bcadren wrote:Pain does that with Necro (being very rare unless you are of Kiku nonewithstanding). Doing it with Earth (as the only elemental school that doesn't have one [though Flaming/Freezing/Elec just use the dam type and not boosted by the spell school]) and Translocations instead too weird. Though in the case of Translocations, I'm fairly sure it's the only use of that spell school for increased dam instead of defense/escape. Is there any practical reason what Pain does shouldn't be applied to other brands/schools?
It would make the connection between pain and necromancy, and between the enhancer staves and their respective schools, less distinct. That isn't a deal breaker, but it does mean there should be a strong compelling reason for why to add it. What does it actually add? It increases melee damage based on raising a magic skill, and having more brands that benefit weapon speed over base damage—but there are already effects in game that do precisely this. For phasing, ignoring AC could be cool but I wouldn't increase tloc just for the chance of that; also what AC enemies have is not apparent in most cases so it would be hard to judge where and how it is useful without digging into stuff that players generally shouldn't concern themselves with.
With a lot of these brands, I think you need to weigh, "likelihood to benefit a player's experience" (by creating interesting choices or new non-trivial decisions) versus the additional complexity and opacity. To me, most of your suggestions don't pass muster; I could see Molten, Stunning, a simplified version of Crippling, and maybe Vital working out on specific unrandarts, but not as regular brands.