It’s still a huge stretch to go from “this could possibly work, but there’s no evidence that it was ever used besides sailors often being drawn with eyepatches” to “ever single sailor on the ship wore an eyepatch, and everyone forgot why and also depicted most sailors as not having eyepatches for some reason”.

Not D&D-specific, but one party member with Quietus and one with Obtenebration was absolutely nasty in Vampire back in the day. There have been several rulebook revisions since then, so I have to assume those powers either suck or no longer exist now.

Oh I doubt they all used that but it could’ve been a backup/specialist method dependent on ship or crew member. It wouldve been enough that when combined with actual eye injuries which could’ve been caused by any number of things it got stuck in on a cultural level, it’s like how under shirts got labeled tank tops because enough tankers kept getting too hot in their tanks so they stripped down to their skivvies. Doesn’t take much for memetics to kick in on such things, which when combined with ill records can cause a weird dissident of information.

when combined with actual eye injuries

Doesn’t take much for memetics to kick in

That alone is enough to explain our observations (the trope).

So, to summarize your point, if this happened but not very often, it wouldn’t leave any evidence. We have no evidence, therefore it must have happened, just not very often.

Probably, there may be evidence if you cross referenced a bunch of old journals, possibly medical logs, and maybe familial oral traditions. But yeah without going through largely inane and scattered documents it’s probably one of those self perpetuating memetic things that pops up on occasion because for a short period of time an uptick in sailors with eye patches happened and it got stuck culturally.

The best you could probably do to actually disprove such a thing would be to find where the source was, which would in all likelihood come down to a certain model of ship or a specific cultural tradition. Hell given how commonly shit goes back to Odin it could be a lost form of worship that got wrapped up in with sailor folklore after the viking age.

This is the type of shit I dislike about DnD.
In any system I write and run, you simply get 2 actions per turn. Action types are a complication that add nothing to the game.

But then you have to give up one of your attacks to move or do anything else that takes an action. On the other hand, when you have different types of actions, it feels like a waste when you have one you haven’t used but there’s nothing even slightly useful you can do with it.

Pathfinder deals with it by giving you three actions, but the second attack is at a -5 penalty and the third is at -10, so you’re not giving up much by using one of your actions to move. It is a complication, but I think it’s useful. Though I think I’d prefer something a bit lighter on the rules.

But then you have to give up one of your attacks to move or do anything else that takes an action

Yes. That’s generally how it is. If you first have to run to your opponent to hit them, you can’t hit them as often as if you were already there.
If you shoot while moving, you will have a lower effective rate of fire.
But my actual point is: turn-based combat is always an abstraction. I like to abstract it a bit more than DnD does, simply to avoid wasting any game time on arguing about action types.

It also involves lowering your guard, so should trigger AOps.

I don’t think that’s what’s happening, here.

This is more as if there are mods for a game engine, and loads of people think the mods are made for one game specifically even though they work on any game using that engine. That would grind my gears as well, to be honest.

I miss Reddit switcharoo rabbit holes.