Refining Skeletons: Finite Collectible Arrows / Picking up Skeleton Arrows

First, this is a sort of a “single idea, two parts” thing, as the one idea requires the other. Not two unrelated ideas. I hope that’s okay.

That said, I’d like to suggest a two-part idea, that being the reworking or refining of Skeletons’ arrows. The first part is giving skeletons a limited or finite number of arrows to facilitate the second part: allowing for the arrows shot by skeletons to be collectible by a player.  Here’s what I suggest in bullet point form:

• Arrows shot by a Skeleton can be picked up by a player.
  
  
• To counter the now potentially limitless number of arrows, Skeletons will have a limited number of arrows in their inventory. I’m thinking starting around 3-4 arrows and going up depending on difficulty and increasing with local difficulty. (I went with 3-4, because I personally can usually kill a skeleton before or at 4 skeleton-shot arrows when in close combat, making for a subtle change while still leaving the arrowless behavior possible/likely.)
  
  
• This opens possible additions to the combat mechanics such as: making Skeletons able to collect arrows, both the Item and entities. This could allow for a little more dynamic AI such as: If a Skeleton is out of arrows and there are no arrows around, they will turn to melee attacks, as they do when they have no bow. But if there are arrows within some distance and within view/line of sight, whether an item or an entity, they will go after the arrows over a melee attack.

-- I’m not sure how the drops should be handled. Should Skeletons drop all arrows they have in their inventory, or just the 0-2 they normally drop, or possibly some function of the two? (As a skeleton could potentially be carrying many arrows.)

This would allow for a little more interesting combat with Skeletons. It also adds the possibility of being able to collect the arrows shot at you from a skeleton and fire them back at the skeleton, convenient if you were out of arrows. Mobs already have inventories and Villagers have an item collecting behavior and the skeletons already have a melee attack/behavior, so I don’t think it should be too difficult to implement.

                I’m a bit worried that it might make them seem unusually intelligent compared to the other hostile mobs, but I think it will be okay as most interactions will probably stay the same.