Roguish Archetype: Phantom 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Clouded breath gently wreaths around the hooded figure on the rooftop on this cold winter’s night, forming into humanoid faces with their mouths directed towards the tiefling as if trying to scream at him. With a deep breath, he puts his hands to the roof, skin becoming translucent, revealing his slim skeleton below his flesh, as his form borrows the ethereal forms of the deceased that curse him, sinking through into the attic. Time to go to work.

Phantom is edge personified. It's “what if rogue, but haunted by their crimes of MURDER”. I adore this fantasy. I want to walk through walls, sneak in shadows, and harness life force for evil. It can struggle a bit from levels 3-8, but past that, it can be a powerhouse both in and out of combat with unique mechanics and complex decisions.

3rd Level: Whispers of the Dead and Wails from the Grave

Whispers of the Dead is just a bonus skill proficiency you can swap around between rests, which annoys me. A lot of D&D is about specialization as part of a broader group, and having any skill of your choice lets you take charge of all the skills of which you happen to have the highest ability score. One per short rest is somewhat limiting, as you have to decide before you may know what you need, making it less offensive than something like Borrowed Knowledge. Its a fine skill expansion, agnostic of my annoyance. A lot of phantoms will just pick a bonus skill here and default prepare it, never thinking about this feature beyond that, and honestly, that’s usually fine.

Wails from the Grave is a proficiency bonus per long rest feature or just two to three in the low tiers. You get bonus damage a few times a short rest to a second creature. Half your level (rounded up, thankfully) to a bonus creature, no save, is a decent chunk of damage that expands out how you can contribute to fights. Wails in the low tiers normally just feels like a free extra hit against two creatures each long rest, but in the upper tiers, starts acting as a meaningful crowd control tool you can use to strategically target higher amounts of damage on healthier targets with Wails executing lower health enemies. It's way more interesting as the game progresses and you have more uses to throw around and feels underwhelming in the lower tiers.

9th Level: Tokens of the Departed

Tokens of the Departed is the core reason I’ll always love Phantom. As a reaction when something dies, you can snag a bit of it and turn it into a bauble. Just that flavor is enough for me to adore this, as it gives you a bag of memories from all the people you’ve killed, like little trophies! You can only keep a handful at once and can use them to fuel your Wails from the Grave. Which is outrageous. This gives you what will feel like an endless amount of Wails of the Grave so long as you can maintain a close-ish distance and keep things dying. Wails being bonus damage, too, means you can often chain free Wails together, with one killing something while weakening another, giving you a free use to finish off the first target while weakening a second, and so on.

Plus, each comes with two other uses: granting advantage on death saves, or getting a question from the deceased. Most of the time they’ll answer in lies and spit in your direction because typically you’re related to the reason they died. In some cases, though, this has a bit of extra fluff utility that will be useful in an adventure, and that kind of niche tool is a perfect fit alongside a reliable source of bonus damage that establishes an interesting play pattern.

My only issue with Tokens is you have to sit on Wails without its recharge mechanic for five levels before its more engaging play pattern is opened up, which is already nearly at the end of many tables’ life expectancies.

13th Level: Ghost Walk

Tokens of the Departed delivers on the edgy, soul-stealing murderer well. Ghost Walk sells the ethereal invader that takes on the form of specters and ghosts to enter any room with ease.

A minute of ethereal movement is spicy, especially as a bonus action. You can easily use this in and out of combat for quick repositioning through walls or infiltration passed locked doors to places you can’t even see for teleportation. Plus, let's not forget that while Ghost Walking, all attacks against you have disadvantage. As long as you have Tokens of the Departed spare, and are at a table where you’re slaying enemies regularly, this feature is exceptional both in and out of combat.

17th Level: Death Knell

Capping off Phantom is Death Knell, which empowers your Wails to double its damage, plus gives you a free soul trinket each long rest. The meat of this feature is in the bonus damage, as now you’re Wails of the Grave hit like a truck against the initial hit target, making subsequent secondary targeting with it all the better. As far as 17th-level improvements go, this is a bit light on interesting new stuff to do or play with but is a major improvement for a core subclass feature you’re going to be firing out left and right.

All Together

Pre-9th level, Phantom is a little clunky. Two to three Wails of the Grave per long rest isn’t all that exciting, nor is a bonus skill from Whispers. Once Tokens of the Departed is obtained, this class comes to (un)life in and out of combat. Its unique resource system works great at a lot of tables running one or two encounters per long rest, encouraging resource balance, using your features regularly, and making somewhat interesting decisions between Ghost Walking or Wails from the Grave once you hit 13. 17 levels in the rogue isn’t something I’m typically eager to recommend, but given that your core feature doubles up its power with your rogue level because it scales with Sneak Attack and compounding Death Knell’s damage and resource bump on top of that and I’m convinced. If you’re playing a game you don’t expect to get past levels 9 or 10, Phantom might not be a great fit. If you’re in a campaign for the long hull, though, the mid and upper-tier features of this subclass are exactly what a ghostly rogue wants to be doing.

Thank you for visiting!

If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.

The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.

‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.

Rogue 5e