ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Archery as a mindslayer currently sucks. There is almost no benefit to it, and it only is helped by a single locked tree.

My ideas to make it better:

Give mindslayers the ability to use bows with Beyond the Flesh, with a penalty of halving the range (to prevent some abuse).

replace the last skill of psi-archery with one that allows your TK bow to duplicate the target of your regular shots, with 20/40/60/80/100% chance to do it instead of firing randomly.

unlock Psi-archery, and make it a lvl 0 tree instead of 10+

Give them something to help them reload better (telekinetic reloading instead of shooting?)

Another option could be to make psi archers as another subclass.

I agree, useless talent tree

It'd also be good if it was clear that the skills help slings as well as bows. I don't know if they do or not, since I haven't tried it, but if you're boosting your cunning as a mindslayer, then slings are a more attractive weapon then bows.

An auto-reload skill would be nice (auto-reloads 1 shot every 10/8/6/4/2 turns, maybe?), and infusing the shot with psychic abilities (fears, knockback, etc) would be good, too.

I like the "make it another class" idea. Archery doesn't seem to fit in with the existing mindslayer in a meaningful way. Why not a Zen Archer class?

Interesting idea for it - "Arrow's Hunger" - functions like Conduit, but for zen archery and the Voracity tree. You somehow attach the sustain to one or more voracity powers. While the sustain remains on, the applicable voracity powers are on perma-cooldown, there is a chance to have them apply their effects on ranged hit (not 100%, because that would be terribly broken. The chance would be skill-dependent) and you get back a bit of psi every time you hit someone with an arrow.

Wave of Repulsion - targets everything within three or so, pushing outward and dealing physical damage. moderately high cost, moderately high cooldown. Things that are closer take more damage and are pushed farther, and things that are pushed into walls take additional damage.

I think this and a psi-mage idea would work well in combination. Most mage/archers end up failing because the character ends up with a choice in any given turn of either being an archer without most archer abilities or a mage with few spells. Archery and magic replace each other easily, but they don't compliment each other well.

That changes with psionics, where telekinesis is a natural form of 'spells'. I'm imagining a class with Bow Mastery, Sling Mastery, Survival, and then some new trees. One would lay out archery augmentations, with various passive/sustained abilities to increase accuracy, damage, critical chance, resistance penetration, maybe even an auto-load (to stack with ammo auto-loads, but how?). Another would be something like 'psi-shots', where the character uses the projectile to channel psi-attacks, or simply uses the 'shock' of being hit as an opening into the enemy's mind (mental defenses waver for a split second, maybe). These would add mind damage and various mental status effects, like confusion, fear, stun, daze, maybe blindness, or even charm. There would have to be some kind of ranged energy-feed, whether channeled through the shots or independent. And then a group of utility spells, something like 'mindbending'. You can become 'invisible' by causing other people to simply not notice you (invisibility? stealth? something else?), or knock targets back with a telekinetic thrust, or boost your speed substantially (at least 100%) for a (very) few turns (something like the mobility infusions).

I think a class like that would actually work quite nicely.