By ‘stealth archer equivalent’ I mean the stereotypical easy/newbie or basic bitch way to play the game. It may be easy to pivot to and get stuck in a rut of playing that way.
I thought about this while playing Balatro. I kept trying to do creative combinations like Stone Joker and Marble Joker to see how far I could go with stone cards and pairs but pretty much always end up doing 8 Ball flushes.
I think it was Oblivion rather than Skyrim, but I remember one character I had whose stealth was so high guards would lose track of me if I entered a slightly shaded area. Archery would only improve things because then I wouldn’t have to walk up to them to kill them.
Petty sure that character could just shoot whatever I wanted and just sit there, not even that far away, and anyone who noticed the shot would give up looking pretty quickly. Don’t think it was any different for walking up to them and stabbing.
There might have been some stealth fortification involved.
That sounds a lot like chameleon, the spell/enchantment in Oblivion that reduced the ability of enemies to spot you. It was basically a second layer of sneaking that stacked with regular stealth.
There was a famous exploit where if you managed to reach 100% chameleon effect strength, you could literally stand there wailing on NPCs with a greatsword and they wouldn’t even notice. The AI simply wasn’t allowed to know you were there.
There’s a reason the spell was removed in Skyrim. Stealth archers could have been even more broken!
Don’t forget Morrowind where you could enchant your gear to give you a permanent 100% chameleon. Good times.