Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth
Technical aspects aside, as far as I know cultures that prized archery as a high-status martial skill are usually horse-archer cultures. (Maybe also chariot archer cultures?) Being atop a bulky, fast-moving platform gives a whole additional incentive to have a ranged weapon, and takes the issue of getting run down by swordsmen largely off the table.
In more general battlefield massed use, bows can engage at significantly longer ranges because they are aimed in large numbers at large groups of troops, rather than at individuals, and the arrows allowed to fall where they will.
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That's actually the essence of it right there. Archers in real wars were not main combat troops. You put them on a high place, where they could shoot at the enemy, usually in massed fire, and you put a line of armored infantry between them and the enemy. They were the moral equivalent of artillery in that case. Or you put them in chariots or on horses, so they could keep away from the enemy and shoot at them from a safe distance. They were lethally vulnerable at close quarters—so the whole trick to using them was to ensure that the enemy never closed.
If you want to take an archer into a dungeon setting, you don't treat them as front line fighters. You want a row of knights or barbarians or other tough hand to hand fighters between them and the monster. They amount to nonmagical substitutes for fireball-throwing wizards.