A few quick thoughts for consideration relating to DFA abilities/spells:

I think it might be worth re-visiting the concept of DFA in 3.1 given the fact that the implementations of the concept come with pretty heavy concerns about overpowered-ness (rightfully I think). Instead of having DFA abilities/spells completely bypass a second defense without any cap, what about adding a cap to the penalty that scaled? For instance, make maneuver cleave (and eliminate, and burn, and soul attrition, etc) test shield at a 50% penalty (instead of a 100% penalty) with a "cap" of 400-500 ranks or something. Or maybe it could work like an inverted curve, with a heavier second defense penalty at low ranks and a lighter penalty at higher ranks.

I don't know exactly where that cap should be, but I know that as the numbers scale higher and higher, the effect of total skill nullification becomes more and more pronounced. When general combat is scaled to factor in two defenses, both at 1200 ranks, and you take one completely out of the equation, things hurt a lot more than when you do the same thing at the 100 rank level. On the other hand, I think the flexibility in DFA-like attacks is really cool and they should have a very valuable niche. The added "accuracy penalty" to burn was, to me, a type of adjustment along these lines.

Regarding maneuvers in general, in PvP, they are definitely too powerful as is. They feel good against critters (10-12 shot kills went down to about 3-4 for me), but in PvP, they seem to making up huge, huge gaps in skill. For example, I can maneuver palmstrike Raikage consistently for about 16-17% vit damage despite having absolutely no chance of actually hitting him with a brawling attack, and I can't hit him with Burn, or any TM at all, despite the fact that my TM is over 400 ranks higher than my brawling. Granted, TM really, really sucks right now, so the bonus from palmstrike/cleave might not, in fact, be considerably more than 400 ranks, but it's hard to say without knowing exactly how screwed up TM is.

I really love what these abilities add to the game conceptually, but I think the numbers and precise formulas need some tweaking.

>I think it might be worth re-visiting the concept of DFA in 3.1 given the fact that the implementations of the concept come with pretty heavy concerns about overpowered-ness (rightfully I think). Instead of having DFA abilities/spells completely bypass a second defense without any cap, what about adding a cap to the penalty that scaled? For instance, make maneuver cleave (and eliminate, and burn, and soul attrition, etc) test shield at a 50% penalty (instead of a 100% penalty) with a "cap" of 400-500 ranks or something. Or maybe it could work like an inverted curve, with a heavier second defense penalty at low ranks and a lighter penalty at higher ranks.

Maybe have the amount of defense bypassed dependent on some formula of Tactics (or Tactics v Defending)?

Regarding maneuvers, I should also note that Powershot is the exception to the rule on maneuvers I've tried. It doesn't perform any better than a fully aimed shot for me. I have more crossbow than brawling and 2HE; I can connect on someone at level or bigger, like Raikage or Gort, with palmstrike and cleave but not powershot.