In my games, we use an L-shaped hand gesture to denote detect magic. Since you have 360 degree facing but detect magic can only be in a 60 ft. cone, I assume you have to look through the "lens" made by the hand gesture to see magical auras. I also imagine auras like "colored lights," but more like mists, like the winds of magic from Warhammer Fantasy.
Technically they can just angle the cone straight down from the bottom corner of their square constantly and not have to deal with the "colored lights" distracting them.
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You ever watch Fringe? You know Olivia's ability to recognize objects and people from the Alternate Universe? That's pretty much how I envision detect magic. Things don't glow so much as they shimmer or glimmer.
Here's a clip from the show where Olivia first sees Peter after her ability has been reactivated (having been dormant since she was a child): Olivia sees Peter's glimmer.
There's a lot of potential fun attached to having a permanent detect magic. Maybe each school of magic has a color of its own, so different effects are easily denoted by color scheme. Someone has protection from arrows running? That's abjuration, those show up brown. Using alter self? Green. And so on. Depending on where that caster is at, maybe the world becomes dull to him when he's in a small village where there's precious little magic, but in a wizard's academy it's a neverending kaleidoscope of colors. Over time, maybe the character's personality will change from the experience. To give an example, my cleric had continual deathwatch. Part of her somber, brooding personality I attributed to the fact that when she looked at people on the street, many of them looked like they were fighting off death (3 hp or less) to her eyes, including children. There's lots of potential in this, so roll with it.
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It seems highly unlikely to me that magical auras would glow different colors for different schools of magic. If we look at the spell's description, we can see why:
You detect magical auras. The amount of information revealed depends on how long you study a particular area or subject.
1st Round: Presence or absence of magical auras.
2nd Round: Number of different magical auras and the power of the most potent aura.
3rd Round: The strength and location of each aura. If the items or creatures bearing the auras are in line of sight, you can make Knowledge (arcana) skill checks to determine the school of magic involved in each. (Make one check per aura: DC 15 + spell level, or 15 + 1/2 caster level for a nonspell effect.) If the aura emanates from a magic item, you can attempt to identify its properties (see Spellcraft).
If magical effects of different schools were color coded for your convenience, then it hardly seems likely that one would have to spend a good 18 seconds concentrating on an object before recognizing its color. Also, a DC 15+ check is awfully high for recognizing a color.
"Hi. I'm a first level wizard with a 12 Int and 1 rank in Spellcraft, and I only have a 50% chance of distinguishing a blue cantrip from a red cantrip."
If magical auras glow in different colors, then recognizing the originating school of magic should be automatic. With only nine possible options it shouldn't require any real effort to distinguish different auras. So I assume that they do not glow different colors.
Gailbranthe, you're right about the colors. The point that I was trying to make is that there may be some good RP opportunities for someone who has gone ahead and permanencied detect magic upon themselves, that's all.
You do jog my memory about one thing though. Since you only notice presence/absence of magic auras on round 1, it seems strange that if you ran across an artifact or deity that you'd not know it till round 2 when you get the strength of the most powerful aura; it's not instant, it's after a full round that you start getting into trouble.
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You have a good point. But considering that 18 seconds is a very short amount of time in a non combat situations it could become annoying to have it on continually. I see how the color coded thing would not work. I guess it could be like sensing the world on a totally different spectrum. The part that is not clear is what sense is used to detect the magical auras.
It appears to be a sixth sense of some kind, with a visual component as well. A sixth sense because one can detect magic through solid objects -- such as a magic ring inside a wooden chest, or in someone's pocket; but with a visual component -- since you must have line of sight to distinguish the nature, but not strength, of an aura.
Needing to have line of sight doesn't necessarily mean that detect magic has an optical component. Line of sight is just a handy game term to describe how the "sense" works, it works like vision in that sense. That's all.
I've always viewed detect magic as a mental image created by the magical effect, so in that sense it's very much like a "sixth sense". I hate the term "sixth sense" though for lot of reasons.
The spell attunes your brain's sensory functions to magical emanations, and thus your mind forms mental images based on the magical stimulation in your brain. That's pretty much how all the senses work, so I just figure that's how detect magic, good/evil, alignment, etc. work. It would be fine to have different auras be different "colors" but initially you'd only see "black and white" it would take time for the color to start seeping through. Alternately you can envision the type of aura as stimulating the olfactory portion of the brain, so you "smell" different auras, and again, it just takes a little time for you to recognize the smell. Or a tone, or something totally different, like balance, or direction...
Just do what feels interesting to you.
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I imagine the result to be like the foggy vision after sleeping. At first everything is a blur, but the presence or absence of the blurs is still (minimally) informative. After sitting for a moment, things start to shift into focus and at that point you can actually analyze the details of what you see.
Moving vision around is a sloggy haze with blurs blending together (which is why it takes a round to get the minimal info).
How would someone with permanent detect magic deal with the constant high-pitched "doo doo doo doo" that magical effects emanate?