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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7461949" data-attributes="member: 7006">On the Detect Magic front...  [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] is right that the standard results of the spell are to give the player the school of magic.  Which is a perfectly resonable way to play it.For me personally... I don't give that result when someone casts Detect Magic for a number of reasons.  First, because I find it to be a waste of game time for me to have to pull out the Player's Handbook to look up the school in the spell section every time it occurs.  Second, because many situations (like your hag/pixie thing) have no obvious spell equivalency, so there's nothing to "look up" anyway, so what kind of school of magic are you going to just make up for it? And most importantly, third... I find the schools of magic to be one of the least useful bits of information to give a player.  It means almost nothing.  Most players have never concerned themselves to learn what the eight schools are, even more probably couldn't name what spells go into what schools anyway, and the effects you can find in each school are so varied (between positive and negative for instance) that knowing the school gives you no meaningful information to use.For instance, a treasure chest has detect magic cast on it.  It radiates Abjuration.  What does that tell us?  It could mean it could have Arcane Lock on it (which basically only means its just going to be much harder to pick), or it could have a Glyph of Warding on it (which means the glyph will explode when you try and pick it).  The casting of the detection spell literally does not give you any information or clue as to what you should do with this chest that wouldn't have done otherwise had you not cast it.Now yes... some DMs might give additional information like saying the Glyphed chest radiated a stronger Abjuration (since its a 3rd level spell) compared to the Arcane Locked chest (which is only 1st).  But again, you're asking your players to not only remember which spells are in which school, but then also the levels of these spells and then try and divine what the DM is implying by his use of different adjectives they're using to describe the school.  To me... the whole enterprise is a whole lot of nothing.  Especially for needing to waste a 1st level spell to cast Detect Magic in the first place.So for me... I just use descriptions of the types of magic, the essences of magic, the story of the magic they find.  I don't need to say precisely what it is... but if they're going to spend a 1st level spell to find it out, there is no harm to give them a pretty solid idea of what they find.  Because even if they know what the magic is... they still have to deal with it.So with regards to your example... I personally would tell the player they get a sense of very strong and potentially malevolent Fey essence.  Because why not?  Why not let them know that there's some nasty fey in the area?  Because at the end of the day its going to generate action on the part of the players-- they will either become intrigued and go searching for the fey (which is great, new adventure!) or they will high-tail it out of there (which tells you as a DM that they aren't interested in that kind of adventure.)  As opposed to just saying "You get a sense of Enchantment in the area", which can mean practically anything and the Warlock will have gained no information to act on.I always default to the idea that more information for the players is better than less.  Because then they can make actual choices and decisions, rather than just blindly go forward, stumbling into anything or everything.Of course, that's just my opinion... I could be wrong.</blockquote>

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