OO and game design questions

[dex]

I'm building a turn based RPG game as a hobby. The design is becoming
increasingly complicated and confusing, and I think I may have
tendency to over-engineer simple things. Can anybody please check my
problems-solutions and point me to more elegant solution?

Every item/character/room is a separate object. Items/characters need
to have references to room they are in, and room needs to have a list
of references to items/characters that are contained within. I decided
to use weak references. That way I can destroy object by deleting it,
I don't have to destroy all references as well. In each object's
__init__() that object is added to game_object list, and in each
__del__() they are removed from game_object list. This mechanism keeps
them safe from garbage collector. How pythonic is this design?

In turn-based games, the order of action execution in battle can give
unfair advantage to players. For example, if player's arm is crippled
before his action is executed, he would do less damage. To offset
this, I first execute all players' actions and calculate effects in
first pass, then apply the effects in second pass. The effect can be
health decrease by 15HP, item pick-up, 30p experience gain, etc. This
means the player deals the same amount of damage no matter what
happens to him in that turn. The difficult part is keeping track of
various effects. I had to make separate class for various types of
effects (ChangeAttributeEffect, GetItemEffect, LooseItemEffect). Each
class stores weak reference to target object and has apply() method
that applies the effect to object. I'm not satisfied with this as it's
limiting, error-prone and uses metaprogramming. Is there a design
pattern that would remember changes to an object, and apply them
later?

Sorry for the wall of text.