I also thought the Hound of Sauron was a little weak. (Although, their Fell Abilities make them more dangerous than an Orc Chieftain.) The feeling I get from the lore is that they would be considered a "big bad" if you ran into them. Certainly able to tear apart a Troll or Great Orc. Easy ...
Ruins of the Lost Realm describes athelas like this: "Player-heroes carrying athelas and rolling HEALING to reduce the severity of the injury of a Wounded individual gain (1d). If the roll is a success, then the hero that is being cured additionally removes 1 point of Shadow. Using athelas on a...
What I want to say is: Real short swords (gladius, spatha) are much too big and heavy for Hobbits to fight with. And I don't see a problem giving their daggers the appropriate narrative weight nevertheless. I mean even Legolas is fighting "only" with a knife. So: no weapon-shaming here (w...
As an aside, most of my TOR characters have carried shortswords. This is a personal narrative choice. I play in Strider Mode and I tend to favor Rangers. The idea of sneaking and climbing around the wilderness with a four-foot steel bar flopping at your waist seems silly. (This is similar to the abs...
It's hard to see how you would represent things like Sting and the Hobbit's barrow blades without having rules for shortswords. You could call them "daggers" I suppose, but Tolkien clearly gave them more narrative weight. You mentioned that the other swords in Middle Earth were all longswo...