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?

Evidence of Past Lives

Starting at 3rd level, you remember talents you had in your previous life. When you finish a long rest, you gain one skill or tool proficiency of your choice. You can replace this proficiency with another when you finish a long rest.

Revived Nature

When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, your newfound connection to death gives you the following benefits:

• You have advantage on saving throws against disease and being poisoned, and you have resistance to poison damage.

• You don't need to eat, drink, or breathe

• You don't need to sleep. When you take a long rest, you must spend at least four hours in an inactive, motionless state, rather than sleeping. In this state, you remain semiconscious, and you can hear as normal.

Bolts from the Grave

Starting at 3rd level, you have learned to unleash bolts of necrotic energy from within your revived body. Immediately after you use your Cunning Action, you can make a ranged spell attack against a creature within 30 feet of you, provided you haven't used your Sneak Attack this turn. You are proficient with it, and you add your Dexterity modifier to its attack and damage rolls. A creature hit by this attack takes necrotic damage equal to your Sneak Attack. This uses your Sneak Attack for the turn.

Tokens of the Departed

At 9th level, when a life ends in your presence, you're able to snatch a token from the departing soul, a sliver of its life essence that takes physical form: as a reaction when a creature you can see dies within 30 feet of you, you can open your free hand and cause a Tiny trinket to appear there, a soul trinket. The DM determines the trinket's form or has you roll on the Trinkets table in the Player's Handbook to generate it. You can have a maximum number of soul trinkets equal to your proficiency bonus, and you can't create one while at your maximum.

You can use soul trinkets in the following ways:

• While a soul trinket is on your person, you have advantage on death saving throws and Constitution saving throws, for your vitality is enhanced by the life essence within the object.
• When you deal Sneak Attack damage on your turn, you can destroy one of your soul trinkets that's on your person and then immediately use Bolts from the Grave, without expending a use of that feature.
• As an action, you can destroy one of your soul trinkets, no matter where it's located. When you do so, you can ask the spirit associated with the trinket one question. The spirit appears to you and answers in a language it knew in life. It's under no obligation to be truthful, and it answers as concisely as possible, eager to be free. The spirit knows only what it knew in life, as determined by the DM.

Ghost Walk

 At 13th level, you can phase partially into the realm of the dead, becoming like a ghost. As a bonus action, you assume a spectral form. While in this form, you have a flying speed of 10 feet, you can hover, and attack rolls have disadvantage against you. You can also move through creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain, but you take 1d10 force damage if you end your turn inside a creature or an object.

You stay in this form for 10 minutes or until you end it as a bonus action. To use this feature again, you must finish a long rest or destroy one of your soul trinkets as part of the bonus action you use to activate Ghost Walk.

Ethereal Jaunt

When you reach 17th level, like a ghost, you have the ability to slip in and out of the Ethereal Plane. You can now use your Cunning Action to teleport to an unoccupied space within 30 feet of you. You don't need to see that space to teleport to it, but your teleportation fails, wasting your bonus action, if you attempt to teleport through magical force that is Medium or larger, such as a wall of force. If you appear in a space occupied by another creature or filled by an object, you are immediately shunted to the nearest unoccupied space that you can occupy and take force damage equal to twice the number of feet you are shunted.