Okay, here are the buttons on the UI we could consolidate or remove:
Melee Attack and Ranged Attack - You put your cursor on an enemy and a sword appears. Want to attack a non-enemy? Right click and pick Attack. Buttons not needed.
Weapon Toggle - If I want to attack with off hand, I can click on the enemy a second time, or that should be how it works. If I get more than 1 attack per action because of multiattack, the first two times I click on the enemy is with main hand. The third is offhand.
Sneak Attacks - Make it a toggle instead. Toggle is either apply Sneak Attack to Main Hand or Off, and have it auto apply to damage when it meets the conditions. (Stealth, BTW is a condition where Sneak Attack should apply, but in Patch 6 it's not working.). We don't need a Sneak attack button for both ranged and melee, one each, so we could just get rid of those buttons altogether.
Help Button - Hover over downed ally. Heart appears indicating you can help them. Click on them. You run up and help. No button needed. (Medicine roll should be made. Otherwise, Medicine skill is virtually useless.)
Menacing Attack and like combat special maneuvers - Consolidate to 1 Button each type of attack. Whatever weapon you have out, that's what you use and the special ability is applied to it. No need to have one for ranged and one for melee. So 1 Menacing, 1 Pushing, 1 Tripping, etc.
If you have more, please suggest.
as to your first point....
don't think you've thought this through.... let's say you're looking for advantage on a fight, you're hidden right click on the enemy, how does it do the attack you want. How do you attack objects out of combat and have the choice of which weapon? Are you always going to be walking up to a firebarrel and breaking it melee, or are you always going to beat down a door with ranged... That's why these buttons are here, so you have a choice without making the game decide the wrong option you can't get around.
Help button.... you can help a downed friend like spelt for a whole action, or shove them to same effect for bonus action. if you have illithid powers and have the restoration effect you might want to do that reduce to 0 option.
Special attacks, these follow special rules and putting the decision on whether it's a melee or ranged attack on the system again creates issues, as game code writing for situations you get in to is severely limited.
Think more, speak less.
