Looking for variant with strong endgame mages
 

I want to play a variant that aligns with my reading and tabletop gaming experiences. I cannot possibly imagine any warrior character, no matter how ripped and skillful, being even remotely relevant against a proficient mage, much less a master one. For me, a fully-leveled and perfectly-equipped mage should be a creature of near-unfathomable power. Of course, they have to work hard to earn that power...

Does such a variant exist? I know that mages are probably DCSS' strongest 15-rune-run build, and I might pick that game up, but we'll see.

I think FAangband mages end up pretty strong, but I would say that wouldn't I

Portralis, though you may have to dip back to one of the older versions before the grand rewrite started after The Maths got too strong for this world and exploded reality with the dev at the focal point of the blast.

@Nick, I'll give it a shot. I always assumed that FAngband mages would suck and be all subtle-magic-only because of how magic works in Tolkein (no such thing as Fireball in Tolkein world, for example).

getter77: I have no idea what the second half of your sentence means, since I wasn't in the loop when this drama occurred. I'll look into Portralis.

If anybody else has suggestions too, I'm still listening :)

Subtle magic is reserved for Sil. FAangband mages blow stuff up.

Imagine a Roguelike where the numbers got so big, so crazy, and in so many respects beyond the norm---it became a spectacle that brought the very game to its knees. We're talking multiple lives, 5-6 figure damage reckonings amidst a great many types and situations, varied powerful enchantments, chests so over the top and majestic it is just insane.

PosChengband is crazy packed full of things unto Angband almost to a degree that Elona+ is essentially things gone crazy unto ADOM---Angband v Portralis has closer kinship with the latter pairing and remains the holder of that title to this day.

Eventually things just kinda of fell into madness for the dev, he stepped away for awhile, then started on a slow and now/often long-stalled rewrite---the latest community notion/my indirect harassment being for him to consider availing of T-Engine 4, since ToME 3 shares a similar deep lineage and death by technology...sort of....as the tech woes there were a bit different than Maths Gone Mad that afflicted Portralis.

Portralis is one of Angband's very few wayward heirs off in the hinterlands because their doings diverged so much at the time they ended up in an exodus of one sort or another from the lands of Oook Rephial---LambdaRogue is another, though for vastly different reasons...

I like Sangband for the Necromantic realms, Shadow shield and Wraithform being my favorites...Wraithform dosen't exist after Sang 1.0.0 though, guess it was too unbalancing being able to hide in walls..Also loved the ability to curse creatures for massive amounts of damage by weilding (horribly cursed) items. There are different spells in the mages repitoire that are different from Angband as well. I think S/O/FA are pretty similar with the spell sets that differ just a bit from version to version.

My PWMAngband Sorceror class is probably a good contender. Check this ladder entry (ironman sorceror): http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=14997. Good buffs + awesome offensive spells makes endgame sorcerors very powerful. This is, of course, balanced by the fact that you have to kill Morgoth in real-time...

It's more or less based on the ToME2 class, so you could try that variant too.

Just out of interest: How (dis)similar is "your" Sorceror to the T2 Sorceror?

I always thought that the Sorceror was (by far) the most powerful (assuming Melkor worship), except for the über-special levels.

Take the Mage class from V, add +2 INT at the cost of 2 STR and 1 CON, add +25% mana pool, increase the damage from basic offensive spells a little, add a midgame elemental spell firing 4 bolts at the same time (fire/cold/acid/elec) and a midgame non elemental ball spell doing (sun)light damage, add a meditate spell to increase mana pool at the cost of max hps and combine that with a disruption shield spell to take damage from mana instead of hps, add high damage blast spells (balls centered on the player), a "wraithform" spell and endgame havoc wreakers (annihilation, tidal wave, anarchy force)... and you get the PWMAngband sorceror class.