decado does have a point. In ye olde tymes, an armored fellow could easily survive several melee attacks(with certain exceptions, like claymores) because the armor made almost all of them blunt strikes. Meanwhile, an accurate **** with an arrow or bolt would hit pierce flesh, and could easily kill someone.
That said, PE is not and should not be a realistic setting. Part of the reason I hate the first bit if BG is because your party will get one-shoted by mooks with slings and bows(due to **** low-level D&D gameplay). Perhaps I'm too optimistic, but I trust that Obsidian will be able to design a system where archery is balanced to be roughly equal to melee combat and not exceedingly powerful or weak.
And in DAO, archers did kind of suck. In the expansion they were OP'd though.