Instead of having generic "strikes" or "misses" messages, or just weapon-specific ones, I'm giving each mob list vars called attacks, defends, misses, and so on... they contain text strings that are a variety of different combat related actions... the combat proc picks from among them to choose the text it outputs, making each battle different and exciting for the people who like to read them. The actual effect on the game is nil, for people who don't want to read the scrolling text, they just have to look at the part that says what damage is done.

Items also have potential combat actions. If you're using an item (weapon, shield, etc.), it simply adds them to the mix, but won't necessarily over-write your own combat actions. The style of combat I'm trying to create is action TV show/movie, where a hero might stop a swinging axe with his or her hand and follow up with a sword slash, or catch the axe with the sword and lash out with a fist or kick.

Weapons aren't going to have an actual damage dice value like in many RPGs. Instead, if you are using a weapon, it will add some general bonuses to your combat abilities, and the cosmetic change, above. Damage is somewhat abstract in this game, anyway... there's some degrees of injury, but basically, you're either hurt badly, or you're not.

Same thing for skills. If you study martial arts or boxing, you'll get some different (fancier) actions showing up in combat. If you study acrobatics, then your character will begin doing leaps, flips, and hand-stands. Again, the specific maneuvers are purely cosmetic effect... the skills will just give you combat bonuses.

You'll be able to see a basic version of this system, when I run the first test of my textMUD, hopefully tonight (Sunday night.)