so... I should become a Magick Archer after maxing out Mage/Sorceror, right? I remember seeing talk about that earlier in the thread.
IIRC, I started my Arisen off as a Strider for her first 10 levels, did 11-70 as an Assassin, 71-100 as a Magick Archer, and am now in the process of doing 101-200 as a Sorcerer. Once I hit 200, she'll be a pretty bad-ass Magick Archer for good, but one that can rely on purely physical daggers and still stand her ground for those foes that are highly resistant to magick.
If this is your first run, I'd say do whatever, experiment with the different Vocations, and just have fun. There's no content in this game, even in Hard Mode, that requires dedicated min-maxing of any sort. Stats are important, but gear makes up like 80% of any build. Which means you can pretty much completely fuck over your stats, and so long as have good gear for the Vocation you're currently playing, and have that gear appropriately dragonforged and rarified, nothing will present itself as a serious roadblock.
That said, if you've been putting the majority of your early (1-100) levels into the magick Vocations, but are getting bored with spell-slinging, then a Magick Archer is a perfect Vocation to shift into, since all of his/her magickal bow skills and a solid chunk of the MA-exclusive dagger skills scale off the magick stat, rather than the strength stat.
Should've mentioned, I already disguised myself and only took along female pawns. The wiki said if I've killed her once she'll automatically aggro me. I'll try waiting for a week.
I'm almost completely positive that aggro can be reset. You may have to KILL them first, and then rest for however long it takes for them to respawn. All of the bandits are technically named NPCs, not regular mobs. So they respawn slower than regular enemies. I'm almost 100% sure that in my first PS3 run ages ago, I cleared out both bandit camps long before I realized they had sidequests associated with them, and yet still managed to get those sidequests done. But it's been many years since that run, and in my later PS4 runs and current Switch run, I've been careful to avoid aggroing them at all.
Edit - Did some quick Googling, and it sounds like killing her and resting for 8 full days (to be safe) should reset all aggro. Also, if you finished Maul's quest and got his badge, try leaving that in storage just in case. I don't think carrying that around would cause her to aggro, but just stash it to be safe before you try to visit her again.