What's your favorite magic system and why? >Hard mode;

I really like the magic from through the breach. It's done in a cool way where you can build your own spells by adding or removing mods to get a variable difficultly to cast.

>>54774930
On paper, Call of Cthulhu. You're not supposed to have many powers, nor use them terribly often, and the magic system is understood to carry incredible existential and metaphysical implications (even though I don't like the interpretation of those implications inherent to cosmic horror). That said, in actual gameplay, I'd probably go with the Savage Worlds power system, because it's a solid, mechanically versatile option that doesn't require quite the same kind of fussing that many other power systems do.

>>54774930
Ars Magica 5e.
It's freeform.

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>>54774930
Deadlands, What's not to love about playing poker with spooky monsters of unimaginable horror?

>>54774930
My favorite magic system so far is the one from Swedish RPG Eon, despite it being far more complex than I usually like my rules. The system is, however, rigorously consistent in how its mechanics work which mitigates most of the complexity as you can usually deduce how you're supposed do to things with only an understanding of the base mechanics and some common sense.

What the magic system does particularly well is that it's extremely modular and allows you to make up spells on the fly that are just as weak or powerful as you want them to be, at the same time as magic feels truly dangerous to use, and the more powerful or complex a spell is, the bigger the chances are that the mage will fumble somewhere along the way and accidentally put himself on fire, for example.