Ranged combat can be tricky especially if you pick a bow.
Here's the reason:
While traveling it is impractical to keep your bow strung for a long period of time. If you're GM is vindictive (like any good GM) he'll slowly have your bow lose it's power and then if you'll be out 75 sp (if you picked up the longbow), which is a bummer. So that means that you'll be walking around with your bow unstrung.
So at the beginning of combat, if you are caught with your pants down (and let's face it, this will be 75-90% of the encounters you'll have), you'll have to string your bow and then wait your full weapon speed to shoot. This could leave you basically inactive for the first 20-30 seconds of combat, which at lower levels is practically the entire combat.
You can toss the bow aside but that means you'll have to settle for a thrown weapon or a sling.
Personally, I love the sling. Easy to ready, it's a great go-to for weaker characters and it does a moderate damage with a pretty good range. However, it'll never have the range or the damage that a bow will.
So really, the sling is great starter weapon and I usually grab it for my weaker fighters and thieves. It's not great for a character that plans on being a mainly ranged weapon as the more BPs you spend on it, the less you get in return.
You could always pick up a thrown weapon but you should be aware of a few things:
The strength bonus you get for thrown weapons doesn't make any sense. If you have strength penalty, your thrown becomes less powerful by getting a running start. You might argue to the GM that you should always get your strength bonus and then get a +3 to damage if you get a jogging start.
That makes them more effective overall.
Additionally, there is a knife and a throwing knife. A hand-ax and a throwing ax. While it is heavy implied in the rules that they are, in fact, the same weapon, it never actually makes the connection. If you can convince your GM to make them one in the same, they have the added bonus of switching from melee to ranged without having to wait your full weapon speed to attack it somebody engages you.
All throwing weapons have the same main benefit: they are fast as sin. Most you can draw and throw in under 10 seconds.
Javelin has the greatest range and range of damage but is a bit slower then the others and less likely to actually penetrate.
The throwing ax is a nice medium. It's biggest strength is that it does a fair amount of shield damage, meaning that if you're pretty swole and get a running start, you can put a dent in someone's shield.
The throwing knife is the quickest out of the three but does the least amount of damage.
I usually pick up the javelin or throwing ax for my stronger fighters, while I tend to favor the throwing knife for my more manly thieves as it doubles as a melee weapon in case someone closes with them.
The last are the crossbows. To be fair, I don't have a lot of experience with them. Crossbows roughly equal to bows except for their reloading time which is a pain. The best use for crossbows, I've found, is for NPC peons forming some sort of blockage. Since only one has to fire it, you have maybe 5 additional NPCs all reloading crossbows. Forming a battery of about 20-30 men, you can effectively lay down a constant fire.
Crossbows popularity came from the fact that it was easier and quicker to train men to use them.
I would only recommend crossbows to players that have a small following of NPCs to reload for them.
If you're set on bows, you'll find that the first few levels will be frustrating as you'll have to pull out and string your bow, which will delay when you can enter the fray.
There's a few things you can do to counter act that:
Ditch the armor entirely.
If you do then you automatically drop an initiative die.
If you're not an elf, you can pick up the Improved Awareness talent. The talent doesn't stack with class or race bonuses to the initiative die but it doesn't say anything about not stacking with the bonus gained from not wearing armor.
That means that you are starting combat at two lower initiative die (a d12 becomes a d6, which is pretty awesome). That means you'll be able to act quicker then almost everyone.
If you do go this route, I also recommend picking up the Dodge talent so that you get your Dex vs ranged attacks. That'll make it a little harder to hit you.
That won't completely negate the time you have to wait to string your bow but it'll certain be a huge improvement. Ditching your armor is not a bad strategy but YOU WILL BE SCREWED IF YOU GET INTO MELEE COMBAT.
So keep in mind the exit: that depends on the type of campaign but if you're in the forest a lot then go for Grel. Full speed through the underbrush paired with hiking/road marching plus long distance running and you will never have to worry about being caught.
Bows greatest strength is their range and damage. A long bow is the hardest hitting, quickest, and farthest reaching weapon in the book. Grab the Advanced Sighting and you gain roughly an additional 50 feet of range from which to tag your enemy.
Once you invest the BPs into specialization then you can get your shooting down to 6 seconds per shot. It's getting there that's tough.
The real difference between short bows and long bows are their proficiencies cost (which doesn't matter to you as a cleric of the Patient Arrow) and the fact that Long bow costs twice at much, which means that you won't be able to buy your long-ranged death-dealer unless you purposely stash BPs away to cash in for... while... cash. Less BPs means less talents and specializations which means you'll be less effective out of the gate.
You'll need a minimum of 15 BPs to afford a long bow without dipping into your other starting SPs. That's enough to get you +2 in everything on your bow. Pretty good if you ask me.
You can also go the route of borrowing cash from other players. I had a player do this. His reason was that his ranger was the body guard of the rogue and that the rogue wanted him to have the best equipment. This tied their backstories together and tickled my soft stop as GM, so I allowed it. This allowed him to save his precious BPs to make him a better archer.
If that doesn't suit you or your GM says no, then you can try to save some BPs by relying on your starting cash roll to mitigate the cost. It's a risk but you might be able to save enough BPs to get maybe an additional +1.
Always pick up Advanced Sighting with your bow. It's great. You can also use it to rationalize it being able to see farther and you might convince your GM to give you an extra something-something on Observation checks that require you to see you long distances. I'm a pretty hard-ass GM and even I thought it made sense.
Well, this has become a regular essay and I'm so sorry that this ballooned into the monstrosity that it's become. I hope it was helpful at the very least. We can also talk about what you can do in melee to not get curb-stomped.
