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The combat rules say to apply a negative modifier to attacks under bad situations.
Fighting in Mirkwood is, I think, a "bad situation".
But do you apply the same modifier to every weapon? I mean, I was thinking of giving the +2 to the TN to one-handed weapons (maybe also Great Spears, which are thrusting weapons) and bows, and a +4 to two-handed weapons and great bows. I consider the forest to be a worst complication for swinging weapons and encumbersome ones.
This would also explain why Woodelves use short bows and spears.
Also for Woodmen there would be a reason to choose a bow instead of a great bow and their long-hafted axe could show it's versatility by being used one-handed in the woods and two-handed in the open (the Anduin valleys).

Mirkwood with low hanging branches and tangled roots would seem to me to be a dreadful place to have to fight let alone the enervating effect of the gloom and general atmosphere. A one-handed spear and the plain bow should maybe have a single modifier and maybe not for 'natives' like elves and woodmen. Two-handed (only) weapons should get a double modifier (-4) because of the very nature of the close terrain and having no space to swing such a weapon, draw the bow. Great ideas for making Mirkwood even more unpleasant to be in.

In fact, I got the idea from this thread (viewtopic.php?f=7&t=683&hilit=bow+opening).

There are some minor concerns that I also have regarding elves, wood-men, bows and great bows.

Not necessary to repeat everything here, but after reading it's 6 pages (!) I considered the different hindrance when fighting in dense woods a simple solution -within the rules and without tweaking the RAW weapons- to make bows more appealing to those cultures.

Like Corvo there, I guess that Lorien elves use Great Bows instead of Bows from what we can read in the books.

To Legolas she gave a bow such as the Galadhrim used, longer and stouter than the bows of Mirkwood, and strung with a string of elf-hair.
-The Fellowship of the Ring, "Farewell to Lórien"

Also, in the Heart of the Wild supplement, Haldir (a typical Galadhrim at my eyes) has Great Bow.

Which leads me to wonder: if Legolas is a Wood-Elf with Bow, how can in game terms he use a Great Bow with proficiency? Maybe Wood-elves should have (Bows) as Cultural Weapons instead of Bow? Or are the Galadhrim Bows a Reward that allows it's wilder to use them with either the Bow or the Great Bow ability?

As I said, minor concerns, what very funny to discuss in forums like this.

Having just come from a thread discussing Cultural weapons and favoured weapons I can see the issues.

I can find nothing that says that a character cannot have Bow and Great Bow so while the Elves start out with only Bow they certainly have the time to develop a separate Great Bow skill and make it Favoured. In fact with time I suspect that a LM could choose to make a long-lived Elf with both Great Bow and Bow as favoured skills with the Elf choosing which type of bow to use based on whether they are in woods and forests or not. Rivendell Elves get Great bow as a starting favoured skill and we have no idea what skill set an Elf from Lothlorien might possess.

Personally I wouldn't apply penalties to fighting "in Mirkwood" in general, except for cases where the LM wants to rule for plot reasons that the party has strayed from the path into a particularly dense & tangled area.

And, of course, Woodmen prefer it.

Well, I wouldn't apply it if fighting in the Elf Path or any other open clearing, but everywhere else. Surrounded by wretched roots and low branches, bad light, dense forest that doesn't let the sunbeams pass,... Seems like a moderately hindered situation to me.
On the other hand, the real reason I was thinking of applying this penalty was to be able to make a difference between bows and great bows, and spears/one-handed weapons and the two-handed ones (swinging axes when surrounded by tree trunks, weeds, lianas and such). So to say, give an ingame reason for the use of this weapons by the wooden cultures.

Falenthal

This has been discussed before - it says quite clearly in at least two places (the core rulebook being one) that most of Mirkwood is classed as a 'dense forest', and thus the -4 penalty for being 'severely hindered' should apply to most cases. This is EXACTLY why the Elves of Mirkwood do not use a long bow, and in fact makes the Reward 'Woodland Bow' a useful one ( I recall some others in this forum wondering the use of this Reward) -

Woodland Bow (bow)
The Silvan Elves have always eschewed the great bows
favoured by many folks in the North. They prefer shorter
and lighter bows that can be bent as quickly as possible,
as in a forest the enemy can be anywhere.
You are always allowed to make one additional opening
volley, even when no opening volleys are allowed (unless
you are surprised).

I also rule that a character who uses such a bow suffers no penalty in Mirkwood. Whereas the woods of Lorien are not 'Dense woods' thus a longbow is more useful.

Robin S.

Thanks a lot, Robin. What I exactly was wondering was if the penalty should be the same for different types of weapons, but your answer clears a lot.

I think I'll go with:

-4 to 2-handed weapons (including Great Bow, but not Bow), except Great Spear
-2 to 1-handed weapons, Great Spear and Bow.

The Woodland Bow, in my house rules, would still suffer the -2 penalty.

In the new Bree supplement, there's rule in one of the adventures that can be applied to combat hindraces in general when fighting in narrow spaces:

In the cramped, narrow corridors of the Hobbit-hole,
there’s little room to swing a sword or thrust a spear. The TN
for all melee attack rolls is increased by the Encumbrance
rating of the weapon (so, +1 for a short sword, +4 for a
great axe, no penalty for a dagger and so forth).

This could be a general rule for hindrances in combat, that would range from 0 (a dagger) to 4 (Great Spear and Great Axe).

I would note that, in a way, I think the game is already designed so that the higher Fatigue threshold already represents the fact that the greater weapons are more tiresome to use, and this rule would penalize double those weapons.

But I think I'll use it, nevertheless.

If there's every a TOR 2nd edition I hope there's a rule about hindrance and weapon types; I'd love to see "Great" weapons suffer explicit disadvantages under certain conditions (like being in Mirkwood).