Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1038781Certainly true in Pathfinder.  Instead of "I hit" every round, I say "I power attack" every round.

Whee.

I've been playing since 2e, and it's always been that way.  Find the best 'move' and stick with it.  It's why the 'meta' promotes the 'Save or Die' (Or Suck, or whatever, the Shutdown Spells, like Sleep, Charm, Cloudkill or Flesh to Stone etc.) abilities over raw damage.  They're reliable (they reduce the chance of death/target removal by one die roll, a Saving Throw, vs. a Roll to Hit, and then Roll for Damage) and more effective (because if they succeed, the fight is over, whereas most monsters can survive one damage roll) and always useful.

Surely we could come up with a system of limiting the manuevers and/or a randomisation. After all, in a fight you don't always have the opportunity to perform said manuever because of distance, timing, angle etc.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1038850Surely we could come up with a system of limiting the manuevers and/or a randomisation. After all, in a fight you don't always have the opportunity to perform said manuever because of distance, timing, angle etc.

No, but games are abstracted to a point where it doesn't matter other than the best 'move'.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1038850Surely we could come up with a system of limiting the manuevers and/or a randomisation. After all, in a fight you don't always have the opportunity to perform said manuever because of distance, timing, angle etc.

A lot of other games have already done that by making combat options that interact, but D&D uses an exception-based model (where every spell or combat maneuver is its own self-contained rule).

For example, Fate and Savage Worlds both have options to increase the effectiveness of your "best" attack by doing something else first (tricks, feints, "create advantage"). Weapons of the Gods/Legends of the Wulin requires you to spend points of Chi in different flavors to use your biggest attacks but you gain those points by using weaker attacks to set them up first.

At one point I had a rule for flails ignoring shields in your AC, but I dropped it as no one used them anyway!
I used to allow 2 attacks a dagger if you were a fighter or thief.
I increased the damage of xbows by one dice size (1d4+1 became 1d6+1)
I allowed an extra attack with short, long or composite bows
Not weapon changes per say, but I allowed an extra +1 to hit if you added proficiency in a weapon you were already proficient in.

That's about it, I think. Tweaks, rather than a whole new concept.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1038852No, but games are abstracted to a point where it doesn't matter other than the best 'move'.

Quote from: Xúc xac;1038871A lot of other games have already done that by making combat options that interact, but D&D uses an exception-based model (where every spell or combat maneuver is its own self-contained rule).

What do you think of Dungeon Crawl Classic's Mighty Deeds of Arms?

Several of these manuevers are linked to particular weapons called Weapon Specific Deeds (Core rule book p96)

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1038850Surely we could come up with a system of limiting the manuevers and/or a randomisation. After all, in a fight you don't always have the opportunity to perform said manuever because of distance, timing, angle etc.

Maybe this will help get things started, or maybe it will remind you of something that another game does similarly and/or better, but in my game we have it setup so that fighters and similarly martially-inclined classes can choose talents that let you automatically use certain maneuvers if your total attack roll is x or higher (these are optional, so if you don't want to deal with them you don't have to): the idea is that you roll, and if you get high enough it means that you found an opening and can try to exploit it.

So, for example, Disarm requires a 20 or higher, so whenever your total attack roll is 20 or higher your target has to make a save or drop something. You can try to spend your turn disarming an opponent anyway (uses whole turn and they get a save), it's just that having the talent lets you do it automatically as part of a standard attack.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1038932What do you think of Dungeon Crawl Classic's Mighty Deeds of Arms?

Several of these manuevers are linked to particular weapons called Weapon Specific Deeds (Core rule book p96)

Don't play DCC, can't actually say.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1038781Certainly true in Pathfinder.  Instead of "I hit" every round, I say "I power attack" every round.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1038852No, but games are abstracted to a point where it doesn't matter other than the best 'move'.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1038850Surely we could come up with a system of limiting the manuevers and/or a randomisation. After all, in a fight you don't always have the opportunity to perform said manuever because of distance, timing, angle etc.

Special combat tricks have a real fine line (particularly for those in the books, which also have to contend that they can't foresee the gaming style of any given group the way that house-rules can be targeted) to be good enough not to be basically forgotten (or ignored as unnecessary complexity), while also not becoming a 'new normal/always optimal choice.'

In old(-er) A/D&D, it was the WvsAC table (too fiddly, just use the longsword or 2H sword, they do the most damage) that was ignored, and specialization, when it came in, simply became the new normal (for single classed fighters at least). Two-weapon fighting vs weapon and shield vs two-handed weapon at least was a choice. In 3e the Tome of Battle was absolutely a legitimate attempt to rebalance martial classes to be on par with spellcasters. Of course, there were something like 3 good builds using the same 3 abilities in that one as well, so it was just replacing X with X+10 and seeing how that compared to Y. 5e has ranged and melee 'power attack' feats which are, as usually, almost always the best possible decision.

I generally don't have any special weapon qualities aside from those I mentioned in the OP.

Though in L&D shields get bonuses to parrying, for obvious reasons.