A new weapon table and mundane weapon qualities - Advice?

[Twigs]

I'm about to start working on rewriting the weapon table for an upcoming home game. Ideally I want to simplify the weapon-list trimming several of the similar options (such as the morningstar and heavy mace, darts and shuriken etc.) and assigning most weapons with a mundane special ability (brace, disarm, etc.) that make them unique and exciting.

I want to make some of the unused weapons (axes, maces, etc.) a little more powerful, or at least to fill a specific niche. I'm also considering a general "nerf" of greatswords, greataxes and their ilk, treating them as large size weapons (-2 to hit but bigger damage dice to represent their unwieldiness and to encourage the use of vital strike for a slower more deliberate fighting style.)

So first, a general question... has anyone tweaked the weapons table like this? However small I'd be interested to see what people have come up with. I know Mr. Kirth Gersen has done some tweaking in his houserules which I intend to mine for ideas. With a few new players at the table I don't want to mess with their knowledge of the game too much (i.e., no drastic changes) so I'd rather keep it to static bonuses than something more complex, like the simple/martial/exotic proficiency bonuses.

Second... and here is where I want suggestions and feedback... I'll need to come up with a few more Weapon Qualities than appear in the APG. I intend to add a "Sundering" quality to Axes and a "Bullrushing" quality to shields. However I'll have to do more than grant bonuses to combat manuevers, and here I'm a little more stuck. Power-wise I'm looking for something that's equivalent to a feat, without making any one option grossly overpowered compared to the others.

Some Considerations:

I'm considering a "Staggering" quality for delivering a stagger effect on critical hits. This is equivelant to a feat with a +13 BAB requirement, however the fact that it would only be present on relatively subpar weapons (warhammers and maces) with x3 critical strike it might just fly.

I'm also considering a full-on "knockback" quality for greatclubs and warhammers, granting a +2 to bullrush and allowing the user to not travel with the target.

Crossbows will either get the "sniping" quality (half the penalty to ranged attacks while sniping) or "armour piercing" (essentially what firearms have now, targeting touch AC within point blank range. Without any feats to measure them up to here, would you consider this to be overpowering?

As for swords I'm utterly at a loss. I could give each of them the sub-par "Deadly" quality from Ultimate Equipment, simply up the damage dice and replace all longswords with bastard swords (making them martial) to make them slightly more effective than their peers, but that just doesn't cut it for me.

That's probably enough for the original post. This is my first brush with houseruling and I want to make sure I don't do a clumsy job of it, as houserules tend to have notoriously short-lived runs at our table. I also don't want to stray too far from the core and confuse a few new players as they join other games (or confuse them with the dizzying amount of sub-par options on the paizo SRD). I'd be super keen for any feedback you can give me throughout the week, at the very least I want it done before game day!

[Twigs]

I know this isn't the most fast moving of boards, so here's a shameless bump with a link to the currently devoid of weaponry google docs document I meant to start working on tomorrow. Perhaps I'm picking the wrong our to post but I'd really love some feedback! Pretty please?

[The Terrible Zodin]

I have been wanting to do something like this myself. What I came up with is this:

Every weapon, in addition to a crit range, has a manuever range. It starts at 20 and increases for every +1 the weapon has. If the natural roll on the die is high enough the player may take advantage of a free manuever effect based on the size of the weapon.

Two handed weapons may use bull rush or sunder

One handed weapons may use disarm or reposition

Light weapons may use dirty trick or overrun (to get into flanking and what not).

If a weapon has a listed manuever effect (like many polearms) the user has the option of using that as well.

I haven't playtested it, so I don't know about any pitfalls.