Far be it from me to defend 3.5e--a revision I think likely to produce a less fun and balanced game on the whole. However, I can't say I see anything wrong with this feat.
My initial thought when I read it was "how ridiculous" but when I thought about it, I realized that it will primarily come up in only a very few situations:
1. Firing past an ally into melee. No more +4 cover bonus and chance of hitting the ally.
2. Firing into a grapple. No more chance to hit your friend. (Ranged sneak attacks will be very deadly in this situation with this feat but it's pretty limited).
3. Firing at archers behind arrow slits.
4. Firing at characters with blur or cloaks of minor displacement active.
5. Firing at targets in melee range while in the area of one of the various fog or mist spells.
Of these, 1 is clearly not particularly powerful. If your ally had a +4 dex bonus or was hasted, he didn't really provide much of a cover bonus anyway (any arrow that missed by the amount of cover hit the cover but if said cover was missed by an amount equal to or less than his dex and dodge bonusses, he got out of the way and it hit the target anyway).
2. Is potentially powerful but is a reasonable thing for a feat to do. Any attempt to exploit the effect (possibly with large groups of grappling zombies supported by rogue or OotBI archers) will run into two problems: 1: the prerequisites for this feat may make it difficult for rogues to attain it. . . and OotBIs don't get as much sneak attack and usually have to be too high level for significant numbers of them to participate in an EL appropriate ambush). 2. All of that sneak attack damage (and all of the archers) become irrelevant the moment someone casts Obscuring Mist or Fog Cloud, etc.
3. Sounds impressive but 7th or 8th level archers could already hit bad guys behind arrow slits 40-50% of the time (at least my cleric archer in RttToEE could at that level). And why shouldn't a high level character be able to spend a feat to be a Robin Hood lookalike. It's not as if the situation comes up very often.
4. Blur was never worth casting anyway and cloaks of minor displacement were primarily anti-sneak attack devices (see previous note about rogues most likely having difficulty achieving this feat if the prereqs are appropriate).
5. If you're going to try firing while in melee your character deserves the sundered bow he's going to get. Or if you're an OotBI, you get to use your class features. And the feat still won't help you if you're not in melee range because you won't be able to see your target.
All told, I think this is a good feat--possibly a little strong but clearly worth taking (unlike Sharpshooting from Sword and Fist which was very marginal). This adds another reason for archers to have more than 4 fighter levels since there are now at least 4 feats an archer would probably want after weapon specialization etc. (Greater Weapon Focus and specialization, Improved Precise Shot, and Manyshot).
DonAdam said:
Note that this also makes blur useless. It used to stop sneak attacks, now it won't.
This feat won't make blur useless; it's impossible to
make blur useless because it already is in 3e (it might be worthwhile as a 1st level spell....). If you want to stop sneak attacks, do it for everyone with obscuring mist or fog cloud. It you want to get hit less cast protection from evil or shield of faith. Either way is more effective for the desired result than casting blur.
