Lo-Fi Games

I think its possible to spice up combat a bit more within the existing system by adding a new weapon group.

Call it Trick Weapons? Or maybe Support Weapons, Dirty Weapons, or Ninja Weapons?

Whatever you want to call it this weapon group will take a more supportive role on the battlefield. What I mean by that is that these weapons will have sort of terrible stats in terms of damage but they make up for that by having disabling effects on their targets.

Two good examples would be the Kusarigama and the Slave Catch Pole.

The Slave Catch Pole is simple, the character wielding it attacks as normal in melee, but when he hits his opponent the weapon doesn't just do a little damage but also catches the enemy. Once thusly attached to an enemy the character wielding the Slave Catch Pole would continue making attacks on his turn as normal but now his attacks will try to force the enemy into a prone position, this will make the opponent who is now prone a very easy target for your other characters to attack.

The Kusarigama works similarly but slightly differently. This weapon is a sickle with a chain attached. The character wielding this will attack with it in melee, but it has two different attacks it can perform, a chain attack that entangles the opponent or a sickle attack which is just a normal attack that deals a little bit of damage. Entangling the opponent is the more significant property of the weapon, which will disable the bodypart that it attacks/entangles, possibly taking the opponent out of the fight or making him an easier target.

The goal of these kinds of weapons is supportive, their damage could be nonexistent or just very low. It depends how good the entangling effect of the weapon is. You can add a variety of weird weapons to this group, various Kusarigama's, the Slave Catch Pole, just a Chain or Spiked Chain, Nets, a very short range (melee) Harpoon Gun with rope or metal wire attached. You've got options, as long as its some kind of entangling weapon.

The entangling portion could also be of various strengths, for example the Slave Catch Pole could deal no damage at all but it has a very strong entangling effect vs the Kusarigama which has a weak entangling effect but still deals some ok damage. Entangling could have a variety of effects, from completely disabling a body part to merely causing some kind of penalty associated with that body part.

The biggest value of adding these weapons is that melee target priority finally becomes a thing in Kenshi, now you can have a few of these weapons in your army and aim to attack high priority targets with them to make it easier to defeat those targets. And as long as the damage of these weapons is low or nonexistent enough they won't replace the need for all the normal weapons we already have, they will simply play a supportive role.

Chains and Nets

A Chain, Hooked Chain, or Spiked Chain as a support weapon.
A Chain could be a weapon that when used could become some kind of bondage item on your opponent, kind of like the shekels we already have. When an attack with a chain weapon is made the attacker attempts to bind the opponent with it, this would replace the equipment on the body part hit with the chain weapon and as long as it remains equipped in this way it will affect the opponent with a penalty. Or maybe the fact that the opponent has lost a piece of equipment is already enough of a penalty on its own.

The Hooked Chain variant could be a chain weapon that can't be removed during combat. For example, other chain weapons could have a chance of being removed as part of the opponent's attacks during combat, every time the opponent attacks he gets a chance to remove the chain and thus any negative effects of it. But the Hooked Chain could not be removed in this manner, this will have to be done manually after combat.

The Spiked Chain variant could inflict damage to the opponent every time the opponent makes an attack, it would only deal damage to the body part that it entangles.

Of course once these weapons attach themselves to your opponent they will no longer be in your equipment, so you'll have to fall back to a secondary weapon or martial arts.

A Net, Weighted Net, or Bladed Net as a support weapon.
A Net could be a reusable sort-of-one-use weapon favored by martial artists. Equipped only in your Weapon I slot, when you make a successful attack with a net weapon the weapon is removed from your inventory and placed in your opponents inventory, as long as its in the opponents inventory the opponent is considered entangled and will suffer some kind of combat penalty until the net is removed. Because the weapon is no longer in your weapon slot your character will switch to either martial arts or his side arm in the Weapon II slot and continue to fight the opponent the normal way.

If you miss the attack with the net, you could either have the character keep the net for the next attack or have the net be dumped on the ground.

Once combat is over opponents will remove the nets from their inventories and just dump them on the ground, or if you won the combat you can open their inventory and loot your net weapon back to use it again in the next fight.

The different types of net could have different effects, for example the Bladed Net could be a real nasty piece of work, it would have the same entangling effect but it will also damage the opponent any time the opponent makes an attack. It would only need to be a small amount to be useful, like 5 or 10 damage per attack, this damage would be applied to every body part, this makes for a possibly doomed opponent. To make this effect not too powerful have this damage interact with the Harpoon resistance stat of armor, that way the armored opponents won't be bothered by this effect at all since such a low about of damage is easy to completely prevent.