Rogue-likes with the best Magic systems?

[Rallen12]

Also best rogue-likes that aren't just dungeon crawling.

[guest509]

Well they mostly all have magic systems, even the sci fi ones tend to have something similar.

The most in depth? I dunno, but some have spells you can learn and other are item based. Item based meaning that your magic abilities depend on the wand, scroll or potion that you find. Your magic isn't based on the class of your character. Then there are games that mix the two.

Brogue has cool magic items in a solid game system. ToME has awesome class based abilities.

[Wisp412]

Probably not what you are looking for but Guilder (a 7drl) has an amazing magic system. You have magic words that you can string together to create your own spells. An example: one kay thaum prae (true name) yal aes surutai two em jiha ptoron uum! (take one thousand of my or anothers mana and turn it into heat two spaces in front of me [end spell]). If you want to try it I suggest writing all the key words down. I haven't figured out how to actually get rid of the heat, or a faster way to cast then typing all of that, but it has lot of potential if polished up.

A word of warning though, its not really a game yet, and horribly unbalanced. You can draw essentially unlimited mana once you figure out how to and.. I don't need to explain why that breaks balance. Also the level gen fails to create doorways to the rest of the level (and stairs) sometimes.

I could write up some interesting ideas to make this work in a more traditional RL, but if I ever get around to making a roguelike I'm going to be focusing more on off-genre fantasy than wizardry.

[Avagart]

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has very good magic system. Learning magic is simple - only reading books (in so far as the spellcasting ability allows), but what you can do with magic... the correlation between the spells... You can flood the opponent with water, and then let go of lightning in the water. You can poison the enemy (including aoe) and then ignite to all the poison. There are a lot of possibilities.

[Trystan]

I don't know if it's one of the "best" magic systems, but I'm pretty happy with how different the magic in my little roguelike Pugnacious Wizards 2 (at http://trystans.blogspot.com/2013/09/pugnacious-wizards-2-version-10.html) turned out. There's no mana and each spell has different uses and potential drawbacks. For example the three spells you always encounter first are Fire Jump, Magic Missile, and Heal & Weaken.

• Fire Jump lets you teleport to a visible space and surround yourself with fire and is great for escaping enemies or jumping near them and catching them on fire - until you accidentally catch yourself on fire by jumping into a room with lots of flammable stuff.
• Magic Missile shoots a projectile that bounces off walls and splits when it hits creatures. When aimed right you can take out a room of enemies. When aimed poorly you will kill yourself with reflected missiles.
• Heal and Weaken fully recovers all hp but slightly lowers your maximum hp and vision radius. Most games you will either forget you have it until it's too late or use it too often too soon and end up weak and blind and unable to use most magic since all aiming is limited to visible tiles.

There's about 20 spells total that do everything from summon a golem, make trees fight for you, recover hp by absorbing blood on the floor, make corpses explode, lay traps, move things/creatures/yourself with telekinesis, and more (although only 10 or so at random are available in each map). There's also a lot of interaction among things: try using Poison Fog near water or freezing yourself if you catch on fire. It's a quick little game you can play in your browser or download, and it's quite different each time.

[Samildanach]

Probably not what you are looking for but Guilder (a 7drl) has an amazing magic system. You have magic words that you can string together to create your own spells. An example: one kay thaum prae (true name) yal aes surutai two em jiha ptoron uum! (take one thousand of my or anothers mana and turn it into heat two spaces in front of me [end spell]). If you want to try it I suggest writing all the key words down. I haven't figured out how to actually get rid of the heat, or a faster way to cast then typing all of that, but it has lot of potential if polished up.

A word of warning though, its not really a game yet, and horribly unbalanced. You can draw essentially unlimited mana once you figure out how to and.. I don't need to explain why that breaks balance. Also the level gen fails to create doorways to the rest of the level (and stairs) sometimes.

I could write up some interesting ideas to make this work in a more traditional RL, but if I ever get around to making a roguelike I'm going to be focusing more on off-genre fantasy than wizardry.

It's an interesting magic system, for sure, but I find it incredibly unwieldy and dense. For that reason I can't really consider it 'good'. With more work, maybe. One of this year's 7DRLs, Shit Crimson (seriously), attempted something in a similar vein, though not as complicated. It was similarly obtuse and awkward though.