[Reaver]

If I am understanding what you are saying, that makes no sense.

If you allow a noticing magic test on any of those sustained spells, you have just defeated the purpose of those spells. (Note I am not arguing a resistance test).

Basically, if I understand you, you are allowing 2 magic tests, one to resist the effects, and one to notice a magical effect....

So someone who casts physical mask at force 10 will ALWAYS be viewed at magical by everyone around them, thus defeating the point of the physical mask spell, which is to appear as someone else - just due to the fact that its a noticable magical effect!

IE: male mage is wanted by corp security, so he casts physical mask (F10) to appear as a female. The guard fails the resistance test so he sees a female. However, he autopasses the noticing magic test, thus knows that the 'female' in question has a magical effect on them....

[Herr Brackhaus]

There are several cases in the books where noticing sustained magic goes against the nature of the setting.

Run Faster deals specifically with using magic on your Johnson (no, not like that you pervs); specifically, using manipulation magic is a good way to earn a black mark or even a death sentence, but using spells like Analyze Truth is OK.

If it was possible to detect a sustained high-Force Analyze Truth spell just through the Perceiving Magic rules, this in-setting suggestion makes very little sense as nearly all Detection spells require several net hits, and thus a fairly high Force, in order to be effective. You could argue that there's always reagents, but again, I'd point to the in-game stories that lean more in the way of sustained magic being mostly unnoticable.

To my mind, Perceiving Magic is for when a spell is cast and possibly when it takes effect; once the effect is sustained or becomes permanent, not so much.

As for magic having obvious effects, El Diablo is spot on as far as I'm concerned. Some magic alters reality (Shapechange, any of the Shape [Material] spells, Mist Form], but most do not. So while Increase Body makes you more resistant to damage and Increase Strength makes you more ... well, strong... neither actually change your physical form.

[Blue Rose]

If I am understanding what you are saying, that makes no sense.

If you allow a noticing magic test on any of those sustained spells, you have just defeated the purpose of those spells. (Note I am not arguing a resistance test).

Basically, if I understand you, you are allowing 2 magic tests, one to resist the effects, and one to notice a magical effect....

So someone who casts physical mask at force 10 will ALWAYS be viewed at magical by everyone around them, thus defeating the point of the physical mask spell, which is to appear as someone else - just due to the fact that its a noticable magical effect!

IE: male mage is wanted by corp security, so he casts physical mask (F10) to appear as a female. The guard fails the resistance test so he sees a female. However, he autopasses the noticing magic test, thus knows that the 'female' in question has a magical effect on them....

The resistance test on an illusion spell is your roll to notice it.  If you fail your resistance check, you don't notice the illusion.  If you pass, you notice the illusion.

And as I said, for illusions, that illusion is the effect the spell has on the world.  If you cast a force 10 physical mask, yes, people will notice.  People noticing is the point of that spell.  They will notice that you look like Tina the actuary, because that's the thing that spell physically does.  Because it's force 10, the effect is more real, has more substance to it.  In other words, you look more like Tina the actuary.

I never said the roll should be, "Aha!  Thar be magic!"  But there should be something to notice, especially when you get up on the extreme end.  You hulk somebody out with health spells and I may not know if they're magicked or on kami, but there should be a tell on that one that something's happened to their body.  Magic that has no effect on the world and only alters numbers in tests is both silly and boring.

[Whiskeyjack]

The resistance test on an illusion spell is your roll to notice it.  If you fail your resistance check, you don't notice the illusion.  If you pass, you notice the illusion.

There are two different rolls being discussed here.

And as I said, for illusions, that illusion is the effect the spell has on the world.  If you cast a force 10 physical mask, yes, people will notice.

If you cast in front of them, yes, they get to roll to notice and roll to resist. If you walk into a room with it already cast, they get to roll to resist and nothing else, barring Assensing. That is the entire point. The roll to resist is penalized with higher Force. The roll to notice casting when it happens is made easier with higher Force. The point is, casting an Illusion at high Force while people are watching gives them the easy opportunity to notice the magic occurring paired with a very small chance of them resisting the ultimate effect. If you cast an hour before you see anyone and sustain it, their chance to see through it is very small, and they don't "deserve" to know they've been magicked by making the very-easy-if-Force-is-high roll.

This is quite intentional, given the nature of the Illusion spell type.

But there should be something to notice, especially when you get up on the extreme end.

There is something to notice, if you can Assense. There is no reason mundanes "should" be able to notice a difference.

You hulk somebody out with health spells and I may not know if they're magicked or on kami, but there should be a tell on that one that something's happened to their body. 

Again, why, beyond your personal preferences? which aren't supported by the text I might add

I mean sure SOME people might interpret that but it's hardly a bright line rule unlike "Armor makes you glow."

Magic that has no effect on the world and only alters numbers in tests is both silly and boring.

1. well that's just like your opinion man

2. It *does* affect the world. Cast Increase Reflexes and you are effectively running magic Wired Reflexes, with the possible descriptor of jitteriness that comes with that; cast Combat Sense and you might exhibit the sort of hypervigilant perception that is best described by watching how a bird moves. Cast Increase Body and suddenly a guy hit with an AK round shrugs it off instead of going down in a pool of blood.

But that's ultimately fluff, and if a person wants to ignore it or minimize fluff, who ultimately cares outside of people in their gaming group bored by their lack of effort?

This isn't the sort of thing that rules are really meant to set down, aside from the obvious "Armor makes you glow" kinda thing (which, incidentally, is probably because it's an entirely different kind of spell than Combat Sense or Physical Mask, and there are different assumptions about how those spell types work. Or even within the same spell type - it's not like Control Thoughts or Influence logically have visual components to them, and if they did, they'd suck for some of the same reasons Armor sucks, i.e., the obvious "geek the mage" sign in neon they would create).

Frankly, the difference between Automatics 1 and Automatics 6, or the application of Improved Ability, or whether or not someone has vision mods in either ware or contacts, has an effect on the world and how such characters would be expected to act in the context of using those things, but not one that's obvious if someone puts no effort into descriptors (and not everything needs such a descriptor constantly, I'll add); otherwise, it "just" affects numbers, which in the end DOES affect the setting as it effects results, turning otherwise-ordinary people into superhumans with the details and effects they can achieve.

Not sure why this is controversial let alone a big deal; that's not exactly an uncommon thing in RPGs, that effects seem bland if the player doesn't try to make them appear interesting IC.

[Tarislar]

As I understand it, magic/mana is invisible to the mundane.

Its effects can sometimes be seen,  (The fire from Fireball,  the glow from Armor,  the change in your look from illusions)

But the Magic (Mana) itself is invisible.  So no, you can't see a sustained detection spell.

The perception test is to notice the caster doing the casting.  To me its a hold over of the old "Shamanic Mask" from SR1.
You see their concentrated focus, moving lips/fingers, etc etc.

If someone is walking around with a sustained Analyze Truth spell on I don't think your going to know it as a mundane.
Unless they just can't keep a straight face when they pick up on your lying to them.

The only way I can see the perception test being involved with something like Physical Mask would be if you were in some serious physical contact with the Masked person.  Then maybe you get a tingle from such close contact like walking through a ward.

If your in a wrestling match with someone with a sustained attribute spell, maybe you get to check for a tingle.  But not just from walking past them.

Even then I think those physical contact options would be just that, optional for the GM, I don't see it as how the wording of CRB is intended.

[Kuirem]

The Core Rulebook does say :

People have reported feeling chills, dread, or other unnatural sensations they can’t quite put their finger on when magic is in the area

RAW it would be that any magic can be detected but they don't know which spell it is or from where it comes from.

But if you look at the examples :

If you just stepped through a Force 5 ward, the threshold to notice the markings or feel the tingle is 1

Notice that it says when you just stepped through the ward, not right before. So RAI looks like you can only detect a spell that you have seen casted or that you go through (Similar to how you can detect an Astral Form, which makes sense since Spells have an Astral Form).

[Whiskeyjack]

The Core Rulebook does say :

People have reported feeling chills, dread, or other unnatural sensations they can’t quite put their finger on when magic is in the area

RAW it would be that any magic can be detected but they don't know which spell it is or from where it comes from.

That's not a rule, that's called "reading crunch into fluff."

[Kiirnodel]

The Core Rulebook does say :

People have reported feeling chills, dread, or other unnatural sensations they can’t quite put their finger on when magic is in the area

RAW it would be that any magic can be detected but they don't know which spell it is or from where it comes from.

But if you look at the examples :

If you just stepped through a Force 5 ward, the threshold to notice the markings or feel the tingle is 1

Notice that it says when you just stepped through the ward, not right before. So RAI looks like you can only detect a spell that you have seen casted or that you go through (Similar to how you can detect an Astral Form, which makes sense since Spells have an Astral Form).

Spells don't generally have Astral Forms, they leave behind Astral Signatures, but don't have "physicality" on the Astral. (Astral) Mana Barriers are of course one of the exceptions because they are specifically there to impede Astral Forms. You get a check to notice passing through an Astral barrier for the same reason you get a check when an Astral Form passes through you, based on Astral Detection pg 314. But I wouldn't necessarily give someone a check to notice walking into the area of a detection spell. I might make that an effect of a glitch on the spellcasting or if a character resists the spell particularly well (several net hits on the defense).

[Tarislar]

What he said ^^^


Big difference between walking through a large magical area barrier,  and realizing that someone has someone has boosted their willpower when they are standing 10 feet from you.

[Senko]

Personally I'm one of those GM's who HATES the whole non-magical people notice magic when its cast especially since the rules don't really go into things like force of spell, distance from caster, interfering objects, etc, etc. So I tend to play it as you might get a check to notice the caster casting but you don't get one for magic unless reasons (your a mage, you have a magic sensitive quality I allow in my games) but normal every day people will no more notice magic being cast than they notice the signals to the advertising AR's. Cause and effect noticing the guy sitting in front of a screen mumbling to himself maybe, noticing the spell of sense enemies he's cast no. Of course if he were casting fireball and it blew up the square you were in you'd notice that but that's an obvious effect you don't sense the magic causing it and the guy mumbling to himself may have been talking on his comlink to mall security because he IS a mage who sensed magic being cast when it shouldn't.

I do however like the idea of varying force affecting the visible effects of things that are visible e.g. bigger fireball, brighter armour. Force 1 faint glow barely visible in a dark room, Force 19 solid blue glowing shell lighting up the area in broad daylight and hiding the mage inside.

[Fenix Wulfheart]

Blue Rose, I am going to speak for what I think you are saying. Please correct me if I am wrong. And I hope I am not overstepping any bounds here.

There is something to notice, if you can Assense. There is no reason mundanes "should" be able to notice a difference.

He isn't saying a mundane can tell you have magic per se. See below.

You hulk somebody out with health spells and I may not know if they're magicked or on kami, but there should be a tell on that one that something's happened to their body. 

Again, why, beyond your personal preferences? which aren't supported by the text I might add

Let's say a person has an Agility of 4, increased by magic that is being sustained to 4 (. 8 is actually a physically impossible level of Agility for a human being to achieve in the world as we know it (AFAIK). When you watch this person moving, what do you see? This level of grace and coordination is, simply, unnatural. In the world of Shadowrun, then, where this kind of thing can and does happen, it will look like this person is wired, magicked, possessed, maaaaybe certain kinds of metahuman, maybe a vat baby, etc.

What Blue Rose is saying, is that the magic itself is not visible, but the change that it has caused is subtly apparent. He is not saying make detection of magic two rolls all the time so much as trying to communicate that the initial casting roll isn't the only time when the spell can be recognized as a spell, even without Assensing. The cue is NOT definitive, however. You examine this person's unnatural grace, and you have to come to your own conclusion for WHICH OF THESE THINGS IT IS. Natch, omae?

He is also not saying there is a second roll to spot the illusion in the case of a Mask - just the opposite. He is saying it is even less likely you get a second roll to resist, because the high Force of the spell makes you more "solidly covered/enclosed" in the effect of the spell. Someone "sees" the magic as MORE real and thus harder to differentiate from reality precisely because it is a higher force.

It is not a stretch, then, for something like Increase Strength (when cast at higher levels) to visibly increase muscle mass that is evident externally. It is a Health spell, after all. If Heal can stitch up and seal wounds, then Health spells do have some slight crossover into Manipulation when it comes to body manipulation. But Shapechange is Manipulation. So where is the line? The book doesn't quite say. I'm inclined to think that the muscles would increase in apparent size a little bit when increasing Strength by 3 or 4, but how is someone to know that isn't your natural muscle size if they didn't see the spellcasting? Stretched clothes might give an idea, but I wouldn't say that it stretches enough to, say, ruin Custom Fit, so the change wouldn't be that noticeable. Maybe if someone already knew you very well, or saw you earlier that day. In the end, rules can't cover things like this near as well as individual tables can in my opinion. ^^

Your examples in bullet point two seem to me to be illustrating the point I think he was also trying to make. Like you guys are trying to say the same end result but from two different perspectives, maybe?

This isn't the sort of thing that rules are really meant to set down, aside from the obvious "Armor makes you glow" kinda thing (which, incidentally, is probably because it's an entirely different kind of spell than Combat Sense or Physical Mask, and there are different assumptions about how those spell types work. Or even within the same spell type - it's not like Control Thoughts or Influence logically have visual components to them, and if they did, they'd suck for some of the same reasons Armor sucks, i.e., the obvious "geek the mage" sign in neon they would create).

A fair point indeed.

Frankly, the difference between Automatics 1 and Automatics 6, or the application of Improved Ability, or whether or not someone has vision mods in either ware or contacts, has an effect on the world and how such characters would be expected to act in the context of using those things, but not one that's obvious if someone puts no effort into descriptors (and not everything needs such a descriptor constantly, I'll add); otherwise, it "just" affects numbers, which in the end DOES affect the setting as it effects results, turning otherwise-ordinary people into superhumans with the details and effects they can achieve.

Not sure why this is controversial let alone a big deal; that's not exactly an uncommon thing in RPGs, that effects seem bland if the player doesn't try to make them appear interesting IC.

Eeeeeh....but not everyone is good at that sort of thing. It is and it isn't necessary to include descriptors. I'd say it is for the best to have a rulebook section ON description and how to adjudicate what the numbers MEAN (aside from the Skill chapter table about 1-12 ratings, etc), but I don't really need more than that. Some might, though.

What I am unsure of is if Blue Rose is actually trying to advocate a change in how the book should be represented, or rather that he is trying to explicate his subjective viewpoint of how magic works/should work in this setting in a clear way. I'm not seeing his end game just yet.

Also, I particularly agree with what you said above that I put in Bold

[Senko]

The problem I have wiith that Fenix (and I think others might be the same) is that it comes back to what I was saying about cause and effect. Lets take a hypothetical agility spell for example. . .

Situation
Large crowded street with lots of people (See picture below), Tim see's mall security moving on a nearby shoplift thinks they're after him and his friends who were casing a nearby bank and panics, he casts increase agility 4 on the samurai.

Now this is where what you notice comes into play. If you read that "people notice magic because its unnatural" as crunch then EVERYONE nearby should get a roll to sense Tim's magic. Even if you ignore the issues of range, line of sight etc that's a huge number of people all making checks to see if they notice the magic. Not Sarah suddenly getting a lot more graceful and fluid which could be her activating wired reflexes or the like, they may not even see her its just the magic the sense. So you potentially have a lot of people with no magical ability suddenly getting chills, feelings of dread, etc because magic was cast nearby. They don't see the mage he's behind them, they don't hear the mage their chatting on a cellphone, they don't see the magics effect that's on one girl who's also behind them but they feel something unnatural because they passed their roll. On the other hand if you ignore that fluff then only those looking at Sarah would even get a check to realize somethings happened and that something could be a purely physical activation of wired reflexes, if they don't see her suddenly change her gate then maybe she's just one of those people who are naturally insanely graceful.

Then of course you have the issues of faireness a decker can do all sorts of things in the matrix but if your not in at least AR you'll only see effects you don't get feelings of dread because of the unnatural wireless transmissions he's sending out so why should you get it with magic which is a lot more natural when you aren't magically sensitive in the first place? Decker hacks your comlink and dips into your bank accounts your not going to innately sense something wifi related is going on (unless your a technomancer) so why should you suddenly get a roll to sense a mage has cast clairvoyance on a nearby police station?

As for magic making the body muscles increase that's purely personal taste I for instance prefer something like Buffy the Vampire slayer where the magically endowed strength has no physical manifestation at all and a cute, little girl (teenager so girl is applicable) has the strength to lift a 6'2 football player off the ground and suspend him one handed in mid-air. Making her both bait and trap in one person.

[Fenix Wulfheart]

Now this is where what you notice comes into play. If you read that "people notice magic because its unnatural" as crunch then EVERYONE nearby should get a roll to sense Tim's magic. Even if you ignore the issues of range, line of sight etc that's a huge number of people all making checks to see if they notice the magic. Not Sarah suddenly getting a lot more graceful and fluid which could be her activating wired reflexes or the like, they may not even see her its just the magic the sense. So you potentially have a lot of people with no magical ability suddenly getting chills, feelings of dread, etc because magic was cast nearby. They don't see the mage he's behind them, they don't hear the mage their chatting on a cellphone, they don't see the magics effect that's on one girl who's also behind them but they feel something unnatural because they passed their roll. On the other hand if you ignore that fluff then only those looking at Sarah would even get a check to realize somethings happened and that something could be a purely physical activation of wired reflexes, if they don't see her suddenly change her gate then maybe she's just one of those people who are naturally insanely graceful.

Hmm. Part of the point, though, is that no one actually can have Agility 8 if they are a human being outside of augmentations - max is 6 (or sometimes 7). So when someone sees that, it looks actively unnatural. So if this spell was not triggered in front of people, which means by the rules there is no Noticing Magic roll, then wouldn't people be entitled to look at this literally unnatural Agility and think "Huh, this person is not normal? Are they Augmented? Or maybe Awakened?" They don't get to Notice Magic, but they get to notice that something is going on, with maybe some kind of roll called for by the GM. You dig?

If we do accept that magic is some sort of unnatural manifestation that can be sensed like astral forms passing through someone, we may need to question Essence and Magic itself. Magic is supposed to be natural, formed by the Gaiasphere and the presence of life. That is why there isn't any in space. Therefore, I don't see why it would feel that way in fluff. So I figure Noticing Magic is seeing flashes of light or some other physical manifestation of a spell. For a Buffy-esque character being buffed, I would picture a subtle shockwave from the caster rolling out to a half meter, and at Force 10 it physically moves small things and sends dust up into the air. No muscle bulge or anything, but some kind of visible and obvious magic. If it is instead unnatural, then things would bog indeed bog down a great deal in game.

Then of course you have the issues of faireness a decker can do all sorts of things in the matrix but if your not in at least AR you'll only see effects you don't get feelings of dread because of the unnatural wireless transmissions he's sending out so why should you get it with magic which is a lot more natural when you aren't magically sensitive in the first place? Decker hacks your comlink and dips into your bank accounts your not going to innately sense something wifi related is going on (unless your a technomancer) so why should you suddenly get a roll to sense a mage has cast clairvoyance on a nearby police station?

I agree. I don't think there should be some kind of dread or something. That's weird, if you ask me. No, I figure there would be something noticeable with a subtlety or lack thereof appropriate to the spell and the Force. I'm not certain where this is coming from, though - is this roll to notice magic when you weren't looking at the spellcaster something I seem to have implied? I didn't mean to. I certainly don't think that is true O_o


BTW this is my Noticing Magic house rules:
"Noticing Magic: Stronger magic is easier to spot. But why is higher Force easier to spot? Magic strength is not Force alone. And why would a Force 6 Physical Barrier actually be harder to spot than a Force 7 Armor spell? The Physical Barrier creates a much larger effect that expands into much more of the world, and these two have the same Drain Value at that Force. Further, why is this rule only for spells? And why do mundanes and the Awakened have the same chance to notice it (More, actually, for the mundanes that bought higher Perception with their Karma that didn’t go into magic skills).
So instead, I make the Threshold of the roll to Notice Magic always 5, using Intuition + Magic-Based Skill (So people trained in Spellcasting as an Active AND/OR a Knowledge skill can use it to detect spells; similar deal for Conjuring, Alchemy, Spirit Powers, etc). However, the dice pool has a bonus equal to the Drain Value of the spell, and has a +6 bonus for Extended Area spells, +3 bonus for Area spells, Nix for LOS spells, -3 for Touch, and -6 for Self Only spells. This means high Force spells with Reagents used to control it are more detectable than lower Force spells, and it also means that a low Force spell with a high limit is very subtle and hard to spot. For spirits or alchemy-creation or ritual spells, the Force is the bonus."

[Senko]

Ok let me take your points in order I apologise for the lack of quoting my laptops' not good at more than basic typing especially on this site, it took me 10 minutes to post this after typing it . . .

superhuman agility
To avoid being difficult we'lll work with max human + max augment. Your noticing someone with agility 10 as amazingly graceful/odd I have no problems with. that's a purely physical i.e. real world effect that can be seen and reacted too. Knowing that its magic or suspecting because you felt a feeling of dread beforehand as opposed to them merely having amazing cyberware is what I object to. Again cause and effect you can see the effect but that doesn't automatically mean you know the cause it could be magic, it could be cyberware, it could (if you didn't see them before) being something that looks human but isn't such as an elf with max agility/human looking and exceptional attribute agility (unlikely but that is an agility of 8 on someone who looks human). From what I can see by your comments here we're in agreement on that you can see the effect and suspect something is odd but there's other explanations than magic.

Magic is unnatural
I agree it seems weird that one bit of fluff refers to it as unnatural and others as a natural result of life. We agree you can notice effects on some spells where we differ is that you seem to feel they should occur for all spells and I don't e.g. str boost you give it a shockwave whereas I wouldn't there is literally no outside indication of that strength till the person does something that should be impossible e.g. lifting something heavy. Just becuase its force 10 doesn't mean (for me) that its visible in the physical world. To any mage or person with magic sensativity it'd be obvious but to a normal, everyday person it isn't.

Kind of Dread
Not really aimed specifically at you but in other threads there have been people who treat the single line of fluff with no mechanics about magic causing feelings of dread etc because of its unnatural nature as gospel and that any magic regardless of force, use, situation causes that in the people around which was what i was referring to. For example casting clairvoyance in the pic I linked above would for them give all those people a roll to feel a sense of dread, chills, etc. They often go on to say that they wouldn't "necessarily" know it was magic causing the sensation but they would have it. Like I mentioned in my games there are some spells that have obvious effects anyone can see e.g. fireball, some that the subject can feel e.g. a person under a spell increasing agility would find physical co-ordination easier and if they were boosted above their races normal maximum someone might notice that and spells no one should notice UNLESS they are a mage or magically sensative (a quality I allow in my games for non-mages to sense magic going on around them if they wish) such as clairvoyance.

Magic Rules
Pretty much as per the book but only for mages or people who take the quality above.

[Fenix Wulfheart]

We are in agreement on most points. However:

Kind of Dread
Not really aimed specifically at you but in other threads there have been people who treat the single line of fluff with no mechanics about magic causing feelings of dread etc because of its unnatural nature as gospel and that any magic regardless of force, use, situation causes that in the people around which was what i was referring to. For example casting clairvoyance in the pic I linked above would for them give all those people a roll to feel a sense of dread, chills, etc. They often go on to say that they wouldn't "necessarily" know it was magic causing the sensation but they would have it. Like I mentioned in my games there are some spells that have obvious effects anyone can see e.g. fireball, some that the subject can feel e.g. a person under a spell increasing agility would find physical co-ordination easier and if they were boosted above their races normal maximum someone might notice that and spells no one should notice UNLESS they are a mage or magically sensative (a quality I allow in my games for non-mages to sense magic going on around them if they wish) such as clairvoyance.

This is against the rules. If a spell was cast, there is a Noticing Magic roll allowed, always. It is the responsibility of the GM and the group to make that roll make sense and fit the setting. This roll is allowed at the moment of casting provided the spellcaster can be seen/is being looked at. It can be described as tiny flares of nearly unnoticeable light or something similarly simple (dependent, of course, on the threshold), but there is something. Shadowrun, by the rules, has a magic system wherein high concentrations of mana warp physical space. This is also further supported by those domains of mana wherein you can step into astral space from the physical world - I forget what they are called. Where physical and astral space are one. These physically apparent manifestations makes sense, really. If magic is natural, then it is part of the normal world. Not separated from it. When magic can only be detected by those sensitive to magic, then that is a world where magic is subtle. Shadowrun isn't one of those worlds. That sort of magic also implies it is unnatural or outside the world, aka artificial.

In shadowrun, magic is natural. That is why there are paracritters. Magic is born into people in this world, but that doesn't mean that those without it can feel it. There should be no "feeling of dread" with Noticing Magic, but rather some indication that something happened that fits the fluff of the situation. Glowing eyes is a common one I use, and that one is supported by official artwork of the Combat Mage in SR4 who is casting what might be a manabolt. If it is a manabolt, the Force must be high because that is a spell that is normally not visible. So a manabolt may look like a bolt flying from the caster, but it then disappears from sight as it leaves the mages aura. There is no dodge with such spells for a reason.

So if someone casts invisibility in front of you, there is a Noticing Magic roll. This lets you see that something happened. It doesn't let you know where they are or what they look like any better. And if they disappear in front of you, odds are you can figure out what happened without the Noticing Magic roll. In order to not have this Noticing Magic effect, you would need to house rule it in your home games. And that's OK. I can certainly see a world wherein that is true. It isn't much of a difference from Shadowrun. But it is different.

Also, note that the threshold is Force based up to TEN. I mean, TEN! Most people will see absolutely nothing when you cast an Illusion - why cast an Illusion higher than Force 6? The enemies have to get more hits than you. Most of the time this will be a non issue, which means most of the time your idea that it is subtle/invisible is fairly accurate. Invisibility spells and Detection spells are subtle, often with thresholds of 4 to 6 for Noticing Magic. That is the point of these spells, really. They aren't flashy, but they make stuff happen nonetheless.

Oh, and I don't recall if it is in this edition, but in prior editions Awakened people got +2 to this roll to Notice Magic IIRC.

Magic Rules
Pretty much as per the book but only for mages or people who take the quality above.

This sounds like a house rule. Is that what you are trying to say, that you house rule this part of the magic system? Or are you saying that you read that part of the book as only applicable to magic users?