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Beornings are people from the mountains and valleys that we presume, use to hunt. Check Beorn information in Loremaster Book to find hints about his vows.

The stats we see are for Hobbit adventurers, not for common folks.

Agree with Falenthal completely.

Both Feanor and Morgoth fell to Shadow, so Shadow is something much greater, older, and more insidious than merely being a servant of Sauron.

You have to keep in mind that those skill values are for adventurers (and there only those played by the players). It does not mean that all Beornings start with 3 in Hunting, but the player characters do. Not all Hobbits start with 1 in Travel, but the Hobbit adventurer does.

As to missing skills: Elves of Mirkwood don’t start with a score in Courtesy only if you choose not to assign XP during character creation to Courtesy. Again, not all Elves start with 0 in Courtesy, but there are adventurers (and player characters) that do. This is not how all members of that culture are.

I think Marko's point is a good one. The template for the cultures are used for creating PCs. You can use them for other purposes if you like but their primary purpose is for creating player character adventurers.

I've read very interesting points, and besides this is probably one of the best RPG forums I've been in a long while: polite, long-experience players with lots of common sense, and also lots of answers

Now another meta-game consideration: what do you think about Resistance - Hope combinations?

I've seen that the balance between the races has been obtained considering 1 point of Hope as roughly equal to 2 points of Resitance, so the cultures are balanced like:

Beornings 24 Resistance, 8 Hope --> 24/2 + 8 = 20 points
Dwarves 28 Res, 6 Hope --> 28/2 + 6 = 20 points
Hobbits 16 Res, 12 Hope --> 16/2 + 12 = 20 points
Woodsmen 20 Res, 10 Hope --> 20/2 + 10 = 20 again,

with the exception of Bardings and Elves that score 19.

Do you agree? Maybe this has been already pointed out long ago, but I wanted to share it anyway. Sounds like a nice house-rule in case anybody wanted to create new races or cultures

Interesting.

Does that mean bardings and elves could do with either another point of hope or 2 more points of endurance to match the balance?

Michebugio wrote:I've read very interesting points, and besides this is probably one of the best RPG forums I've been in a long while: polite, long-experience players with lots of common sense, and also lots of answers

Now another meta-game consideration: what do you think about Resistance - Hope combinations?

I've seen that the balance between the races has been obtained considering 1 point of Hope as roughly equal to 2 points of Resitance, so the cultures are balanced like:

Beornings 24 Resistance, 8 Hope --> 24/2 + 8 = 20 points
Dwarves 28 Res, 6 Hope --> 28/2 + 6 = 20 points
Hobbits 16 Res, 12 Hope --> 16/2 + 12 = 20 points
Woodsmen 20 Res, 10 Hope --> 20/2 + 10 = 20 again,

with the exception of Bardings and Elves that score 19.

Do you agree? Maybe this has been already pointed out long ago, but I wanted to share it anyway. Sounds like a nice house-rule in case anybody wanted to create new races or cultures

Yes, I already noticed this disparity. I don't mind it too much, since it doesn't make either Elves nor Bardings unplayable in my book. Dwarves low Hope score is much more crippling in my book.

Michebugio wrote:I've seen that the balance between the races has been obtained considering 1 point of Hope as roughly equal to 2 points of Resitance...

I apply a house rule in my game reducing Hobbit base Endurance by 4 points and increasing the Hope by 2, creating a more noticeable gap between them and the other races, so it's certainly a pattern I noticed.

Michebugio wrote:I've read very interesting points, and besides this is probably one of the best RPG forums I've been in a long while: polite, long-experience players with lots of common sense, and also lots of answers

Now another meta-game consideration: what do you think about Resistance - Hope combinations?

I've seen that the balance between the races has been obtained considering 1 point of Hope as roughly equal to 2 points of Resitance, so the cultures are balanced like:

Beornings 24 Resistance, 8 Hope --> 24/2 + 8 = 20 points
Dwarves 28 Res, 6 Hope --> 28/2 + 6 = 20 points
Hobbits 16 Res, 12 Hope --> 16/2 + 12 = 20 points
Woodsmen 20 Res, 10 Hope --> 20/2 + 10 = 20 again,

with the exception of Bardings and Elves that score 19.

Do you agree? Maybe this has been already pointed out long ago, but I wanted to share it anyway. Sounds like a nice house-rule in case anybody wanted to create new races or cultures

While your numbers are correct, keep in mind that these scores are somewhat meaningless unless you add the Heart value.

For example, Bardings and Elves are both 22 End/8 Hope, but once you add Heart Bardings have 3 Endurance and Hope points above the Elves (on average: the spread is from+1 to +5).
To make a long story short, any simmetry goes out of the window.

...on the other hand, if you want the whole story, adding an average Heart* value to your numbers, we got:
Bardings: 28
Beornings: 27,5
Dwarves: 24,5
Elves: 23,5
Hobbits: 29
Woodmen: 27,5

*Average Heart: every culture got 3 possible Heart values. I simply picked the middle one.

(ps: hope my math is ok, I'm in a hurry... )

The fact elves have a 19 while ALSO having minimal heart does combine for one of the worst combos in the game, you must admit.