Basically, youryou are looking for ways to improve the player's choices; the ways to do that are to make the choices more interesting &/or meaningful. By meaningful, I'm referring to the impact a choice has to the overall experience. Without knowing more about the game's other systems, narrative, etc, I'm going to set aside the meaningful part as out of scope for this answer. Instead, I'm focusing on some ways to add measured uncertainty & complexity to the combat system to make it more interesting.
Based on the information presented, I suspect that there's more or less a clear strategy for combat, probably something along the lines of:
- ifIf health is low & potion is available, drink potion
- otherwiseOtherwise, select most damaging attack option
These sorts of patterns don't take long to discover & once found, the game play consists of going through the motions. You've already tried a couple of solutions:
- there'sThere's a bit of push your luck regarding when to use a potion (Hmmm, how low is low?)
- damageDamage is randomized, which leads to a bit of anticipation (Did I roll good numbers?)
Here are some ways that you can add complexity to the system with the intent of making decisions more interesting:
- createCreate situation where the answer isn't always obvious:
- anAn attack that damages multiple enemies a little bit vs. damaging one enemy a lot
- anAn attack that does less damage now, but adds an effect like, damage over time, chance to stun, reduce enemy accuracy, etc
- addAdd some uncertainty to the potion system:
- potionsPotions degrade overtime, creating more uncertainty about when best to use them
- potionsPotions provide variable healing over time (up to some cap)
- healthHealth potions also temporarily increase player damage, thus encouraging earlier use in combat
- createCreate systems that encourage the player to push their luck
- manaMana points only regenerate when the player is below 50% health
- healthHealth potion can be cashed in for some reward (XP, stat bonus, etc)
- createCreate systems that reward mastery
- playerPlayer estimates # of round combat will take, if their guess is close, they get bonus XP
It's possible to add complexity, uncertainty & encourage the player to take risks. i.e. give the potions a random number from 0-9. Potions heal more based on how closely their # matches the last digit of damage most recently dealt to the player.
Since GDSE is more about Q&A than opinions, I want to emphasize that the examples are just that. The core answer is to find ways to make the system(s) in question interesting, without making it too complex, arbitrary or inscrutable. If you need additional opinions on how to make that happen, you may need to go to GDSE chat or a gdev forum like TIG Source.