#3008 Curses
In their current form, randomly cursed weapons spice up the early game slightly (pick up what looks like an interesting weapon, only to find that it's cursed & useless, and you're stuck with it for another half a dungeon floor), and then become a bit of a non-issue, except for possibly being a passing annoyance if one decides to take on the tomb.
My proposal is that, in addition to the regular broken & cursed weapons around, cursed items also have a good chance to be quite powerful (or vise versa - a lot of good items end up being cursed). This could be just in terms of plusses, or a brand (excluding holy wrath or positive energy). The catch is that the more powerful cursed weapons don't like being uncursed, and (for lack of a better idea) cause brand-appropriate miscasts proportional to their power when the curse is removed, and very-powerful weapons may be slightly dulled (I'm thinking just plusses, removing the brand seems a bit harsh).
To prevent an early hammer of draining from turning into a death sentence, you could add a choice to removing the curse; face the ill-effects, or lose the weapon.
This only applies to generated-cursed items, not ones cursed by mummies or the like.
This post seems to be two FRs in one: first, any cursed weapon should have unwield/uncurse effects similar to distortion (but less severe). Second, cursed weapons should sometimes be very good weapons that lose part of the goodness when uncursed.
The first part seems pretty nice, esp. since cursed stuff is a non-issue past d:2 or so. The second part is a non-issue b/c players will likely uncurse the item anyway and lose +1,+1 for convenience's sake. I will mention that the new divination god (Ashenzari) will reward cursed weapons with +3,+3 slaying or so but will make it no easier to re-curse items, fulfilling the second part in a way.
Definitely a fan of more interesting curses. I like the miscast effect ones you propose. Maybe "stuck to you" should be one kind of curse, but not the only kind? Would make Tomb much, much more interesting.
-Ero