Phantom (Homebrew/UA Update for 5.5e)

Many rogues walk a fine line between life and death, risking their own lives and taking the lives of others. While adventuring on that line, some rogues discover a mystical connection to death itself. These rogues take knowledge from the dead and become immersed in negative energy, eventually becoming like ghosts. Thieves’ guilds value them as highly effective information gatherers and spies.

Many shadar-kai of the Shadowfell are masters of these macabre techniques, and some are willing to teach this path. In places like Thay in the Forgotten Realms and Karrnath in Eberron, where many necromancers practice their craft, a Phantom can become a wizard’s confidant and right hand. In temples of gods of death, the Phantom might work as an agent to track down those who try to cheat death and to recover knowledge that might otherwise be lost to the grave.

How did you discover this grim power? Did you sleep in a graveyard and awaken to your new abilities? Or did you cultivate them in a temple or thieves’ guild dedicated to a deity of death?

Whispers of the Dead

3rd-level Phantom feature

Whenever you finish a Short or Long Rest, you can choose one skill or tool proficiency that you lack and gain it, as a ghostly presence shares its knowledge with you. You lose this proficiency when you use this benefit against to choose a different proficiency.

Wails from the Grave

3rd-level Phantom feature

As you nudge someone closer to the grave, you can channel the power of death to harm someone else as well. Immediately after you deal your Sneak Attack damage to a creature on your turn, you can target a second creature that you can see within 30 feet of the first creature. Roll half the number of Sneak Attack dice for your level (round up), and the second creature takes necrotic damage equal to the roll’s total, as wails of the dead sound around them for a moment.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Dexterity modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Tokens of the Departed

9th-level Phantom feature

The spirits of the dead are drawn to you, and echoes of their past lives magically manifest as strange curios with resonant power.

Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you gain two soul trinkets; each soul trinket is a Tiny object (the DM determines the trinket’s form or has you roll on the Trinkets table in the Player’s Handbook to generate it.) These trinkets last until you finish another Long Rest, at which point they disintegrate. If you ever move more than 30 feet from a trinket, the trinket immediately teleports to you, appearing somewhere on your person.

The number of soul trinkets you gain when you finish a Long Rest increases when you reach Rogue levels 13 (three trinkets) and 17 (four trinkets).

Using Soul Trinkets. You can use soul trinkets in the following ways:

Death’s Knell. When you deal Sneak Attack damage on your turn, you can expend one soul trinket and immediately use Wails from the Grave without expending a use of that feature. The expended trinket is destroyed.

Life Essence. While you have at least one soul trinket, you have Advantage on Death Saving Throws and Constitution saving throws.

Spirit Query. You can take a Magic action to expend one soul trinket and immediately cast the Augury spell, requiring no spell components and using Dexterity as the spellcasting modifier. The expended trinket is destroyed.

Regaining Soul Trinkets. When a creature you can see within 30 feet of you dies, you can take a Reaction to regain one expended soul trinket.

Voice of Death

You can cast Speak with Dead once without a spell slot, requiring no spell components and using Dexterity as the spellcasting modifier. You regain the ability to cast it this way when you finish a Short or Long Rest.

Ghost Walk

13th-level Phantom feature

As a Bonus Action, you assume a spectral form, gaining the benefits below for 10 minutes or until you end them (no action required). Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a Long Rest unless you expend and destroy one of your soul trinkets from Tokens of the Departed (no action required) to restore your use of it.

Flight. You gain a Fly Speed of 10 feet and can hover.

Hazy Form. Attack rolls have Disadvantage against you.

Incorporeal Movement. You can move through occupied spaces as if they were Difficult Terrain. If you end your turn in such a space, you take 1d10 Force damage.

Death’s Friend

17th-level Phantom feature

Your association with death has become so close that you gain the following benefits.

Death’s Lament. When you use your Wails from the Grave feature, you can deal the Necrotic damage to both the first and the second creature.

Draw of Death. When you roll Initiative, you regain one soul trinket for your Tokens of the Departed if you have none remaining.