Supernaturalist (5e Background)

You specialize in the supernatural, having spent a significant portion of your life researching the esoteric nature of magical phenomena and their place in the world. Your study may have taken place in the hallowed halls of reputable universities, on the road with eager eyes, or through the avenue of oral tradition. Your view of the occult may be naturalistic, religious, or anything in-between. Regardless of your theorizing, you demonstrate practical competency on matters beyond the mundane.

Skill Proficiencies: Arcana, Nature

Tool Proficiencies: Artisan's Tools (Alchemist's Supplies)

Languages: Celestial or Sylvan.

Equipment: A hiking stick, a set of traveler's clothes, a small occult chapbook, notes on your studies, an esoteric charm, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp.

Field

To determine your specialty in the occult sciences, roll a d4 or choose from the options below.

  1. Psychical Research
  2. Popular Occultism
  3. Esoteric Druidry
  4. Classical Magic

Feature: Occult Intuition

Experience, training, and occasional extrasensory insight assist you with the investigation of unearthly mysteries. If you cannot find a clue regarding a topic of supernatural significance, you often get an inkling of where you could uncover more information regarding the topic. This information applies to all potential sources of knowledge, including hidden locations or living people, but only when the occult is the key subject. Your DM may rule that actually accessing such information may be difficult, or that your intuition simply fails you on that occasion.

Suggested Characteristics

Supernaturalists tend to be of the inquisitive sort, and such curiosity may itself give way to obsession. The drive for such knowledge could be for its own sake, though many also display a preoccupation with the accumulation of personal power or academic notoriety. Focused as they are on things beyond nature, supernaturalists may come across as odd or marginal to outsiders, though just as many lead rather normal lives outside of their unusual profession.

Personality Trait

  1. My nomenclature tends to exclude those who don't share my interests.
  2. My speech is peppered with secret mantras and bizarre syllables.
  3. I like to make myself appear more mysterious than I actually am.
  4. Given my line of work, I place an emphasis on appearing normal. For obvious reasons, I try too hard.

Ideal

  1. Knowledge. In understanding, we find power and freedom.
  2. Beauty. The magic of the world makes it more than bearable.
  3. Freedom. No limit of nature should place shackles on our unlimited potential.
  4. Power. Understanding the supernatural gives greater insight into our own magical attributes.

Bond

  1. I will shelter the few students who safeguard our unappreciated field.
  2. I'd do practically anything for the school that allowed my studies to thrive.
  3. Not a single friend who accompanied my supernatural studies shall go quietly into the dark. I'll make sure of it.
  4. I know I need to find an answer to that occult case from so many years ago.

Flaw

  1. I'm lazy, which is why most of my portfolio consists of vague musings or blatant theft.
  2. My work is my life and I have little patience for anything else.
  3. I constantly fret over occult factors that few others give much credence to.
  4. I'm more enamored in the fantasy than the science of the supernatural.