I've played the original and ZAngband, though my current favorite is ToME. Gotta love the quests and skill point systems... my best character is a level 35 RohanKnight Swordmaster. Only three of my characters have ever gotten past level 1, and I'll be sorely hurt indeed if this one dies... so far I've just been playing it safe with Phase Door and Teleportation. Does 855 damage per round with the Main Gauche of Maedhros.

I've been a long term fan of ToMe myself, ever since the Pernangband days, which is 5 years ago or so. You can also find me at their boards, or the wiki. In all this time I've never won, but I've been close quite a few times.

The game is pretty addictive, I've probably spend almost as much time playing ToME, as I have Diablo 2. And I tell you I was a hardcore Diablo gamer.

If you haven't tried it yet, Theme is an excellent module for ToME, that is what I'm playing right now. When ToME 3.0 comes out for real, most "bands" are probably gonna evolve around that and its modules, since they're making it so easy to make them.

I'm currently playing a lvl 45 Ent ascetic, that is an antimagic monk. Things are beginning to get rough as I can't wear much, due to dodging and barehanded fighting, and I lack many of the vital resists.

I'm not following you here.

I haven't played much of any roguelike recently, though I played some Nethack a long time ago, I've briefly tried ADOM, and my brother is an Angband addict. They're good stuff.

I'm not sure that I can visualize him myself, but ents get +0.4 to barehanded fighting, and as such makes very good monks. [insert nerd smiley here]

The resistance lacks can be a downside on playing a Monk, however, and an Amulet of Resistance doesn't cover the more potent non-elemental damages. Your rings are also better off for Slaying, Damage, or some Artifacts, as wearing a Ring of Cold/Fire Resistance is a waste. I haven't personally tried being a Monk myself, and I don't consider myself a good ToME player at all. I just started about a month ago, however, so I just give myself a mental nudge if I'm heading off to the Sandworm Lair and forgot Scrolls of Trap Detection or something. One of my biggest mistakes is maxing out on physical prowess, however. I mean sure, my guy can kick Durin's Bane's ass without losing a third of his HP, but when it comes to the Poisoned Water quest Wands of Noxious Cloud barely does any damage.

I also have a level 32 Wood-Elf Ranger, my first character to make it past level 1, and he's pretty much a failure also. Minimum Magic-Device skill, but maxing out on Bowmastery and Archery. I'll take a leaf out of Lord Dimwit's Advanced Strategy Guide one of these days...

I haven't played many roguelikes recently, but I used to be a huge ToME freak. These days the gameplay seems more annoying than anything else; most of the dungeons have far too many group monsters, and breeders are completely out of control (the first thing I do on downloading a new ToME variant is to take out the MULTIPLY flag in r_info.txt). Characters tend to be less balanced than in non-skillbased variants, too; many classes are almost penalized for trying to boost, say, stealth and disarming skills instead of the class-centric abilities.

Enh; I dunno. Maybe I'm just jaded. ToME has done many wonderful things for the Angband community. I just don't really like the game any more.

Quite close to as far as I can remember the vanilla angband has been my favorite games. A decade of playing it has routed me through just about every combination of race and class. Sure, just about all the mac-converted variants have been tried too, one of my favorite ones being UnAngband. ToME has sprung up a lot of conversation, and I feel like I need to contribute my words to this topic too; a wonderful and vast variant full of new things to discover, but somehow it always feels unbalanced. And I always get pissed off when trying to play a Deathmold warrior...
Anyhow, my devotion to the angband community is as much as I can ever give! This is represented by the championship of the angband.oook.cz ladders since 2002
The day when reading a normal book becomes outrageously entertaining you know you've been playing *band for too long: text begins to look like clear icky things, townsfolk and hairy molds.
Keep on rolling.

-R. Elrathi

I'm more of a NetHack style fan than an Angband style, but I haven't really played that many angband variants.