Traveling along the Elf road through Mirkwood does nothing?

[Heilemann]

It has the same difficulty as the rest of the northern part of Mirkwood. That seems a bit odd.

[Stormcrow]

Indeed. I wouldn't change the difficulty, but I would tailor any hazards triggered to be appropriate to the path. Thus, no spider-attacks, no orcs, but natural hazards would still be allowed, as well as weird fairy-land stuff.

[Yusei]

I wouldn't change the difficulty either, but I wouldn't use the x3 time modifier, because it is a road, after all. Maybe change it to x2 or x1.5. Tales from Wilderland provides some interesting hazards, if I remember correctly.

[Beran]

Uhm, have you seen what happens to a road through a forest that isn't regularly tended to? I think the benefit of the Elf Path is that all the nasty evil things in the Forest can't approach someone travelling on it is bonus enough, yes?

[Yusei]

But if evil things can't approach, why is the difficulty on the road the same as that of the rest of Northern Mirkwood?

[Valarian]

The difficulty is Severe. It's a forest, there are still roots to trip you and tree limbs to climb over/duck under. The remainder of the forest (excluding the lands of the Woodman) is Daunting.

I'd just treat it as a road. The Elf Road is still difficult to traverse, but it's the only road in Mirkwood that still counts as a road. The Old Forest Road is longer overgrown and as dangerous as the rest of the forest.

[Beran]

I think you are viewing it as a wide throughfare which is not. The Elves have probably cut the forest back as much as they can, but even tbat would only be in certin areas. The Elf Road is not a a road that sees heavy usage, as it did in the long past. It doesn't take anytime at all for roots and undergrowth to re take the land; the paving stones are probably all busted up, the unpaved portions could be feet deep mud, bridges would be unsafe to use...in other words the infrastructure that would be in place to call it a road proper just isn't there any more.

[Glorelendil]

On the one hand you could say that the convenience of having a path is canceled out by the convenience for your enemies (i.e. bad guys know where to watch).

On the other hand I think the travel rules might benefit from a tweak. Roads/paths could carry modifiers that are applied to travel rolls (TNs or frequencies).

[DavetheLost]

For my two pennies, some of the difficulty likely lies in how easy it is to be tempted off the path... It doesn't take more than a couple of steps. Also I have traveled by old roads and paths through woods that are no longer maintained. It doesn't take long for them to start getting overgrown and tangled again.

[Robin Smallburrow]

The key word here is ELF path - this is not a "road" as humans understand i
I thought Peter Jackson captured this well in the film

Robin S