Antimagic

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

It reduces the magical energy of the wielder, and disrupts the spells and magical abilities of those hit. Natural abilities and divine invocations are not affected.

The antimagic effect and weapon brand interferes with the spellcasting of anything it affects.

Effect

Against monsters

Antimagic is a status that interferes with casting. When using a "Magical" or "Wizard" ability, monsters have a duration/(4 + duration) (in decaAut) chance to fail, wasting their turn. Even silence-proof enemies like demons and orbs of fire can be affected by antimagic, but "Priestly" (e.g. spriggan berserker) or "Natural" (e.g. dragon breath) abilities aren't affected.

Weapons of antimagic inflict damage×8/(HD+1) turns of the antimagic status.

Against players

Antimagic directly reduces your current MP. Every time a monster attacks you with an antimagic branded weapon, it drains a random amount of MP up to the damage dealt, but weighted toward half that amount. Player Djinn are immune to this effect, as they don't have proper MP.

Wielding

Players that wield a weapon of antimagic will have their maximum MP reduced by 2/3. A character who has already exhausted their MP pool is free to switch to it mid-combat, though this will lower your MP regeneration (as it is based off max MP).

Sources

Antimagic is a fairly rare status and brand. The brand is unable to be obtained via a scroll of brand weapon.

• The antimagic brand is Trog's special brand, so gifted weapons may have it.
• The Enfeeble spell will always inflict the antimagic status, regardless of resistance or EV.
• Vine Stalkers possess a unique antimagic bite attack.
• Black Mark may inflict antimagic if it would have an effect on the target.
• Ru's Apocalypse may cause antimagic (25%) on any target it would have an effect on.

Monster-only spells

• Drain Magic and Draining Gaze directly inflict antimagic, using spell power to determine MP drain.
• Sap Magic inflicts antimagic when used against other monsters (players hit by Sap Magic gain an analogous, but distinct effect).

Strategy

Though it deals no extra damage, antimagic weapons are extremely useful against magical opponents. A well-enchanted weapon in the hands of a capable fighter will be able to cause most of an enemy's spells to fail, which amounts to semi-paralysis. As such, antimagic weapons can reduce the threat posed by powerful end-game opponents such as the lords of Hell or orbs of fire dramatically; you just have to get into melee range with the enemy first.