So we have these two feats that essentially do the same thing, yet are considerably different in value.
Rapid Shot
Pros: A second attack
Cons: -2 on all attacks, PBS is sort of a feat tax, though not half bad.
Two-Weapon Fighting
Pros: A second attack, eventually can get more attacks further in the feat chain.
Cons: -4 on all attacks if you use one-handed weapons, -2 if you switch down to light. Dex 15 is a high prerequisite for a melee character that relies on Strength for hit/dmg, a second weapon is a second large expense, improved and greater TWF require ever higher Dex scores which means your strength will fall behind.
In my opinion TWF is decidedly worse than Rapid Shot, since it denies you accuracy and damage and costs you double. What if we had a melee version of Rapid Shot, something like:
Rapid Strike
Prerequisite: Dex 13, Str 13, Power Attack, +1 BAB
Benefit: When making a full-attack action with a melee weapon, you can attack one additional time this round. All of your attack rolls take a –2 penalty when using Rapid Strike.
The problem is that you can have wildly different powered melee weapons. The design of TWF is to keep you from getting extra great sword attacks at the same penalty as a dagger.
Ranged weapons are far less trouble in this regard; they are 1d6 or 1d8 and it costs more to get ones that can have a strength bonus (which is likely lower than your dex if you're an actual bow user, thus requiring two stats to be able to do notable damage from a single arrow).
"Rapid Shot is obviously too powerful. Let's make a melee version!"
Rapid Shot shouldn't be. It's a legacy from when ranged weapons were a joke. Archery in Pathfinder is significantly improved, and my personal preference involves dumping Rapid Shot and Many shot--they're just too strong, especially compared to melee options.
Oh, also note that if you're throwing weapons or, say, using two repeating hand crossbows or something, you can combine TWF and Rapid Shot.
Simplest fix in the world, and common-sensical as well...
Track ammo.
FWIW, in our campaign, we have Improved Rapid Shot and have replaced Multi-shot with Double Shot which allows two arrows to be fired at once as a standard action. But we track ammo. It gives characters who have invested in archery a nice option and those whom have invested heavily in archery an ability to really put out some burst damage - but its not sustained burst damage over time which evens things out.
I have found the easiest way to deal w/ archer characters doing excess damage is to design areas w/ lots of stuff in them. Those cover bonuses do help out a lot to reduce ranged damage. Also, if the group is in a forest the archer may need to move to get a clear shot through the trees (and 10 ft means no full attack!).
"Rapid Shot is obviously too powerful. Let's make a melee version!"
Or arguably, it's powerful enough and TWF is far too weak.
Simplest fix in the world, and common-sensical as well...
Track ammo.
Ammo is basically free and weighs nothing, it's no more a concern than spell components in a pouch.
I did take into account the further TWF feats, I made a note of them in the cons. The Dex required goes from 15 to 17 to 19, and that's subtracting from your strength which you use to hit (and damage, but the archer also needs Str for damage so I'll discount that). Sure maybe you can flank for +2, but that just makes up for the to-hit bonus you'd normally have if you didn't have to boost your Dex from 15 to 19.
I consider the ease of full attacks with a ranged weapons to balance for the higher weapon die would be able to Rapid Strike with, since the meleer has to take a full move more often than the archer.
I forgot to put in Cons of TWF that the second weapon only adds half of your already taxed Str, while the Rapid Shot adds full Str.
People are comparing Manyshot to Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, and that's a pretty fair comparison. The difference is the consistency of Manyshot (it adds onto your first attack at no additional penalty) while it is unable to crit (well, the first arrow can still crit, but you cannot double crit off a single attack roll), while the Improved TWF gives you a another attack roll and thus a another chance to crit, albeit it's at your iterative attack roll, thus another -5 to hit). It's pretty easy to see which is the stronger feat here, and again, who can more easily full attack.
Some of the balance comes from the fact that you have to deal with cover and never gain the benefit of flanking with Rapid Shot. You also need a third feat, Precise Shot, to avoid taking another -4 penalty to most of your attack rolls.
I don't know about your games, but I've never even seen an enemy 1200 feet away. However, my archer has had to deal with cover in almost every combat he's participated in.
The real feat imbalance is between Many Shot (that gives you weapon damage AND all of your damage bonuses) and Vital Strike. If the Vital Strike line worked like Many Shot, that would go a long way towards balancing out ranged with melee. The real benefit archers have over meleers is that archers can full attack far more often since they don't need to close with their enemies.
Well if you never seen enemy 1200ft it because +1 to Perception check per 10ft so it Perception check DC 120 for just just for range. I do not care what your BaB is. If you can not sense it you can even think about targeing it.
As far as Precise Shot feat gose play smarter.
1)Shot first. If your shooter you should have high DEX and most likely go before the melee guy's at lest 20% or 30% time
2)Shot some thing else not in melee
3)Delay till after melee person is done with attack and have them 5ft step back to make hole.
4)If a huge size monster it is eazy to shoot square that is not in melee.
I played group gamer sinse 3rd ED that have 20 year on averge gaming experince and never take Precise Shot cause it easy to work around it or with out it. At most we get caught once or twice per combat. For that rarity, I do not think it worth wasting the feat.
I would get Craft Wounderous item and Craft Belt +6 DEX and Bracer of Archery and get the +4 to hit all the time for one feat vs spending a feat to not geting -4 some of the time.
Some of the balance comes from the fact that you have to deal with cover and never gain the benefit of flanking with Rapid Shot. You also need a third feat, Precise Shot, to avoid taking another -4 penalty to most of your attack rolls.
I don't know about your games, but I've never even seen an enemy 1200 feet away. However, my archer has had to deal with cover in almost every combat he's participated in.
The real feat imbalance is between Many Shot (that gives you weapon damage AND all of your damage bonuses) and Vital Strike. If the Vital Strike line worked like Many Shot, that would go a long way towards balancing out ranged with melee. The real benefit archers have over meleers is that archers can full attack far more often since they don't need to close with their enemies.
Improved Precise shot eliminates cover penalties for any but total cover. Eleven Accuracy allow to re-roll the miss chance for concealment. Cluster shot allow you basically ignore DR for any arrow after the first. Point blank master allows you flank and still shot with out provoking a attack opportunity. Add in the arcane archer for seeker arrow and phase arrow.
People complain about full caster at high level. Archers cause me more pain than casters. Ran archers against my group and it was almost a TPK as ranged and stealth for really good ambush. At a short range of 100 feet that adds +10 to the stealth DC.
Something to note.
Level 20 TWF gives you 8 attacks.
Level 20 ranged gives you 6.It's just that many shot is incorrectly prerequisites to 6 BAB instead of 11.
You can also TWF with falcata's which are exactly twice as good as bows and even more so to the fighter.
TWF is balanced around the assumption you'll make it to higher levels. Bows are front loaded to the portion most of the players play the game at. It's a perception thing.
Bows are not font loaded vs 2 weapon fighter it that are alway better
Level 20, 2 weapon fighter, with haste get 9 attack per round.
Level 20, acher fighter, with haste get 7 attack per round.
In most 4 round fights the melee get full attack 2 twice and single attack twice so that 20 attack in 4 rounds.
In most 4 round fights the archer get full attack 3 times and single attack once so that 22 attack in 4 rounds.
That 2 attack per fight advanage for the Archer.
Feat tax melee 3 feats (Two Weapon, imporved, Greater)
Feat tax archer 2 or 3 feats (Point Blank*, Rapid Shot, Many Shot)
*Some Class/archetype let you skip this feat and it gives +1 to hit and +1 to damage if your targe is with in 30ft
With that in mind feat tax advanage archer.
Weath or gold mangemt if both archer and two weapon fighter can spend same total gold per level and weapon.
At level 20 the two weapon fighter will have +8 and +6 weapon or 2 +7 weapons.
At level 20 the Archer will have +10 Bow.
Weath or gold mangemt advanage archer.
Over coming DR material type.
The 2 weapon melee type has to spend alot more gold make there weapon cold iron, sliver, Adamantine or magic.
The archer has to just buy arrows much cheaper.
Over coming DR material type. Advanage Archer
Stat minums
The 2 weapon melee type need minum of 19 DEX.
The Archer type need minum of 17 DEX.
Stat minums advanage Archer
Bottom line Archer win every time.
Durable arrows or a friendly mage casting Mending fixes this.
I actually wouldn't bring up ammo as a balancing factor as it's also a strength. You can buy special material arrows and blunt arrows to get around a bunch of DR while still benefiting from your main weapon's enhancements on them (and any weapon related feats such as weapon focus/specialization), unlike meleers that need a golfbag of weapons that don't come cheap for the same issues.
Simplest fix in the world, and common-sensical as well...
Track ammo.
FWIW, in our campaign, we have Improved Rapid Shot and have replaced Multi-shot with Double Shot which allows two arrows to be fired at once as a standard action. But we track ammo. It gives characters who have invested in archery a nice option and those whom have invested heavily in archery an ability to really put out some burst damage - but its not sustained burst damage over time which evens things out.
In our King Maker Campaign we tracked arrows. We found more than we could ever use. Even with our archer firing 5 or 6 arrows a round.
I think you drastically over-value flanking. Flanking is +2 to hit. If you want to TWF with longswords (a 1d8 weapon, like the longbow), you're taking -4 on all attacks. So if you flank, you're only coming even with the longbowman. The high Dex prereqs for TWF have an opportunity cost to the Str bonus of TWFer, further reducing his to-hit relative to the archer.
There might be a feat the Archer needs to be able to fight point-blank (which is mostly useful to counter Step Up opponents as otherwise a 5ft step will do fine, so let's say Snap Shot to be able to make AoOs), but the TWFer needs Double Slice to add his full Str to his extra attacks. Let's call it even and pretend that the Archer won't be able to get a bunch more AoOs by continuing down the Snap Shot tree.