Do you tell players what sorts of bonuses or penalties they get from the aura once they try to cast a spell? Or do you just adjust the result once you know what they rolled?
In Feng Shui, they have a line that I can’t remember exactly, but that states that shooting someone in the chest with a pair of guns is a pretty good way to tell how tough they are. I always thought that made sense. It would also make sense to me that magi could determine how much easier or more difficult the aura makes things. Not the flavor, they would know that they have a +3 to spell casting rolls but not if they were in a level 3 magical aura or a level 6 faerie aura.
How do other people deal with this? Do magi have to use InVi spells to find the nature and level of auras or are some things discoverable just by casting spells and noting how much easier or harder it seems.
We only use 3 aura levels (+3, +6 and +9). Once you cast a spell you are aware of the power level. You get it automatically once you enter it if you have magic sensitivity or sense holy and unholy
Sometimes we just have players tell how their casting went (like: miss by 3) and the Sg tells them if the spell went off or not. You can usually deduce things after one or two tries. The Sg will tell if the aura is low, medium or high and from what realm the Magi believe it is from. This is usually not hard.
Other times the Sg will just tell the type and size of the aura. We tend to feel this doesn't matter much. Not the auras themselves, they usually mean something. But knowing about it or needing to keep it secret. After all it is hard wotk for the SG to keep keeping it a secret, players will figure it out eventually.
