I've seen GM's in PFS do it in games and overlooked it, but always treated these combat maneuvers that they couldn't be done with a weapon. I just opened up my Advance Players Guide and don't see anything that says you can use these combat maneuvers in place of a melee attack, or use them with a weapon.
I was shown this article writing about combat maneuvers, and it is pretty weird in my opinion.
http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lcom
It writes as if trip weapons are the only weapons that you can apply your bonuses on while making a CMB with a weapon, but trip weapons don't say that at all, but rather just allow you to drop your weapon if you fail your trip. By the rules you can already use your weapons bonuses to sunder, disarm, and trip maneuvers, so what's going on in this article?
Anyways, it goes on to say that the trip special feature on the weapon lets you use your weapons bonuses on reposition and drag maneuvers, but how are you applying these bonuses if you're not even using the weapon to preform the maneuver in the first place? Is this just assuming you have a feat or some class feature to do it? Am I missing something that allows these maneuvers to normally be performed with a melee weapon?
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No, the blog post says that, unlike normal, you can use a weapon with the Trip property to also perform drag and reposition maneuvers, so that the weapon bonuses apply.
Normal: Drag and Reposition are done without any weapon modifiers, as most weapons are not suitable for these maneuvers.
Special: The Trip property for weapons also contains the Drag and Reposition properties, as it was decided that, in general, any weapon designed to trip an opponent would also be suitable to be used to move them around, aka Drag and Reposition.
Some history that might be useful:
Until that blog came out, any weapon could be used to make a Trip attempt but none of the weapon bonuses applied. Only if the weapon had the Trip property could its bonuses and feats apply to a trip attempt. With this blog, that decision was reversed. Now all weapon can be used to make trips, and apply their bonuses and feats. In order, partly, to compensate for the serious hit that the Trip property took, since it didn't give a +2 bonus to Trip attempts, unlike the Disarm weapon property, instead of leaving the Trip keyword to just mean that you could drop it instead of falling prone on a badly failed trip, they gave the Trip keyword access to being used to work for Drag and Reposition maneuvers.
If you look at most weapons with the Trip keyword, you will notice that they tend to either be flexible (flail, whip, heavy flail, etc.) or have a hook built-in (fauchard, sickle, scythe, etc.) that can be used to not just pull someone off their feet (Trip), but move them around (Reposition) or pull them toward you (Drag).
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It writes as if trip weapons are the only weapons that you can apply your bonuses on while making a CMB with a weapon,
How so? I'm not getting that at all.
Anyways, it goes on to say that the trip special feature on the weapon lets you use your weapons bonuses on reposition and drag maneuvers, but how are you applying these bonuses if you're not even using the weapon to preform the maneuver in the first place? Is this just assuming you have a feat or some class feature to do it? Am I missing something that allows these maneuvers to normally be performed with a melee weapon?
If you have a trip weapon, you can use that weapon and its specific bonuses to perform reposition and drag maneuvers. If you have a class feature that specifically says you can use a weapon to perform a particular maneuver, you can use that weapon and its bonuses on the check. Otherwise, you cannot use your weapon for maneuvers other than disarm, sunder, and trip, and thus cannot gain weapon-specific bonuses.