how to explain adding Str to a crossbow or firearm attack?