Arelith

For non-ranger archers, crafting these bundles/bags not only meant they need to dedicate points into a certain craft in order to meet the consumable demand that their weapon of choice requires, but the amount it takes to craft any damask variant of the bundles is also too much for too little gain.

We can look at a ranger with archer path and a non-ranger PC:

• Archer Path: At Ranger lvl10, capable of making Damask Bundles per rest/reset
• PC w/ Gift of Craft, w/o Path: At lvl10, has 30 trade skills, Damask is 30DC with 40 CP (Forging and Carpentry, except Art Crafting for bullets)
• PC w/o Gift of Craft or Path: At lvl10, has 20 trade skills, unable to reliably craft Damask bundles

These materials aren't exactly light, either. 4 Iron and 2 Silver ores can take a lot of effort to come by for a lowbie, let alone the ranged builds are likely either Dex or Wis build with minimal investment into Str.

Since ranger archers get free, high-quality bundles, few ways to elevate the QoL for other non-Ranger Archers: (Pick and Choose!)

• Increase the charges from Crafted Damask Bundles (From 5 to 10, or 10 to 20 for throwing variants)
• Reduce the Crafting Points required (From 40 to 30)
• Reduce the Ore requirements (From 4 Iron and 2 Silver to 2 Iron and 1 Silver)

Consequently, these can also apply to the lower tier bundles.

I like this idea. At 5-6 attacks per round, arrows go quicker than you think, and sometimes finding silver can be a pain.

• Increase the charges from Crafted Damask Bundles (From 5 to 10, or 10 to 20 for throwing variants) - This would be wonderful. Then all you need is 1 bundle to deplete an unstable slot on a template, and it would also make the material use more efficient.
• Reduce the Ore requirements (From 4 Iron and 2 Silver to 2 Iron and 1 Silver) - And 2 coal? Without access to storage, a friendly str beast willing to carry your burdens, or cluttering your inventory with started arrow bundles, puny non-ranger archers are in trouble. Meanwhile, rangers can take a nap and pull a bundle out of thin air. I would go as far as reducing the amount of coal required. It's easy enough to find, but heavy. As it is, the materials required to craft a single bundle weigh way over 50 lbs.

As a player of a friendly str beast/smith, I can confirm that this can easily get really tedious. My character absolutely loved doing it for his archer friend, but that was when he didn't really have anything else to craft. If he was trying to balance pretty much being an arrow-factory with crafting his own gear, plus the commissions he now tends to get, it would become very frustrating very quickly, especially knowing that if there's an archer expecting their arrows, and you don't deliver, they might not get to do anything because they don't have the arrows you promised them.

I'm honestly not really sure it's fair to give ranger archers free arrows, but not AA's. When I was discussing the advantages of ranger archer vs AA on the Arelith Discord a few days back, the convenience of free arrows was one of the things mentioned as making ranger archers a better choice, and it really doesn't sit well for me. Ranger archer being better because of versatility, or durability, or whatever is fine, but "Well it's just so inconvenient to play an AA" really isn't.

If both ranger archers and AAs generating free arrows is too much, I'd much prefer neither one generating free arrows, but arrows being easier and less resource-intensive to craft than the current extreme inequality between ranger archers and AAs in terms of arrow convenience.

Yeah. As an archer ranger who played sugar/arrow daddy to several non-ranger archers who couldn't make their own arrows, I definitely feel it should be easier for non rangers to create arrows.

Couldn't some NPCs just sell bundles of iron arrows? Make them expensive, make it so you have to craft or take the Archer path to acquire damask, but the barrier for a rogue who uses a bow as a secondary weapon to acquire competent ammo is pretty high.

Why not just check if a PC has a weapon focus in a ranged type (thrown/launcher) and then give them the ability to craft a bundle of the appropriate type a rest.

(Decouple it from ranger-archers and give it to everyone.)

There's still more upkeep, considering templates, than any other weapon type but it becomes much less.

The template system is awesome for dedicated ranger archers but is a bit too complicated for the casual ranged weapon user. I can't imagine a typical new player who just wants to use a crossbow on their wizard or bard figuring this out without a lot of hand-holding.

I wish you could still apply a single temporary essence on ammo. Or have ranged weapon merchants sell bronze ammo bundles so everyone could have easier access to templates. I assume the system was created to encourage crafting and trading but I think that shouldn't come until you want medium or top tier ammo. If you want "just good enough" you should be able to procure that more easily especially with an item that needs to be constantly replenished.

i don't really have anything more to add to this beyond the suggestions that I and others have already offered, but I'd really like to see this addressed. I've seen AAs have to stop and go home in the middle of a long grind because they ran out of arrows and there aren't any conveniently for sale, and that really pains me. I don't know of any other class that is so extremely dependent on eating through a ton of resources and crafting points just to be able to participate. It really doesn't seem fair to AA players to be left arrowless, when their companion archer class is essentially given a 2500 GP gift every time they rest.