Play Your Next 5E D&D Game as a Mystic Seer

Over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel Nerdarchists Dave and Ted indulge the latter’s love of puns and come up with the latest Character Build Guide for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. We tend to get a good amount of interaction and feedback on CBGs so I thought this would be a terrific opportunity to walk you through the process and highlight ways you’ll find these useful for your 5E D&D experiences whether you’re a player or a Dungeon Master. After creating so many of these guides we’ve gleaned some unexpected insights ourselves. The Mystic Seer combines the cleric and wizard into an unusual multiclass character with a strong narrative arc to their advancement. In addition where we typically create a generic creature stat block to go along with the player guide this time around we present a specific NPC ready to drop right into your game. So let’s get into it.

Behind the CBG — Mystic Seer

In all our CBGs we consider the journey more than the destination and present a guide suitable for any level of 5E D&D play whether you’re pursuing an epic campaign from start to finish, starting beyond 1st level or choosing a character for a one shot. Then we take those concepts and develop an NPC or creature version of the character build for Dungeon Masters to incorporate into their games. All of this gets packaged up and laid out in a PDF you can find over at Dungeon Master’s Guild. We’ve got dozens of pay what you want products at DMG, many of them best sellers so if you want to check those out start with the Mystic Seer here.

All about the character story

Every CBG begins with an idea for a character with a particular schtick, from the Mind Breaker’s psyche crushing smites to the Mystic Seer’s supernatural senses. In some cases puns and pop culture references represent the catalyst for a CBG too. Looking at you, Sewer Ninja. From there we spend a good deal of time discussing what sort of person starts down this path to power. This includes motivation and also multiclass reasoning because let’s be real — nearly every one of these guides focuses on a multiclass character. As DM’s Guild Brand Manager and longtime Nerdarchy friend Lysa Penrose puts it they’re each like their own unique class for 5E D&D.

The Mystic Seer lingered on our idea list for some time. Up until publication it was known as Claire Voyant CBG, a terribly cheesy pun Nerdarchist Ted pitched a while back. We hadn’t done any CBGs for a stretch and since they’re fun and pretty straightforward and we were at the tail end of a lengthy weekly meeting it got the bump up to the big leagues.

Lest you think we chose githzerai as the character’s race because of the ability score bonuses this was in fact secondary in the selection process. Gith trace their origins to another plane and their appearance in a baseline D&D world lends a mysterious air to their presence. The idea of an extraplanar person with extraordinary perspective and innate supernatural abilities using them as a charlatan to astound simple folk of the Material Plane with parlor tricks and keen insight seemed fun and interesting.

To test this character’s mettle a deity of knowledge chooses them as an act of faith and this set’s the seer on the path of an adventurer as a 1st level cleric. Now they’ve got real magic and a responsibility to use their power to help people rather than swindle them with false hopes. At this point the Mystic Seer only exists as a fresh character with no experience and already they’ve got a solid backstory, motivation and collection of abilities to represent their schtick with aplomb. They’re insightful, persuasive, deceptive and adroit with skills to mask their identity and a cool psionic trick to make a fortune reading really impressive. And this doesn’t even mention their real deal cleric magic.

With a bit of experience as a cleric under their belt this character grows curious. Naturally intelligent and wise they wonder what else they can learn about divining the future and hit the books to study as a wizard. Whatever deity of knowledge chose them would appreciate the nerdy behavior right? The Mystic Seer recognizes the potential immediately. Spells like unseen servant, Tenser’s floating disc and comprehend languages can really up the production value on their side hustle as a fortune teller. But just in case anything legitimately supernatural goes down protection from evil and good remains firmly planted in their prepared spells. And with a bit of practice as a wizard soon they grasp the great power of Portent! And things will never be the same again.

Now the Mystic Seer possesses a plethora of powerful tools to both foretell the future and influence outcomes, magically and otherwise. And they’re only 3rd level! One of the things we noticed early on creating CBGs is how much variety of skills and features a character can accumulate very quickly. More often than not we express surprise to each other how versatile a character becomes early as an adventurer — sometimes even at 1st level.

Making sure these CBGs start off useful and remain so for an entire adventuring career is a guideline we established from the get go. This was particularly important then too because we generally make these Adventurers League legal. That means if you start a new character you’ll be playing at 1st level and a guide that doesn’t get good until Tier 3 or 4 doesn’t do any good. Playing a Mystic Seer lets your follow their path as it unfolds not just in the acquisition of new features and spells but with a narrative arc taking the character from a start as a fraud to a powerful oracle with a sense of responsibility for using their knowledge to guide others in a constructive way.

Or, you could play a Mystic Seer however you want. Keep that charlatan attitude and thrive on using your supernatural powers to acquire a fortune telling the masses and powerful (and rich!) patrons what lies ahead. Along the way maybe in your downtime you perform readings and hold occult soirees by invitation only for the wealthy and famous in the spooky parlor behind your shop like Snilor the Inscrutable.

Mystic Seer NPC for 5E D&D

Full disclosure — the NPCs and creatures we make in CBGs are some of my favorite bits of 5E D&D content to create. Basically we step back and look at the character guide to find the standout features, the ones that feel like signature abilities. The juice! From there we consider what sort of person or people would possess or gain these abilities and build a stat block around them. More often than not the section of a CBG For Dungeon Masters presents a generic creature, often a member of an organization. Nerdarchist Dave loves including organizations into game material because it’s a great way for players to hook into the world.

But for the Mystic Seer I could not resist the appeal of building it around one of my own go to NPCs, Snilor. Whenever a group of adventurers starts poking around the big city for magical stuff they inevitably encounter this occult enthusiast. Snilor first set up shop in outer space in my Spelljammer campaign and he’s appeared many times since in all sorts of campaigns. Snilor is basically a nerd who’s into the occult, and in a D&D world that means he can actually enact rituals, summon stuff and so forth.

For the iteration of Snilor as a Mystic Seer I set out to create an NPC with some powerful abilities but in a very soft way. In my games Snilor is an occult nerd, a wimp and a person with some magical powers in that order. I like the idea they only speak Gith but have telepathy to add a new dimension to Snilor’s strange presence, that’s a new one I’m adding to the next iteration of this NPC in my games. (Usually Snilor is a young human.)

I broke my own rule, and one I suspect is a default assumption of Fifth Edition design, by not giving Snilor any sort of generic attack. There’s no dagger, no staff or even weak attempt at a balled up fist. But Snilor is really good at prognosticating and when they cast an Omen on you it’s serious business. My favorite feature for Snilor and one of my favorite among CBGs entirely is Clairvoyance. (Master of Undeath’s Pale Master stays on top though.)

The pun that started it all had to be represented strongly right? It took me a while to come up with the feature, which for a writer means I took lots of breaks to stare thoughtfully out the window or go for a walk. The dictionary definition of clairvoyance is evocative and I wanted to capture the feeling.

“The supernatural power of seeing objects or actions removed in space or time from natural viewing.”

Clairvoyance (Recharge 6). Snilor sees objects and actions removed in space or time from normal view. As an action Snilor chooses a causal thread in a 40-foot line that is 5 feet wide. Each creature in that line must make a DC 16 Charisma saving throw or it has disadvantage on its next attack roll, saving throw or ability check. If the saving throw fails by 5 or more, the creature is instead trapped between moments of time and paralyzed for 1 minute. At the end of each of its turns, the target can make another Charisma saving throw. On a success, the effect ends on the target. While paralyzed, a creature is immune to Clairvoyance.

Snilor still keeps a few other tricks up their sleeve too so if this sounds like an NPC who might find a home in your own 5E D&D games check out the Mystic Seer CBG here.

And if you play a character inspired by one of our CBGs or use one of the NPCs or creatures in your games let us know. We’ve heard the Mind Breaker makes a dangerous adversary for adventuring parties and we’ve all played these characters in one shots or short campaigns including Nerdarchist Ted playing a Justicar every Thursday as part of the Dawnbringers on Mini Terrain Domain’s Twitch channel for the past couple of years now. We recently started a Community Spotlight on our weekly Nerdarchy the Newsletter and we want to know what you’re up to around your gaming tables. Have you played a character from one of our CBGs or used the creatures in your games? Did you find inspiration from one of our videos, website posts or products? Let us know! Comment on this post, tag us on social media or send us a message and share your stories and images. We love making all sorts of content for you and we want to hear about your adventures too. You get a special coupon for $9.99 when you sign up for the newsletter too. If you want to grab your own copy of this great mini you can grab a copy here.