Many, many npc rangers carry bows in the game. Why shouldn't player rangers?

Crafted, imbued ranger bows could be an interesting addition to the ranger class as an alternative to the standard spear and staff. Assuming this could be balanced at all, it would likely have to be an either-or thing, as with a paladin's dedication or a warrior's specialization. Since bows are exotic weapons, a ranger's actual skill percentage with them would depend on his level. Class skills that use the bow, however, could still be practiced and perfected in combat, providing those high-level ranger skills so many people seem to want.

I picture the bow as being crafted and imbued at level 30 the same way a spear or staff is, with more or less the same stats (adjusted for balance). In normal combat, it would be a two-handed exotic weapon doing piercing damage. It makes sense (to me, at least) that it should be harder than normal to parry, easier than normal to shield block, and harder than normal to parry with. This could get interesting with felar rangers, but I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.

As for class skills using the bow, the most important question is whether or not there is a practical way to allow a player to use an offensive skill on another player who is within his scan range or some arbitrary distance and no further. Whether or not such a thing could work on mobs is another question entirely if "call lightning" is any indication.

While not absolutely essential for the bow to work as a staff/spear alternative, the ability to hit targets in nearby rooms is really the single most fun part of this idea. Unfortunately, it clearly has the potential for severe abuse. There would have to be some serious limitations on it, like being lagged a certain number of combat rounds depending on the skill used, and anyone awake and able to see in the room with the target being able to tell which direction the arrows came from. If shooting distance depends on scanning range, there would also be the conflict of making the weather better for further scanning or worse for 'call lightning.' Naturally, being blinded would render any fancy skills involving the bow useless.

There are plently of variations that could prove interesting, such as vital area shots, poisoned or flaming arrows (though I'm not sure rangers need more maledictions), or variations in the number of shots fired, the accuracy of the shots, etc. A ranger might stand their ground and fire three shots, lagging themselves for two to three rounds of combat, or fire a single quick shot on the run for one only round of lag. A skill that combines waylay and charge set could also be interesting - a "don't shoot 'till you see the whites of their eyes" sort of thing where the ranger prepares to strike first when attacked by someone.

This could be potentially broken against mobs too, if it could even work on them at all, but if they started tracking you down the moment you shot at them, it might still be a fair fight. The other possible issue here is the problem of getting XP from a mob if you kill it from another room. Still, it's not at all unreasonable to expect rangers to have to get up close to actually win a fight. Keeping this in mind, perhaps bow skills could be more of a uniqe way of ambushing from a distance instead of an altogether new way of fighting.

I don't really know if this idea is technically possible or practical in terms of game balance, but I personally think it could be damn cool.

I could maybe see this work (not a ranged weapon) is make it like an assassins dart, and maybe have the ranger able to tip an arrow with poison or somethign to that affect.

There is pretty much no way to introduce ranged weapons that meets two basic criteria: a semblance of logic (e.g. not having call lightning like lag) and doesn't destroy game balance.

Take the mob tracking issue, you'd have to go in and code every mob that doesn't track, guildguards, cabal guards, cabal inners, just to mention the easy ones, to be non-targetable, otherwise a ranger with enough patience could just plink away at them until they are dead.

I agree that rangers could use some spicing up, but giving them ranged attacks isn't the way to go, if you want the project to be done this decade.

Well, even with real range lost, a bow might still be a decent change from the staff and spear. The bow could be a two-handed exotic weapon that does piercing damage. It would still function exactly like a melee weapon, but if you made it very good for offense, very bad for defense, and threw in a decent skill or two, it could still work as an alternative to the staff and spear. Not as interesting as a more realistic ranged weapon, but still a refreshing change, I think.

The one existing model for ranged attacks that I know of in the game is call lighting. A ranged bow attack could work following the same rules as call lightning, a sort of magic arrow a ranger could shoot up into the sky in the hope of hitting a player in the same area. As with call lightning, the ranger must be able to see the target, must specify the target by name, must be outdoors (as must the target), and must be in the same area as his target. The same restrictions could also apply, namely the timer before it can be used again and the weather restrictions - the magic arrow attack could require better weather than call lightning if the two of them together would be too unbalancing.

As for the bow in normal combat, it seems to me that given the way bows work in CF, the existing combat skills that come to mind as representing a bow's real-world capabilities are charge set and parting blow. Getting a shot off that interrupts someone's attack on you makes sense to me as something a bow might do, as does firing a shot into the back of someone running away from the fight. I'm not entirely sure whether giving rangers warrior abilities like these (and one of them a spec skill, no less) would be a good thing, but they seem like the most resonable analogues to a bow's real-world capabilities.

If the previous two paragraphs don't already make this idea too impractical, this probably won't hurt. Giving the bow a basic damage skill roughly equivalent to serpent strike would make it useful for ranking as well.