The pincer thing sounds reasonable. If it does happen, though, it might be worth reducing the pincer-er lag by 1 round whenever the pincer-ee lag is reduced. So it could be 3/2 or 2/1, but not 3/1. Or maybe just change it so you can't start combat with it...but that's probably too drastic.

It will work on people with high AC helmets, but its probably not as good. The range is 1-2 rounds as far as I know, 2 rounds being like trip.

They're the two main skills because wussy people of the day can't seem to win a fight without having 3 people and command denial.

is that axe specs and mace specs tend to be able to achieve the most by causing a brief period of lag for their opponents. A staff/spear spec can use misdirect to get a lag similar to a pincer, but the gain from doing this is often less than it is for an axe spec.

If the helpfile says what it does, my guess would be that material of headgear matters. Also perhaps the weight of the headgear, and the type of headgear (eg full helm that doesn't allow a mask to be worn, vs hat-like thing that does).

No idea on the range of lag cranial can do. But I know it can do as little as zero against a prepped foe, and I know I've been totally lagged out by it before (which could be because I wasn't the tank and was therefore using my one command to get back to my feet or something).