Disarm too Easy?

[Stalker0]

Zorro probably wasn't using Combat Expertise when he was Disarming, and he was probably fighting guys 4 or more levels below him (including the BBEG's in most cases).

Its one of the consequences of doing pen and paper roleplaying. Most combats where you can do that really cool stuff involve creatures many levels below you. However, due to the time investment of combat, most adventures only feature combats that are actually "worth it", in other words when the pcs feel challenged. So you never have those fights against the lower level creatures where you could pull off all that "movie" stuff

 

[moritheil]

When seemingly every other opponent ends up tripped, disarmed, weapons sundered, in the first round of combat, yeah it becomes boring. How fun would it be for your Fighter if you got disarmed of your speciality weapon in the first round of every battle? Even worse, if your favourite weapon got sundered? Or you spend most of every battle trying to get up against a trip-monkey?

Variety is fine, but these three forms of attack in particular are easily min-maxed to the point that they become overpowering and boring.

That's entirely the point. The players should never, ever get away with throwing trash at the DM; the DM can always throw uglier trash at them. If the group keeps getting their weapons sundered by enemies, they're going to realize exactly how annoying sunder can be, as well as needing new weapons, which will encourage them to not automatically think "sunder" every action they take.

If your players are disarming in circumstances where you think it would be unrealistic (or with unrealistic frequency), well, that's why locked gauntlets exist. Suddenly they can't disarm, and their entire strategy falls apart, forcing them to think on their feet.

A game should not have all disarm/sunder actions, but neither should it have none. The main complaint I see from you here is that there is no variety. So change things and force them to mix it up.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Many encounters with EL equal to the party's effective level have room for stylish combat. You are probably only risking a few charges off the old Wand of CLW.

I must confess, my DMs seem to only throw EL +2 (or higher) combats at us... Maybe there is something to your "worth it" hypothesis Stalker0.