Do you need a bow user in a party ?

[There is no Mango]

In my first game, Lann, and Arushaele though a bit less, was the one reliable character to hit when melee or caster could not.

Even now towards the end, he is just a monster.
Furthermore, even though my woljidf and even Sheelah can reliably do damage, the lack of mobility abilities to get in range of npcs and do full attacks regularly make these characters second class to me. Far behind the sheer power of a zen archer.

Thinking about a second run, I am curious if a party without archer is viable in the game considering just how much Lann carried my ass through leveling and after.

[jlawleraz]

Different styles of play for different people, so you might get a variety of responses. I wouldn't describe it as a need, but I typically have five of my characters with bows. A couple of those will almost always use it. The others might generally be spell casters or similar but will still use their bows a lot. As you know, since this is about your second run, there are a ton of high dexterity companions and a lot of narrow areas. Bow users make a lot of sense. I agree with you that the time spent getting in full attack range is a disadvantage of melee-focused characters.

[Sev]

Archers are great for sniping dangerous enemies in the back rows like casters. Made a few 'tough' fights rather easy with 2+ ranged vital strikes (even better with true strike) on some named mage at the start.

[There is no Mango]

I mean that's my point, specialized archers like Lann are too good somehow.

Kinda trivializes too many encounters in the game really.

And so I'm wondering if a party without one is viable somehow.

Probably is ... Oh well we will see !

[zpc]

I try to always have 2 archers (real ones, not just someone I hand a bow) in my parties. At the very least Arushaele which I consider awesome build-wise. (she mostly disables all range enemies / mages in the same time it takes for the rest of the party to engage the main forces).

So far I had no luck doing it without archers - but I haven't tried a Kineticist yet. (I'm sitting on a fence until Owlcat ironed out the bugs of this class). I'd love to have a mage like class with auto cantrips to replace archers - but those have no good damage values. (or I'm missing a big feature here)

[slight001]

I run 4 ranged people and two melee.

Usually my MC is one of the Meleeists.

Thing is I find that everything just pops... I find most encounters boring. Even on the higher difficulties it just feels like I'm either an untouchable beast of slaughter or the one being slaughtered and the difference between the two isn't obvious to me until I'm reloading my save and often even then I have no clue why that enemy was more dangerous than the last few.

[Princess Pilfer]

Need?
No.
Should have?
Yes.

It's not really a matter of trivializing or not trivializing things. It's Pathfinder. It's very rocket-tagy. Either you kill that wizard *right now* or they wipe the entire party with 2 spells.

[Pipmalice / 悪気ピップ]

You can make team comps that do not use any bow users. though ranged options are nice, throwing axes(though only 30feet) are a solid dps option, you can surround people in melee and use spell casts, mid game you can use dimension door to get your team in the middle of parties and charge abilties seem to be able to do their full attack sometimes , it depends on the difficulty you're playing on, on unfair i really wouldn't limit myself to not having archers, on hard it probably be difficult early but at level 10+ you'll probably be good if you build well

Lower than that, if you have good builds you should be fine even without archers