The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Archer's Arsenal ~ Special Arrows and More! (v1.5)
Fun, perhaps, but imbalanced as all hell
Holy crap.
I haven't tested explosive arrows yet but I can imagine they're strong. I can only imagine they're reasonably effective for the price, but the price actually seems like a logical balance if they're as effective as I'm expecting.

But I want to point out:
--Poison Arrows deal 10 damage PER SECOND over the course of 7 seconds. You have to be a dedicated alchemist to achieve similar with crafted poisons and even with prefab poisons, nothing to my knowledge is this strong. 70 inherent damage on top of whatever you deal with your archery? Good god.

--Paralysis Arrows are even more absurd, dealing a whopping 5 second paralysis on hit WITH AN AOE and at half the price of the Poison arrows. Even one second paralysis would be enough to give you a significant advantage; they're too cheaply available, can be bought en masse as early as Whiterun and are utterly game breaking.

--Superlight and Heavy arrows are comparatively disappointing, but are at least interesting in the sense of giving a minor niche to different types of arrows. I have yet to check how this mod interacts with a high archery character but these at least seem reasonable for the base game and are cheaply available.

--Magelight and Soul Trap arrows are fantastic. Magelight arrows allow for some interesting utility and Soul Trap arrows prevent you from inevitably having to make a Soul Trap Bow if you want to enchant your bow with something more combat-viable. I will say Magelight arrows seem a little too expensive for the utility they provide, being basically launchable torches and torches being relatively cheap.


Suggestions:
--Reduce the potency of Poison Arrows from 10d/7s to 5 damage for 5 seconds. Still a reasonable amount of damage but significantly less likely to trivialize early fights. More potent poison arrows can be made available at higher levels if necessary, maybe 10d/5s at around level 20-ish for an increased price.

--If Paralysis arrows truly must be made available, reduce them to a 1 second potency, make them non-AoE and make them available at later levels than "as soon as Whiterun". Even with only 1 second duration, it knocks enemies over and they have to go through a stand-up animation to get back on their feet before they can even attempt to attack you, making it effectively about 3-4 seconds of vulnerability. Seriously, Paralysis's effectiveness can't be understated in this game; 5 seconds is potent enough for endgame even in small doses. I'd suggest levels 15-21 minimum for 1-second Paralysis arrows in the shop and random loot, and not really having any "improved" versions later.

--Reduce the cost of Magelight arrows. Again, they're basically disposable ranged torches, so it makes no sense for them to cost even more than the overwhelmingly powerful Paralysis Arrows.



Tl;dr: A fun and interesting mod but definitely not practically balanced for gameplay progression. The fact you can buy from bundles of 100 at the Drunken Huntsman immediately, limited only by your gold, is somewhat absurd.

It's honestly a shame that this mod is unlikely to see further support, because I really enjoy the concept of varied arrows to make archery more interesting, and I'd love to see it worked with more. It simply needs some balance tweaking and it'd be an amazing mod, imo.