Detect Magic: What colors are the auras?

[Aleiz]

I've been looking around for any cannon on what colors the different school's auras are for spells like detect magic. Is there any such cannon, and if not what suggestions would people have for the different magical colors?

Thanks ahead!

[Deophaun]

I've been looking around for any cannon...
Iron or brass?

I don't think there ever were official colors for magic. If you want, you can take a page out of Pratchet and create colors that don't actually exist*, like the purplish-orange that he uses.

*Strangely, it's not as impossible as it sounds. Magenta, for instance, isn't a color that exists in reality; the color spectrum says that combining blue and red light yields green, but since red-blue light fails to stimulate your green cones, your brain invents an entirely fictitious color to explain it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I don't think there is a canon color scheme.

This is off the top of my head. For each school I'm listing the color then the general look of the mystical circuitry or weaving in the negative color to the primary aura color.

Abjuration: green; sharp angles with round joints
Conjuration: orange; patterns reminiscent of the elements or the outer realms
Divination:white; interlocking loops
Enchantment: grey; fuzzy broad lines
Evocation: deep red; jagged lines
Illusion: transparent; scintillating, metallic-rainbow broad curves
Necromancy: black; bone patterns
Transmutation: purple; parallel lines looping all the way around the target

In all cases these aren't in stark contrast to the object they're attached to but are mostly translucent.

[Hytheter]

Necromancy: black; bone patterns

That one might be a little on the nose don't you think?

[Kelb_Panthera]

That one might be a little on the nose don't you think?

Probably. I was running out of ideas. I did mention it was off the top of my head, right?

Then again, would you recognize the phalanges of an ethereal marauder?

[Aleiz]

Iron or brass?


Thank you Deophaun, but I was thinking I'd go more gaudy with a nice gold cannon with gems encrusting it all over the place.

I like the ideas of magical circuitry, though as this is for a web-comic and would have to be drawn and colored I might have to avoid it for my artist's sanity. Will run the idea by him to see if he is into it (he is a real masochist sometimes, especially for art).

but, let's see...



Abjuration: green; sharp angles with round joints
Conjuration: orange; patterns reminiscent of the elements or the outer realms
Divination:white; interlocking loops
Enchantment: grey; fuzzy broad lines
Evocation: deep red; jagged lines
Illusion: transparent; scintillating, metallic-rainbow broad curves
Necromancy: black; bone patterns
Transmutation: purple; parallel lines looping all the way around the target

Maybe make Enchantment a brighter color, how about Pink? Maybe a nice Blue for illusion instead, as drawing transparent and glittery just makes glittery objects and people... and I'm not doing no twilight crap over here...

Aside from that I like the ideas, anyone who thinks they might have better ones just shout 'em out as nothing's set in stone atm.

[Kelb_Panthera]

For enchantment, grey just seems right to me. Can't say why.

Illusions, at least the good ones, are subtle, so I wanted to go with something subtle for the aura. I was thinking more marbleized metal cords than glitter.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

Thank you Deophaun, but I was thinking I'd go more gaudy with a nice gold cannon with gems encrusting it all over the place.

I like the ideas of magical circuitry, though as this is for a web-comic and would have to be drawn and colored I might have to avoid it for my artist's sanity. Will run the idea by him to see if he is into it (he is a real masochist sometimes, especially for art).

but, let's see...



Maybe make Enchantment a brighter color, how about Pink? Maybe a nice Blue for illusion instead, as drawing transparent and glittery just makes glittery objects and people... and I'm not doing no twilight crap over here...

Aside from that I like the ideas, anyone who thinks they might have better ones just shout 'em out as nothing's set in stone atm.

It may not translate so well to a combined written-and-visual medium, but I've taken to describing the magical auras as smells rather than visible phenomena. My players seemed to like engaging with the world in a way that often goes overlooked.

[Deophaun]

...as this is for a web-comic and would have to be drawn and colored...
Ah, my suggestion would just result in a lot of browns, then. :smallbiggrin:

There are some things that can be done with simpler patterns. You could have one that looks like a sun burst, another that looks like lightning off a tesla coil, one that burns like fire, another that comes off like fog, etc.

[bekeleven]

Abjuration: green; sharp angles with round joints
Conjuration: orange; patterns reminiscent of the elements or the outer realms
Divination:white; interlocking loops
Enchantment: grey; fuzzy broad lines
Evocation: deep red; jagged lines
Illusion: transparent; scintillating, metallic-rainbow broad curves
Necromancy: black; bone patterns
Transmutation: purple; parallel lines looping all the way around the target

Oddly, before entering this thread I agreed with your takes on conjuration, divination, evocation, and transmutation.

I don't mind your takes on abjuration, enchantment, or illusion, I never had a very solid grasp on their looks.

However, necromancy should be blue. Deep blue. I will fight this to the ends of the earth, for some reason.

[Drachasor]

It may not translate so well to a combined written-and-visual medium, but I've taken to describing the magical auras as smells rather than visible phenomena. My players seemed to like engaging with the world in a way that often goes overlooked.

Good point here. Our brain more easily distinguishes different smells compared to different colors. Heck, that's true with our eyes verses our nose to a good extent too (it's complicated).

You can even detect auras that are not in Line of Sight. However, you can't determine the school of magic unless they are in LOS. So it is on odd thing in a way. Best to consider it a new sense, I think, and fluff it as giving you info that's entirely new-sense related (e.g. just raw game info, basically), or one that uses existing neural pathways to deliver info (basically a new sense that causes Synestasia).

But you could fluff different schools with smells, colors, feelings, touch, taste, sound, mental imagery, something else. These can be combined too, so Evocation might smell of burnt wood with a sensation of rough metal across your fingers. This could vary from character to character.

Hmm, I'll have to fluff this up for my character.

[Telonius]

Universal: Octarine. :smallbiggrin:

[Spore]

How says you see something in the visible spectrum of the light? It's magic you could see infrared or ultraviolet radiation!

I'm serious btw. Why restrict the Detect Magic spectrum to visible light, or light at all? Enchantment could be a feeling of fear and happiness, Divination could be a series of mathematical equations and Evocation the primal force of energy.

Make explaining auras a wholesome experience. Not just visual or olfactory.

[Red Fel]

Make explaining auras a wholesome experience. Not just visual or olfactory.

This. I always pictured Detect spells as extrasensory, not ordinary-sensory. So Detect Good might generate a blue-sweet-warm-breeze-light-happy-smooth sensation, something that can't be quantified but you simply know it is.

For example, I assume you recognize the taste of garlic. Garlic-taste. You can try to assign words to it - salty, sweet, peppery, potent, and so forth - but at the end of the day, it is garlic-taste. You would know it if you tasted it on bread, in meat, in a pasta, it's garlic-taste.

Detect spells, in my mind, are like garlic-taste. You simply know that something is the Illusion school, or is Good, or emits a powerful Transmutation aura. It's just a sensation, not quite quantifiable.

[Aleiz]

The main reason I was viewing this as a visual device was because of the conical effect. Feeling or smelling a 60-ft cone just doesn't make sense to me, probably because I've never done acid.

It would also be hard to show, when it's visual the readers can see the effect, but if it's a taste or touch of some sort it's just a speech-bubble going "feels like rainbows and unicorns, necromancy of course"

[Zharradan Marr]

Having different colors for different auras would imply that one could distinguish between them automatically. But this is not the case, one needs to be trained in Spellcraft (even well-trained!) to distinguish between auras when using Detect Magic. I would suggest more subtle differences than "this one red, the other one is green". Can't think off the top of my head what these are, though...

[Spore]

The main reason I was viewing this as a visual device was because of the conical effect.

Valid point but you could argue that the conical experience is because the human(oid) brain can process things in plain view better. It doesn't matter which explanation your group uses but I feel like the approach Fel and I prefer is richer because you can use adjective and words from several areas rather than the "smell" or "see" semantic fields. And it's the freedom of P&P that allows you to interpret it for yourself how your character experiences magic.

Maybe it's like particle physics. Magic is both wave AND molecule. :D

[Gnome Alone]

Iron or brass?
I don't think there ever were official colors for magic. If you want, you can take a page out of Pratchet and create colors that don't actually exist*, like the purplish-orange that he uses.

*Strangely, it's not as impossible as it sounds. Magenta, for instance, isn't a color that exists in reality; the color spectrum says that combining blue and red light yields green, but since red-blue light fails to stimulate your green cones, your brain invents an entirely fictitious color to explain it.

I've only read a few Discworld novels, so stab me in the eye sockets if I'm wrong, but I believe his fictitious color is "octarine," which is not any normal color but nonetheless sort of purple-green.

Also, that thing with magenta is crazy, I never knew that.

Also, cool idea.

[Necroticplague]

Also, that thing with magenta is crazy, I never knew that.

IIRC that's how all colors not on the EM spectrum work. So brown and pink are something similar.

[Slipperychicken]

I don't think there is a canon color scheme.

This is off the top of my head. For each school I'm listing the color then the general look of the mystical circuitry or weaving in the negative color to the primary aura color.

Abjuration: green; sharp angles with round joints
Conjuration: orange; patterns reminiscent of the elements or the outer realms
Divination:white; interlocking loops
Enchantment: grey; fuzzy broad lines
Evocation: deep red; jagged lines
Illusion: transparent; scintillating, metallic-rainbow broad curves
Necromancy: black; bone patterns
Transmutation: purple; parallel lines looping all the way around the target

In all cases these aren't in stark contrast to the object they're attached to but are mostly translucent.

Here's how I envision it:

Abjuration: Green
Conjuration: Blue
Divination: Also green
Enchantment: Pink
Evocation: Darker pink into red
Illusion: Purple
Necromancy: Black, or very dark purple/blue.
Transmutation: Yellow.

Now they can be easily confused for one another, assuming they each occupy a wide part of the color spectrum.

[Cruiser1]

With 9 schools of magic, that suggests the 7 colors of the rainbow + 2 others:

Abjuration: Yellow, because it's the color of protective warm sunlight.
Conjuration: Red, because it's a dense color of manifestation.
Divination: Violet, because it's an ethereal color of insight.
Enchantment: Blue, because it's an alluring pretty color.
Evocation: Orange, because it the color of forceful fire.
Illusion: Indigo, because it's a subtle deep color.
Necromancy: Black, because it's the color of night and death.
Transmutation: Green, because it's the color of growth and change.
Universal: Gray, because it's lacking quality that would give it color.

[Yogibear41]

There are no colors, if every school has a specific color and you could see them with detect magic, then why would you need to make a spell craft check to determine the difference between blue and green.

In the spells description it says nothing about seeing anything, you "detect" magic auras. Works more or less like a metal detector In my opinion.
If it was based solely on sight how does the detecting through barriers which you can't see through work?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Like I said at the end of my list; the colors can be used if they're faint enough that whatever is behind them can make their color difficult to distinguish.

[Duke of Urrel]

This is a highly entertaining thread! There's really no agreement about fluff, is there?

My color scheme is a little like Cruiser1's, but different, of course. I prefer bright and simple colors from the visible spectrum of the rainbow (which are also easily available on the color palette of Microsoft Word), so here's what I use:

Abjuration: yellow
Conjuration: red
Divination: indigo
Enchantment: orange
Evocation: magenta
Illusion: green
Necromancy: violet
Transmutation: cyan
Universal: white

I don't use colors for alignment auras. Instead, I use the following scheme.

The color of an alignment aura is always white, but its glow behaves in a manner specific to the alignment that it represents.


A Lawful-Good aura is steady and sheds more light from above than from below.
A Neutral-Good aura pulsates and sheds more light from above than from below.
A Chaotic-Good aura flickers wildly and sheds more light from above than from below.
A Lawful-Neutral aura is steady and sheds light equally from above and below.
A purely Neutral outlook does not manifest itself as a detectable alignment aura.
A Chaotic-Neutral aura flickers wildly and sheds light equally from above and below.
A Lawful-Evil aura is steady and sheds more light from below than from above.
A Neutral-Evil aura pulsates and sheds more light from below than from above.
A Chaotic-Evil aura flickers wildly and sheds more light from below than from above.

Note: The visible effects of the spells Dispel Evil, Dispel Good, Dispel Law, and Dispel Chaos (according to the SRD's description of these spells) are not alignment auras, but I consider them to share some traits with them. I call these effects coronas to distinguish them from alignment auras.

EDIT: I've now finally read that informative post explaining that magenta is not actually a rainbow color. Magenta is what we see when blue light and red light are combined together, with red light dominating the mix. I should have known!

[Rhynn]

I've been looking around for any cannon on what colors the different school's auras are for spells like detect magic.

Going by the spell description, you don't actually see them, you just detect them. That's why it takes several round to even determine how many there are, and then where they're located. They have no color.

People default to seeing because "aura" usually refers to something visible, but there's just as much support (none) in the spell description for hearing them, etc. And there's nothing that prevents e.g. a blind person from using detect magic (although part of its effects do require line of sight, but that's because the detection can be blocked by things).