[Etharius]

After some consideration of where this topic should be opened, I decided it must go in the Books forum because of simply the level of detail that i will soon ask of you.

I have only so far read LotR and I have decided to take on a project that requires a very good and realistic understanding of the Military organisation, skills and all other details of all of the races involved in fighting in The LotR.

The project or course being, a game.

I need to know which races used which weapons, how effectively and any other comments you may have. Whether they are the Orcs of Mordor or Gandalf the White himself, i need information.

However, in order to make this information immediately effective, i would ask you kind fellows to spare information in a comparative tense. For example, you may choose to say "Boromir is very strong compared to most normal men".

I am aware that there is literature available for details on the army and composition of the Rohirrim, but I have other reading on priority.

That is objective 1 of this topic. Objective 2 is somewhat of a task to whoever is willing, so its more of a challenge. You don't HAVE TO attempt it.

I need you to do some serious thinking here. I need a complete (or incomplete) list of all of the forces in middle earth with beside them, a score. A score will need to be provided for the following attributes necessary for war:

> Fighting- (The extent to which this person can inflict effective damage to another person in battle, how hard they hit, consider their weapon and physical strength)

> Defence- (How hard this person is to maim, beat down and kill in a fight)

> Speed- (How fast this being can run)

> Courage- (How determined is this being in its goal? What will it take to scare it?)

Those are the attributes. Its up to you really considering the actual number to use for the scoring, but you may find that using a maximum of 10 is good enough and easy. Thanks for considering this for me. As I don't have a confident knowledge in the topic myself, I may be able to give you some examples of such forces and heroes in the story:

Forces:

The Guard of Minas Tirith
Riders of Rohan
Rohan Foot Soldiers
Moria Orcs
Prince Imrahils Soldiers

Heroes:

Saruman the White
Lurtz
Aragorn
Merry
Gwaihir

Thats it. Thanks again people for sharing your knowledge. Good luck and i'll see you on the field!