With the new ME team combining profiles, such as Bard, Tauriel, and Thorin (to name a few) should we expect the same treatment for the lotr characters? I'm mainly thinking of the three gorn profiles and the two boromir profiles. Thoughts?

Would certainly expect to see this for the LotR era profiles too - to some extent. It makes the game a bit clearer, saves space in the books and, not unimportantly, means they can reduce the number of models they need to have in production somewhat, given their mission to ensure every profile has a model.

Some profiles will have to get different wargear options depending on the list they are in (e.g. no big banner of Gondor in the Fellowship), although I would expect a number of profiles to remain seperate too - retain a caster and fighty Galadriel, but drop the second fighty one (which is all but useless in comparison anyway). Boromir and Aragorn may well retain a leader of Gondor and Fellowship profile both, but I'd expect Isildur's heir to be combined with Strider. Fellowship Merry and Pippin, and a single armoured Rohan/Gondor/Shire profile perhaps too. One White Council and one Rivendell Elrond.

In short, yes. I think they'd usually want to reduce characters to two profiles maximum, as I don't see why they would make them all into one, seeing how the entirety of Thorin's Company has second profiles (Champions of Erebor) as well.
Come to think of it, some also have the Young [...] profile, giving them three profiles anyway...

I like multiple profiles. The characters have different points values and abilities, which allows them to work in higher or lower cost armies. I do, however, feel that elimination of multiples from the main rules could be a good thing. If this happens, I would like to see scenarios similar to what BGM does, with new scenario-specific profiles that could be reused in friendly games.

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"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock." -Will Rogers

I also like the idea of multiple profiles. Profiles for the game are interpretations of the characters from the books, and there is room for multiple interpretations.

How mighty is Eomer? Having both a marshal of the mark profile and a knight of the Pellanor profile means fans of either interpretation can have their preference. There is also value in profiles for different points in character's lives, i.e. Thrain at his peak and Thrain broken, but that seems a separate matter.

All this could be accomplished with single profiles with options. For example, you don't need a "Isildur's Heir" version of Aragorn that acts as a banner for Arnor for 25pts more if you add a 25pt option to a baseline Aragorn.

I agree, it would easy to have the best of both worlds by adding some options to the characters' profiles, IE: Adding the banner option to Aragorn.

I 50/50 on this. I like that they combined some like Tauriel for example that were barely different.

I hate that they combined some like Azog. So....he had 1 fate at the battle of Azanulbizar, and while chasing Thorin through two movies? Thats bogus.

Same with Bolg. Made them less usable.

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It is good that there are different versions of characters as it allows for more choice when army building

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Azog was already dead at Azanulbizar so I'm fine with him having 1 fate for 2 movies (where he does not actually confront the dwarves except at the misty mountain which is also not by the book).

I don't mind mixing profiles but do like the variation if there is enough there.
For Eomer, his first profile does not really add anything that another captain like Hama or Gamling couldn't add or ideally, Theodred. It would be good to have the option to use him at 2 points levels though so it really depend. Definitely can't have 3 profiles, but that is only really for the main characters as they progress through the movies so that's easy enough to fix.

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Speaking of Eomer, I would like to see a strong eomer profile remain. Tolkein was very explicit in staying his skill level was on par with Gorn and Imrahil.