There has been some suggestion that the King's Blade Reward is overpowered: as the character gets more and more skilled, he's getting a Piercing Blow pretty much every time. Bow of the North Downs, meanwhile, is very weak (in fact, is there an adversary in the LMB who carries a shield?).

I and my group were discussing this in light of our Hobbit player increasing his Valour. One suggested solution was a King's Bow Reward. It would do the same as a King's Blade, but for a bow (obviously). The thought is that is relatively weaker, since the base TN is higher and you need two people ahead of you in combat to use it (note that it wouldn't be cumulative with Fair Shot), but it's still significantly better than a Bow of the North Downs.

Is there any snag I'm overlooking here, or does that sound like a reasonably designed and balanced Reward?

I have no comment on your assessment of the King's Blade (beyond the fact that one of my Hobbits has one, and it doesn't seem unbalanced, yet), but I will point out that almost all of the orcs in the LMB use shields of one sort or another. Hill-trolls also seem to have a Parry bonus, which I assume is due to shield-use, though it is not labeled as such.

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The Parry bonus is usually mentioned as X + Y (shield type), where X is Wits + bonuses and Y is the shield bonus. I've always assumed that a Parry of X only is meant to mean that the NPC doesn't have a Shield. The Troll has high parry because he's tough.

Our PC party has 3 bow using PCs (one a hobbit with a Bow of the North Downs). Usually we can only field 2 archers, so they take turns to not be in Rearward depending on the circumstances of the fight.

You could always tweak BotND to give +1 if no shield is carried by the target.

Right. And the Hill-trolls are both listed as Parry (+1). Though it doesn't say what the source of the +1 is, I assume it's a shield of some sort.

Hm, all the cases I can think of actually say e.g. 2 + 3 (Large Shield), where the +3 is the shield value. If, say +3, on it's own was mentioned, I'd assume that's the Wits value because 1/ Wits can't be < 1 AFAIK, and 2/ if there's a shield there is always a description in brackets after the values.

Thanks for the replies - me missing the adversaries' shields was down to idiotically looking under Protection rather than Parry.

Another thread has reminded me that the BotND isn't quite as weak as I thought, given that shield bonuses are normally doubled in opening volleys - so it's potentially negating a +6 Parry bonus.

Given the different format for the Hill Trolls' Parry, I'm guessing the bonus is for when they're armed rather than a reference to a shield. The fluff refers to them being able to be disciplined, so presumably some aren't and don't use the heavy hammer.