Idea for temporary brands

[Strongpoint]

Currently brand spells aren't very useful, especially after you find a good branded weapon. Also, spellpower isn't really important for brands. longer duration is nice but not essential.

Why not make spellpower more important? Why temporary brand should do the same damage as permanent? For example: Permanent fire brand gives +25% to damage currently. Why can't temporary brand give +x% to damage? Where X is proportional to spellpower. At low spellpower it may be less then 25%, but at high power it may give much more than 25%

[KoboldLord]

Brands already scale with character level. Additive brands like poison and electric scale with attack speed, which improves with weapon skill, while multiplicative brands like fire and wrath scale with damage output, which improves with several other factors. If temporary brands also scale with character or skill level, this means they will be extra-weak at the beginning of the game when they're most useful and most needed, and extra-strong at the end of the game when the player can kill everything even without a brand.

[Galefury]

A large damage buff on a level 2 spell would not be balanced. Besides, level 2 spells becoming fairly useless in the late game is fine.

I think letting branding spells overwrite other brands would be much better. Other than distortion and antimagic of course, and possibly chaos could change to a random brand for flavor. That way you can switch to a brand the enemy is vulnerable to if any, which also provides higher than normal damage. Plus you can pain or distortion brand that awesome artifact you found instead of having to use a mundane weapon. It's a level 7 spell ffs, it's supposed to be powerful.

[KoboldLord]

On the other hand, if the only demon trident generated so far is a demon trident of reaching, there's a marked difference between being allowed to overwrite brands and the current implementation. The early game is the part that matters most, and you have to take what you can get. It seems odd to have a situation where an ostensibly good brand actually hurts a basic character background.

[Strongpoint]

Brands already scale with character level. Additive brands like poison and electric scale with attack speed, which improves with weapon skill, while multiplicative brands like fire and wrath scale with damage output, which improves with several other factors. If temporary brands also scale with character or skill level, this means they will be extra-weak at the beginning of the game when they're most useful and most needed, and extra-strong at the end of the game when the player can kill everything even without a brand.

They do scale, but if you find a good branded weapon early you can instaforget the same brand. In my implementation you may prefer to use another weapon with the better temporary brand. Also it'll make magic more useful for melee fighters that dabbling and magic. Yes I mean crusaders. They was nerfed recently and deserve some buff

Temporary brands should be weaker than permanent only at very low skill levels and it should have some reasonable cap.

It's not really a buff for spellcasters, because guys with high fire, ice, poison or necromancy skills usually use another methods to deal damage, and weapon slot is used by artifact that gives something useful for the caster.

It's not a buff for fighters with very weak magic, because their brands will be same or weaker than permanent

It's a buff to crusader-type hybrids and I think they need it

A large damage buff on a level 2 spell would not be balanced. Besides, level 2 spells becoming fairly useless in the late game is fine.

Most level 2 spells are not so useless, blink, evaporate, sticks to snakes and many many others stay useful much much longer than brand spells. I used cure poison as late as zot, because I had no good source of poison resistance. And as I said earlier, damage bonus may be capped at some point.

I think letting branding spells overwrite other brands would be much better. Other than distortion and antimagic of course, and possibly chaos could change to a random brand for flavor. That way you can switch to a brand the enemy is vulnerable to if any, which also provides higher than normal damage. Plus you can pain or distortion brand that awesome artifact you found instead of having to use a mundane weapon. It's a level 7 spell ffs, it's supposed to be powerful.

Owerwriting is simply illogical. IMO. How can you mix fire and ice magic and expect that fire or ice will simply go away?

[KoboldLord]

They do scale, but if you find a good branded weapon early you can instaforget the same brand. In my implementation you may prefer to use another weapon with the better temporary brand. Also it'll make magic more useful for melee fighters that dabbling and magic. Yes I mean crusaders. They was nerfed recently and deserve some buff

Right out of the game, on D2 with character level 2, your hypothetical crusader would be even weaker than the current version. That's bad, because low-level crusaders are already plenty weak now that they don't have Berserk Rage.

Later on, post-Lair and Vaults for instance, a crusader will usually have Haste and some other useful buffs assembled, so the absence of Berserk Rage from their starting spellbook is no longer relevant. They are at least comparable to any other light-armor melee builds.

By lowering crusader power when they're weak and raising it when they're strong, your idea does the exact opposite of what you intend.

[Strongpoint]

By lowering crusader power when they're weak and raising it when they're strong, your idea does the exact opposite of what you intend.

I think that starting crusader skills with human aptitudes should grant brands as powerful, as permanent, stronger later

[galehar]

By lowering crusader power when they're weak and raising it when they're strong, your idea does the exact opposite of what you intend.

I think that starting crusader skills with human aptitudes should grant brands as powerful, as permanent, stronger later

I really don't think they need the buff. Hybrids are plenty powerful already.

[Strongpoint]

By lowering crusader power when they're weak and raising it when they're strong, your idea does the exact opposite of what you intend.

I think that starting crusader skills with human aptitudes should grant brands as powerful, as permanent, stronger later

I really don't think they need the buff. Hybrids are plenty powerful already.

Light armored with tons of utility spells are powetful. Heavy armored caster builds are not