Cargo query

A Royal Welcome, barely used, is granted an ability that permits Dwarven companions to get a strength bonus against strength 10+ minions, which is most Nazgul and many other beefy minions as well. To be able to use this more than a handful of times, a third ability has been added to let you heal up those allies with your companion's vitality.

Talent wasn't X-ed until Shadows was released, so it was clearly more of a sleeper hit than some of the other more famous choke cards.

As Decipher points out, the card leaves very little room to work with, even when attempting to nerf it. The cost of the card itself could be increased, but then it runs the risk of never having an effect (if it's discarded before the twilight is "paid off"). The exertions could be increased, but again you might just be stabbing yourself in the foot (for even less reason than usual). And, as successfully argued by members of the community, the "spot 4 for -2" clause is among one of the only reasons to bother keeping Pippin alive in FOTR block, so it's got endangered species protection as well.

One of the things we don't want to do with the PC's errata is nerf cards to oblivion. These cards are already banned, and if they are nerfed to the point of never being used then we've wasted a bunch of time and effort just to end up right back where we started.

So, we had to rework the card slightly. It now attaches to either Merry or Pippin (losing its uniqueness in the process), and requires you to play 2 copies of the card to get the same full effect as before. Since it requires more copies of the card, the exertion cost is dropped to compensate.

And then of course, good ol' Pippin is enshrined as necessary to its use, restricting its ability to be used (or abused) by the various Expanded-era Hobbit companions.