Quote Originally Posted by ProudGrognard View Post
Well, making bows exotic will make the ranged warriors suck even more. And I agree about your sentiments on exotic weapons. However, I must point out that a bump in the die is equal to a +1 to damage, which is comparable to a mediocre feat. Perhaps the Greatbow halves all distance penalties as well?

Also, any comments on the feats?
There are several issues that ranged combat has that tends to make it less effective than a melee build of the same investment. I think trying to fix all that from the weapons end of things is difficult and has the potential for abuse, which I why I started by modifying the base rules and feats for ranged combat first.

IMHO, a +1 bump in damage should not be a mediocre feat, it is a BAD feat. It is mathmatically weak and mechanically uninteresting; a mediocre feat can be either powerful or interesting, and a good feat would be both.
That was why I suggested adding additional combat options to the greatbow, to make up for the fact that it was more difficult to master.

Another possibility is to design a selection of payload-style arrows that could fire things like nets, tripwires, glue/acid/fire bombs, grappling hooks, etc, but these larger, specialized arrows would require a different kind of bow (exotic).

Quote Originally Posted by Waargh! View Post
I would give each race options for exotic weapons without a feat tax. Maybe they will require minimum ability score or level, but still. Better weapons on the other hand should always require a feat.
Balacing everything while still having interesting and unique weapons might be very problematic; I would prefer to restrict weapon selection to class, rather than by race, and just give melee-heavy classes more feats.

-I think reinforced plate armor maybe should give some protection against critical hits and stay +8. Like decrease attackers critical range by 1 or 2.
Good idea, but the mechanic of that would be very clunky, I think. There is an armor enchantment on the SRD called Fortification that reduces the chance to deal critical damage. I would either use that, or have it grant the bonus to your AC against rolls to confirm critical hits.