Hey guys, I know this probably comes up a lot, but I wanted to just straight ask the community what their opinion on Clustered Shots is, and what, if anything, should be done to fix it.
We've recently come to notice the power of Clustered Shots (and archers in general) in our JR campaign, in which the archer routinely kills the boss monster in a single round of combat. And while we can't point to a single element that makes her overpowered, we've noticed that Clustered Shots tends to makes a nonsense of the only weakness the archer has (or had, rather)- damage reduction.
Personally, I think Clustered Shot comes way too earlier for the archer-fighter. It's prerequisites are Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, and a BAB of +6. This is approximately 6 levels before fighters qualify for Penetrating Strike- a feat with a similar effect (for the archer, at least).
If you step back, only applying DR once is a lot better than just ignoring 5 points of DR. Consider a situation where an archer shoots at a clay golem and hits 4 times. Without either feat, her damage would be reduced by 40 (let's assume she's not using adamantine arrows, and that each strike does at least 11 damage). With Penetrating Strike her damage is reduced by 20. With Clustered Shot her damage is reduced by 10.
In this situation, the archer finds that Clustered Shots is more efficient than Penetrating Strike. This seems off to me, as Penetrating Strike is supposed to be the more powerful effect, but when compared side-by-side it does less work. As a matter of fact, the only place where it would be more efficient in the above scenario is if the archer only hit once with all of her attacks, and she was not using feats like Many Shot.
So, I posit this question: Is Clustered Shot too powerful? If so, what should be done to fix/balance it. If not, why?
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
The feat completely removes one of the main balance factors of bows.
It's a massive boost to already probably the strongest fighting style in the game.
TBH, the entire archery line needs to be taken out back, shot, and zombiefied into something that isn't so marginalizing. In my main game, we have 10 players. The archer does over 50% of our entire party's damage.
|
How is the archer getting 4 shots and hitting with all of them at level 6?
With Rapid Shot and Many Shot you'd have +4/+4/+4/-1 to hit. Given a Clay Golem is AC 24, that's some high rolls. Even with Weapon Focus, Weapon Training, a magic bow (+1) and a Dex of 20, you're only at 50% to hit with your good attacks, never mind the last one. IF they all hit, it's great damage, but getting them all to hit is tough. Penetrating Strike is much more reliable.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The feat completely removes one of the main balance factors of bows.
It's a massive boost to already probably the strongest fighting style in the game.
TBH, the entire archery line needs to be taken out back, shot, and zombiefied into something that isn't so marginalizing. In my main game, we have 10 players. The archer does over 50% of our entire party's damage.
On the other hand, there are a few spells that stop archery dead in its tracks. Clustered shots is powerful, but as an archer, you've already got an arsenal of arrows for the purpose of bypassing damage reduction anyway. In the end, all you're really doing is making a feat that allows a fighter to do what a ranger can do by casting versatile weapon.
Blatant and completely unecessary power boost to archery, zen archer in particular. Really wish UC/UM (and APG to some extent although less of an issue) had stuck to expanding options rather than power level.
Just buy your different material arrows damnit!
Yeah, well. If buying different material arrows is the answer already, what's the problem with getting the feat instead? Although I guess DR/alignment or DR/damage type would get circumvented almost completely.
How is the archer getting 4 shots and hitting with all of them at level 6?
With Rapid Shot and Many Shot you'd have +4/+4/+4/-1 to hit. Given a Clay Golem is AC 24, that's some high rolls. Even with Weapon Focus, Weapon Training, a magic bow (+1) and a Dex of 20, you're only at 50% to hit with your good attacks, never mind the last one. IF they all hit, it's great damage, but getting them all to hit is tough. Penetrating Strike is much more reliable.
I apologize, my example was not clear. I was just assuming a level at which the archer qualifies for both feats (and a level at which clay golem is an appropriate challenge- level 6 is far too low for a CR 11 monster).
Assume for this example the archer is level 12, and therefore qualifies for both Penetrating Strike (requirements: BAB +1, Weapon Focus, Fighter level 12) and Clustered Shot (requirements: BAB +6, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot).
It does make a huge difference in the archer PC's capabilities once he gets it. I have my baddies use a combination of concealment and spells to mitigate it's effectiveness. Enemy ranged specialists can also prove effective in tying the PC archer up for a few rounds. Remember, there is more than one way to skin a kobold.
Yeah, well. If buying different material arrows is the answer already, what's the problem with getting the feat instead? Although I guess DR/alignment or DR/damage type would get circumvented almost completely.
One answer. But at least the player has to give some thought to what he buys and has some interesting resource allocation questions to think about. Without knowledges he might not necessarily know what materials to use but intelligent pre-planning provides an advantage.
Its mostly the approach. Mechanically archery in 3.? is very good. It has a few weaknesses though, DR being one. IMO its lazy design to allow that weakness to be handwaved away via a feat, YMMV. Forget caring what the thing is just full attack, rapid shot, hasted away.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
On the other hand, there are a few spells that stop archery dead in its tracks. Clustered shots is powerful, but as an archer, you've already got an arsenal of arrows for the purpose of bypassing damage reduction anyway. In the end, all you're really doing is making a feat that allows a fighter to do what a ranger can do by casting versatile weapon.The feat completely removes one of the main balance factors of bows.
It's a massive boost to already probably the strongest fighting style in the game.
TBH, the entire archery line needs to be taken out back, shot, and zombiefied into something that isn't so marginalizing. In my main game, we have 10 players. The archer does over 50% of our entire party's damage.
There are spells to shut down anyone. That's not a proper argument.
Schroedinger's Ranger has a quiver full of arrows to bypass the material DR. Not so much the combination DRs, the alignment DRs, the epic DR, - DR, etc.
But fighters! Ah yes, fighters. When thinking of balance, the game developers constantly say: "Look at CRB." So let's do that! Are there any feats that allow you to lessen the effect of DR?
Well, there's this one... That applies to basically one type of weapon. And ignores only 5 points of DR, except for -. And is meant for 12th level. For only the fighter class. That's quite a lot of restrictions. On the upside, it's available for all weapons, but many strength-based weapons at that point will be relying on large amount of bonus damage, rather than lots of small attacks with moderate bonus damage.
Shall we compare it to Clustered Shots? This is a feat that's available at level 6 or 7, so already about 50% earlier than the existing Penetrating Strike. Huge red flag right there, as it's already much earlier than the established power level of such an ability. It works only on full-attacks...but as an archer, that's mostly useless as a restriction. Only with ranged weapons...but that's just about all you'll be using as an archer anyways, so that's not a restriction. It applies to DR -, unlike the 12th level ability that we must compare it to for balance. Instead of ignoring 5*the number of attacks of DR, it's Average Damage of attack * (number of attacks - 1). The average amount of damage a bow will be doing is 4.5 without any modifiers, so it's trivially easy to get it past the 5 that Penetrating Strike grants. Now we just need to get the number of attacks 1 higher to beat Penetrating Strike much earlier than the feat is allowed. If only there were feats that granted more attacks to ranged weapons, bows in particular...If such feats existed, even a composite +1 longbow would be better served by Clustered Shots.
No, Clustered Shots is overpowered.
|
|
Kashun,
It really depends on the number of hits, and the DR.
If the DR is 5 or less, Penetrating Strike clearly wins.
If the DR is 10 then Penertating strike will lose 5 a hit while clusterd shot will need three successful hits to improve the reduction per hit in damage.
If it's 15, Clustered Shot needs to hit 4 times, and so on and so forth.
DR10 is probably the sweet spot where Clustered Shot outshines Penetrating Strike. After that, you have to hit a lot of times, which against level appropriate foes is not usually that easy, especuially on tertiary attacks.
EDIT: DR X/- also favours Clustered Shot as Penetrating Strike doesn't affect it but unless your DM likes barbarians this isn't that common.
EDIT: DR X/- also favours Clustered Shot as Penetrating Strike doesn't affect it but unless your DM likes barbarians this isn't that common.
Mr Demilich would like to have a word with you.
If we are talking about a level 12 archer then he might already have a +5 bow so he bypasses all but DR/- anyway, don't see a problem.
The math on the item is half his expected wealth (108,000 g.p/2=54,000)going to his primary magic item. On top of that you have quivers full of cold iron and silver arrows as early as level 2. DR is not much of an issue with archers at any level.
So yeah clustered shot is not something one of my players would pick up unless he is a pure fighter archer build and just has extra feats to buy stuff that 'might' come in as useful one day.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
+5 weapon at level 12? hah. That's pretty far off from what the game assumes, what with 25% of your wealth by level going to your weapons.
|
You know, we had a conversation about this yesterday in regards to the balance between the gunslinger and the average archer, and how most bow fighters will reliably far outdamage a GS. Gunslinger's gain Deadshot at 7th level, which allows them to pool all of their attacks into a single shot that adds an additional die to the damage for each one that connects is their equivalent to Clustered Shot. If you were to use the Deadly Aim feat though, you'd still only get a +4 to your total damage, whereas a fighter archer would get the Deadly Aim for each attack that hits, giving him 3x as much bonus damage (I'm assuming that the attack you make with Manyshot only gets Deadly Aim once since there's a single attack roll, but I could be wrong and it could be 4x as much) from the same feat, and the gap only widens from there. Clustered Shot removes pretty much the only balancing factor between melee and ranged fighters as well (more attacks, but each attack at lower damage so less getting through DR). So, you're not off base here in thinking that Clustered Shot is a little over the top given how strong archery currently is in the game. I've been running a lot of our current adventure in caverns and castles lately to rein in our party's Sohei archer, who at 7th level has an attack sequence +12/+12/+12/+12/+7 (Flurry with bow from Sohei, Rapid Shot, Ki point for extra attack) and hits for 1d8+1d6+8 (+1 Frost Composite Longbow Str rating +1, Point Blank Shot, Deadly Aim, Weapon Training from Sohei) and usually makes full attacks while running around on her mount to stay as far from combat as possible. Which has little to do with Clustered Shot, and a lot to do with why archers probably didn't need it in the first place :P
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There are spells to shut down anyone. That's not a proper argument.
I don't know of any spells that completely negate melee combat or spells and only those forms of combat. Could you please list a few spells that shut down any number of attackers using melee or spell combat? Bonus points if they're 3rd level or lower.
Schroedinger's Ranger has a quiver full of arrows to bypass the material DR. Not so much the combination DRs, the alignment DRs, the epic DR, - DR, etc.
Combinations are trivial for a ranger. You're really only looking at epic and untyped. The versatile weapon spell and a +5 bow get you past everything except those two. Versatile weapon and a holy weapon get you past most combination DR until you get a +5 weapon.
An archer fighter on the other hand, can only do piercing damage with his arrows. He doesn't have abundant ammunition for unlimited arrows of any type. Now, he has three feats that can bypass damage reduction at range. He'll ignore almost all damage reduction with those 3 feats.
Also, everyone is forgetting the real disadvantage to ranged combat. You use Dex to hit, and Strength for damage at a much lower rate. Composite bows with deadly aim give you Strength to damage and a +2/-1 damage/hit ratio. A two handed fighter on the other hand, gets Strength to hit, 1.5xStrength to damage, and +3/-1 with power attack. That's huge.
|
|
There are spells to shut down anyone. That's not a proper argument.
I don't know of any spells that completely negate melee combat or spells and only those forms of combat. Could you please list a few spells that shut down any number of attackers using melee or spell combat? Bonus points if they're 3rd level or lower.
Schroedinger's Ranger has a quiver full of arrows to bypass the material DR. Not so much the combination DRs, the alignment DRs, the epic DR, - DR, etc.Combinations are trivial for a ranger. You're really only looking at epic and untyped. The versatile weapon spell and a +5 bow get you past everything except those two. Versatile weapon and a holy weapon get you past most combination DR until you get a +5 weapon.
An archer fighter on the other hand, can only do piercing damage with his arrows. He doesn't have abundant ammunition for unlimited arrows of any type. Now, he has three feats that can bypass damage reduction at range. He'll ignore almost all damage reduction with those 3 feats.
Also, everyone is forgetting the real disadvantage to ranged combat. You use Dex to hit, and Strength for damage at a much lower rate. Composite bows with deadly aim give you Strength to damage and a +2/-1 damage/hit ratio. A two handed fighter on the other hand, gets Strength to hit, 1.5xStrength to damage, and +3/-1 with power attack. That's huge.
People aren't forgetting this KS, but there's also the fact that on average, a ranged character makes way more full attacks per combat than a melee character, which increases to virtually unlimited full attacks if you're playing a ranged warrior with access to a mount. A melee character can Mounted Skirmisher, sure, but you've still got to close in combat and open you (and your mount in this hypothetical scenario) up to more damage exposure than the guy who's filling people full of arrows while his mount dances around staying safely clear of melee attacks. Even in non-mounted scenarios, the ranged character still doesn't need to worry about closing for combat, or losing his full attack while dealing with mobile enemies.
See the Sohei from my post above. How many 7th level melee characters are going to have an average of 75 damage a round with a +1 Frost weapon and know that they'll be full attacking far more often than not? The Archer archetype for the fighter can get even worse with his ability to make trips and grapples with her bow and essentially lock enemies down without ever leaving her position.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
There are spells to shut down anyone. That's not a proper argument.
I don't know of any spells that completely negate melee combat or spells and only those forms of combat. Could you please list a few spells that shut down any number of attackers using melee or spell combat? Bonus points if they're 3rd level or lower.
Schroedinger's Ranger has a quiver full of arrows to bypass the material DR. Not so much the combination DRs, the alignment DRs, the epic DR, - DR, etc.Combinations are trivial for a ranger. You're really only looking at epic and untyped. The versatile weapon spell and a +5 bow get you past everything except those two. Versatile weapon and a holy weapon get you past most combination DR until you get a +5 weapon.
An archer fighter on the other hand, can only do piercing damage with his arrows. He doesn't have abundant ammunition for unlimited arrows of any type. Now, he has three feats that can bypass damage reduction at range. He'll ignore almost all damage reduction with those 3 feats.
Also, everyone is forgetting the real disadvantage to ranged combat. You use Dex to hit, and Strength for damage at a much lower rate. Composite bows with deadly aim give you Strength to damage and a +2/-1 damage/hit ratio. A two handed fighter on the other hand, gets Strength to hit, 1.5xStrength to damage, and +3/-1 with power attack. That's huge.
1) I'm going to ignore your suddenly much more specific and restrictive argument, because that path just leads to more specificity and restrictions in a vain attempt to prove the point. In any event, I'm sure the melee types wouldn't mind the suddenly highly constricted movement space the enemies have since they have to hide in wind wall.
Melee: Hold Person, stone call (good luck moving to actually be able to hit people with your non-archer!), create pit, color spray at the right levels (and since you asked about <= 3rd level spells, it will be), charm person, peace bond if done right. Even summon monster will mess with them because now they have to deal with more problems.
Spells: Hold Person, create pit, color spray, charm person, summon monster (amazing what happens when the wizard is too worried about the wolf next to him to do much else), ear-piercing scream (helloooo fort save Daze), etc.
And those are just first level spells from the wizard / sorc list.
You seem to be saying that because Wind Wall exists, archers are balanced? That line of reasoning also leads to the belief that because antimagic field exists, spellcasters aren't more powerful than non-casters. Congrats! There's a spell that can make your combat style useless. Welcome to the group of every other combat style in existence.
(A better spell to have focused on would've been Fickle Winds, which is just a stupid spell anyways)
2) Ok, so the ranger can spend his standard actions (and he will have to at the start of combat since it's not a long duration spell) and use a +5 bow (so around 15th level) to make up for this? And that somehow makes the feat balanced? Because one class has the ability to spend their actions to get around portions of it? Well OK then.
And then the ranger gets in a fight with creatures with two very different types of DR. Ho hum, better have brought some pearls of power and not mind having to use up a standard action in combat to change the damage type.
Why is this an argument for this feat, available nine levels before +5 weapons are and at a level of play where the vast majority of people play around, as being perfectly balanced again?
You seem to ignore that the melee guy has to get up to his target, and if he moves more than 5', bam! no more full attack for him, cutting his damage considerably. The archer? He doesn't need that. Medium damage, many attacks, always full attacking? That'll beat almost every melee type unless the GM decides to keep all enemies within reach of the melee guy.
|
|
^^ What Cheapy said. Ever since my group "discovered" the joys of ranged combat in Pathfinder, there have been some very grumpy melee types. Even our h.orc Barbarian, who's pushing a base damage of 2d6+30 per hit at 8th level is pretty unhappy about how consistently he's outperformed by our archer. And that's what we're really talking about here. The "sweet spot" for most play right now is between levels 6 and 12(+) and there's nothing at level 6 for anyone else that does what Clustered Shot does for the archer, which is take his larger number of attacks and minimize the effects of all DR. And while there are spells that minimize the ranged fighter a bit, you're not going to suddenly find Bestiaries full of monsters with Wind Wall and Fickle Winds, so you're still talking about a fairly narrow set of circumstances where your archer will need a little help from the rest of the party to go back to being their primary damage dealer.
| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Not all feats and fighting styles are created equal.
Other than the fact that there is dozens of ways to stop an archer with low level spells that don't give saves? Are we also forgetting about things such as swallow whole, teleportation abilities, invisibility, and many other spell like abilities? how do the other nine players only make up 50% of the rest of the damage? Are they all witches or something?
If you haven't realized most of the ultimate books are about power creep and versatility. The feat itself just makes it so you can't shut it down another way with DR. Doesn't mean there isn't other ways to stop an archer. In fact there are dozens upon dozens of ways to stop an archer from full attacking and/or even doing damage. Even so you brought up a good point that the feat itself might not be as powerful as people think considering how dr is somewhat situational and that there is different types of arrows to get past dr.
I think that the feat itself is good but there is several ways to deal with archers other than taking the lame route of putting them up against dr. I don't think archers are too strong I think martial melee is too weak. Perhaps a dwarven zen archer with steel soul and the glory of old trait might be hard to deal with though.
My only point with that first statement, Cheapy, was that wind wall and fickle winds shut down everyone using archery, not anyone. And yes, I'm saying that in a game with varying styles of combat the existence of hard counters helps add balance in combat.
In my experience, hitting has been the biggest problem for me in ranged combat. Cover, concealment, attacking into melee penalties, and provoking attacks of opportunity all hurt early on. You need 5 feats just to get around all that. You need 3 more feats to make damage comparable to a melee full attack. That's 8 feats that are pretty much requirements and I think a dedicated archer would get all of them before clustered shot. You might even be able to make a case for taking weapon focus before clustered shots since you have to hit AC every time, but don't always have to overcome DR.
Also, on an unrelated note, why doesn't anyone ever take the dawnflower dervish fighter archetype? You get to move and make full attacks. Who else can even do that? Grab spring attack and you can make full attacks and end your turn out of reach.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Weapon blanches let you bypass DR anyway, so I don't think its that big of a deal.
The archer is simply doing what all martials were supposed to do: actually make their full attacks. The 'martials suck' cry comes largely from the disparity between what they do on paper paper (three attacks at +x/+x-5/X-10) and what they do on the battlemat (move, hit once, move, hit once, hit twice, kill the thing)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
annoying and metagamey, in my view)
What on earth is metagamey about it? If your job is fighting fires you wear asbestos underwear. If you hike in the woods you take water purification tablets. If you regularly fight werewolves you bring some silver arrows. If you regularly fight gods know what then you bring the equipment that hurts gods know what.
I am also of the school of thought that clustered shots is not as good as people are making it out to be.
Getting past DR is easy. Even at level 6.
I am also of the school of thought that clustered shots is not as good as people are making it out to be.Getting past DR is easy. Even at level 6.
+1
|
I haven't seen any of my party archers use this feat yet. But I have seen multiple party archers and there's a reason why whenever they do a full attack I suddenly have to imagine a missile platform firing dozens of high-impact warheads. Archers do crazy damage in Pathfinder. Anything aligned with that is going to get examined for brokenness.
I guess the feat's major benefit is that you no longer need to worry about sourcing adamantine, cold iron, silver arrows for your quiver.
I haven't seen any of my party archers use this feat yet. But I have seen multiple party archers and there's a reason why whenever they do a full attack I suddenly have to imagine a missile platform firing dozens of high-impact warheads. Archers do crazy damage in Pathfinder. Anything aligned with that is going to get examined for brokenness.
I guess the feat's major benefit is that you no longer need to worry about sourcing adamantine, cold iron, silver arrows for your quiver.
If you think archers are broken then I suggest you find a new game. There are several others options that are more powerful than an archer.
If you're letting your archers just sit in the back and shoot arrows the entire time, you need to do some better GMing and harass those characters more in combat.
|
|
If you think archers are broken then I suggest you find a new game. There are several others options that are more powerful than an archer.
I said they do a crazy amount of damage.
Do you take that parochial 'if you don't like it leave' attitude to everything you engage in?
Seriously dude, read your posts before you hit submit. You're coming across as rude and uninformative.
If you think archers are broken then I suggest you find a new game. There are several others options that are more powerful than an archer.I said they do a crazy amount of damage.
Do you take that parochial 'if you don't like it leave' attitude to everything you engage in?
Seriously dude, read your posts before you hit submit. You're coming across as rude and uninformative.
Actually I gave plenty of advice on how to counteract archers and why clustered shots isn't overpowered. I don't take the accept it or leave it approach all of the time. However you state that you think archers are to be examined for brokenness regardless of putting their power within context of the party or even compare them to others classes. The implication was that archers were to be considered overpowered regarding their damage. I just don't believe that statements about the firepower of an archer without considering how many ways there are to counter them is very productive. especially in a thread dealing with whether or not clustered shots is overpowered. My point was that there is dozens upon dozens of ways to deal with an archer and that clustered shots isn't as powerful as people make it out to be. I'm sorry if I somehow offended you.
What I don't like about it is there is no reason not use Clustered Shot all the time. There is no penalty for using it. So my players cluster shot everything on off hand chance they do have to get through DR. I find this kind of annoying.
Actually I gave plenty of advice on how to counteract archers and why clustered shots isn't overpowered. I don't take the accept it or leave it approach all of the time. However you state that you think archers are to be examined for brokenness regardless of putting their power within context of the party or even compare them to others classes. The implication was that archers were to be considered overpowered regarding their damage. I just don't believe that statements about the firepower of an archer without considering how many ways there are to counter them is very productive. especially in a thread dealing with whether or not clustered shots is overpowered. My point was that there is dozens upon dozens of ways to deal with an archer and that clustered shots isn't as powerful as people make it out to be. I'm sorry if I somehow offended you.If you think archers are broken then I suggest you find a new game. There are several others options that are more powerful than an archer.I said they do a crazy amount of damage.
Do you take that parochial 'if you don't like it leave' attitude to everything you engage in?
Seriously dude, read your posts before you hit submit. You're coming across as rude and uninformative.
What these ways you speak of? I'm not question they don't exist I just want to know. I've struggled to counter archers both as player and gm. Only defense I've found that really works is the spell Fickle Winds.
The feat completely removes one of the main balance factors of bows.
It's a massive boost to already probably the strongest fighting style in the game.
TBH, the entire archery line needs to be taken out back, shot, and zombiefied into something that isn't so marginalizing. In my main game, we have 10 players. The archer does over 50% of our entire party's damage.
50% holy crrrap maan!
I suppose the main issue that I see in all these endless threads posted about "archers be brokez!!!!!!!" eventually boils down to:
"Archers get full attacks easier than other combat classes."
Yeah. They do. That's the point of being an archer.
You have to work harder and generally get some tactical cooperation from your party for your melee characters to get full attacks every round.
But it can be done. Then the difference between archers and melee tends to swing in melee's favor. There are just too many ways to make ranged attacks less effective. There's virtually nothing you can do to stop a melee attack once that raging barbarian is in your face.
|
|
I don't know about archers being broken. A whole combat style that can be rendered useless by a first level spell that is on every fullcasters list just doesn't seem that broken to me. Not to say that I haven't seen archer really do well in putting down an enemy. I think that cluster shot for the ability it represent is fine as written, but seeing the arguements for penetrating strike I could concede that perhaps an increase in base attack bonus requirement to like +8 or +10 might be a good concession. My reasoning is that yes, a pure archer will likely get more utility out of this, however ranged attacks are usually the primary back up of spellcaster and other classes that don't receive full attack bonuses. I don't think they should be penalized for the pure archer's prowess.
Its been a long time since i have seen a full out archer in a game and I have yet to see one in PF so I have little to add to this arguement. However this discussion is very interesting. From just the eyeball test I like the current powerlevel of archers (excluding the fact that Rangers are worse archers then 4 other classes). I plan on playing an archer soon so I guess I will see.
That there exists a counter available to a number of classes is not a good argument at all for the power level of this feat.
The GM cannot be expected put a full caster that uses up his standard action every encounter to stop the arrows, and the argument speaks nothing of the feat when the GM doesn't have a caster able to use it.
One wouldn't say that the ability to inflict ragelancepounce levels of damage is balanced because you can just use charm person on the character.
Cheapy, that's not my argument, and I don't think anyone else is saying that. That archers entire attack can be negated or drastically reduced with simple spells, cover or concealment is compared to forcing melee characters to move more than five feet and therefore lose their full attack.
Full attack for full attack archers and melee characters are pretty balanced. Counter the full attack of each, and they're still pretty balanced.
That makes them feel pretty balanced to me.
Maybe we should break the feat down and evaluate what it does and does not do.
What it does:
When you get it, it can (potentially) give you a 75% reduction in DR against your attacks. More realistic numbers are probably around 50% since you'll be hard pressed to hit with every shot in a round.
It scales with your number of attacks, so it improves with your BAB.
What it doesn't do:
It doesn't help you against everything. DR isn't the most prevalent defense, and much of it can already be bypassed.
It doesn't help you land any attacks. You're still going to be worried about hitting AC more than anything else.
It does nothing for you on occasions where you only make one attack against an enemy. This includes surprise rounds, readied actions, attacks of opportunity if you have snap shot, being staggered, killing one thing and using the leftover attack on another enemy, etc.
That's probably not an exhaustive list, but it seems to me that it's situational, yet powerful when it comes into play. That's not unusual for a feat.
EDIT: Compared mathematically, penetrating strike and clustered shots have the following relationship. 5x = y(x-1) where x is the number of successful attacks in a round and y is the value of DR the enemy has. Just a thought.