JonR

A battery runs out. An enchantment doesn't, hence capacitors that recharge. The 3 examples were all separate reasons why hit-speed would affect on-hit effects, the point wasn't that all would be used simultaneously to explain why speed affects on-hit effects. And the reason why attack-speed should affect on-hit effects is obvious if you ask me. A enchantment that can deliver 5x10damage/second is quite a bit more powerful than a enchantment that delivers 1x10damage/second. Just think of it like it was physics. One has significantly more energy than the other, so it should be much more valuable/harder to craft. Heck, if each hit should deliver the same amount, then the best weapon would be something like a multitailed whip. You can swing it like crazy and each tail scoring a hit is another 10 damage. Get it wrapped around your target and you've got an infinite amount of damage being delivered. After all, if the enchantment can deliver the same amount of damage per hit no matter how often per second you hit something, then the logical maximum is infinite amounts of damage per second. Just doesn't make sense. The reason that has been the case pen-and-paper rule-set games is simplicity, something that isn't a problem once you remove the pen and paper.

"Or, as you put it, why is it okay for base damage to differ purely because attack speed, but not for any other quantifiable effects to differ for the same reason?" No, it is not okay for base damage to differ purely because attack speed. Does that answer your question? There are a couple of rationales why attack speed would affect on hit effects. Imagine that the weapon has a capacitor where the effect is charged on to. Recharge speed and capacitor is dependent on the strength of the enchantment, the stronger the enchantment the faster the recharge & larger the capacitor. So say that you have a 10 damage/second charge rate on your weapon and a 10 damage capacitor. This would then mean that you could either hit once per second for 10 damage, after which every attack more per second would have partially charged on hit effect, so 5 damage for 0.5 second of recharge and so on. Another rationale could be weapons size. Imagine that the on-hit enchantment requires a physical body to store the enchantment. Again like a capacitor for electricity. Having a small capacitor store as much energy as a larger one is more difficult, hence the same strength enchantment has a weaker per hit effect for a smaller, quicker weapon compared to a larger one. And lastly, bigger weapons score bigger hits, allowing for more of the on hit effect to be transferred over. The better the contact on the target is, the better the on hit effect is.