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sayaijin
2020-08-17, 06:40 PM
Phantom Rogue

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.

Tokens of the Departed

3rd-level Phantom feature
When a life ends in your presence, you are able to snatch a token from the departing soul, a sliver of its life essence. If a creature dies within 30ft of you, a soul trinket appears in your hand. The DM chooses the trinket’s form or has you roll on the Trinkets table in the Player’s Handbook to determine it. While a soul trinket is on your person, you have advantage on death saving throws, as your vitality is enhanced by the life essence within the object. You can have a maximum number of soul trinkets equal to your proficiency bonus, and you can’t create one while at your maximum.
As an action, you can destroy a trinket to gain one skill or tool proficiency of your choice. You lose this proficiency when you use this feature to choose a different proficiency that you lack.

Specter's Fury

3rd-level Phantom feature
You have learned to channel the power of the soul trinkets into a spectral assault. If you make a weapon attack and you do not deal your sneak attack damage, you can destroy a trinket. If you do, a phantom duplicate of the creature the trinket was harvested from appears and deals necrotic damage to the target equal to your sneak attack. Immediately afterwards it vanishes.

Taxing Death

9th-level Phantom feature
You have learned to further extract the power of every soul fragment you claim. You may destroy a trinket to use one of the following effects:
Steal Life: You can spend a minute draining the energy from the trinket and gain temporary hit points equal to your Rogue level + your Constitution modifier.
Eyes of the Dead: Name a place the soul has seen in life and if it's the same plane of existence, you receive visual and auditory information as if you were in that place using its senses while concentrating up to ten minutes.
Query Soul: You ask a question of the soul that it must answer truthfully to the best of the knowledge it had while living. You don't need to share a language for the creature's soul to communicate, but the answer may be short and cryptic
Macabre Marrionette: You can cast Major Image without expending a spell slot. The image must be of the creature the trinket was harvested from.

Ghost Walk

13th-level Phantom feature
You can now phase partially into the realm of the dead, becoming like a ghost. As a bonus action, you can destroy a trinket to assume a spectral form for 10 minutes. You gain a flying speed equal to your walking speed and can hover, and all attack rolls against you have disadvantage. You can 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 object.

One Foot in the Grave

17th-level Phantom feature
Beginning at 17th level, you remain conscious but
incapacitated when you drop to 0 hit points, and when you succeed on a death saving throw you may spend a trinket to regain 1 hit point and immediately cast the spell Blink without expending a spell slot (no action required).

http://imgur.com/a/c7TvHbO

Composer99
2020-08-17, 09:56 PM
There aren't a whole lot of features that rely too heavily on DM input - wild sorcerer's Tides of Chaos is one, so I'm a bit leery of any feature that does. Maybe a set CR of creature might be better?

However, the effects of destroying soul trinkets at the different levels are very flavourful and interesting.

Since Swashbuckler offers a way to get (almost) at-will sneak attack, the fact that this archetype does as well is okay. I would leave a requirement such as "you don't have disadvantage on the attack roll", since you will probably be able to use this feature almost at will, unless your DM is very stingy with the soul trinkets.

The only thing I'm particularly concerned about is semi-permanent advantage on death saving throws. As far as I know, the half-orc and the barbarian are the only in-game entities that muck about with being reduced to 0 hit points, with the half-orc and base barbarian class having "no, I'm at 1 hit point!" options and the zealot barbarian having a "so what if I'm at 0? I'm still up!" option. On the other hand, a benefit like that is interesting and distinct, and a solid thematical fit.

Maybe playtest the current version and a toned-down version (perhaps, as a bonus action you destroy a trinket, and then for the next minute you have advantage on death saving throws) and see how it feels in play?

And... that's about it, really. Congratulations on the subclass.

sayaijin
2020-08-18, 06:11 AM
There aren't a whole lot of features that rely too heavily on DM input - wild sorcerer's Tides of Chaos is one, so I'm a bit leery of any feature that does. Maybe a set CR of creature might be better?

However, the effects of destroying soul trinkets at the different levels are very flavourful and interesting.

Since Swashbuckler offers a way to get (almost) at-will sneak attack, the fact that this archetype does as well is okay. I would leave a requirement such as "you don't have disadvantage on the attack roll", since you will probably be able to use this feature almost at will, unless your DM is very stingy with the soul trinkets.

The only thing I'm particularly concerned about is semi-permanent advantage on death saving throws. As far as I know, the half-orc and the barbarian are the only in-game entities that muck about with being reduced to 0 hit points, with the half-orc and base barbarian class having "no, I'm at 1 hit point!" options and the zealot barbarian having a "so what if I'm at 0? I'm still up!" option. On the other hand, a benefit like that is interesting and distinct, and a solid thematical fit.

Maybe playtest the current version and a toned-down version (perhaps, as a bonus action you destroy a trinket, and then for the next minute you have advantage on death saving throws) and see how it feels in play?

And... that's about it, really. Congratulations on the subclass.

Really appreciate the feedback! I originally had the trinkets come from any death, but that's tricky. See I personally want this rogue to scry on a location where a rat walked - maybe a dungeon he wants to explore, but I understand some DM's wouldn't want to give trinkets on rat kills.

Old Harry MTX
2020-08-18, 06:35 AM
The DM input about which creature is worthy of that death shards is mandatory to avoid the bag of rats problem, but I would prefer at least a minimum CR. Maybe trinkets could have different levels of power depending on the creature?

Anyway, the concept is cool!

sayaijin
2020-08-18, 06:38 AM
A couple other things:

Normally more than one sneak attack is required to kill an enemy of the appropriate CR, so this rogue is not going to be able to generate trinkets as fast as they can spend them.

The way it's worded, they don't have to hit to use the Specters Blade ability. They also don't have to use a finesse weapon, but they're limited to the number of trinkets they have, and they can't use the SCAG cantrips because it specifies the attack action.

I like the idea of a ghost behind hard to resist and hard to bring down. I balance this by never giving the rogue the ability to do more than their sneak attack damage, but giving them survivability and utility.

sayaijin
2020-08-18, 07:03 AM
The DM input about which creature is worthy of that death shards is mandatory to avoid the bag of rats problem, but I would prefer at least a minimum CR. Maybe trinkets could have different levels of power depending on the creature?

Anyway, the concept is cool!

I think the bag of rats problem is mitigated by the maximum number of trinkets you can hold. Unless you're killing rats in the middle of combat, you can't generate trinkets as fast as you can spend them if you use spectres blade every time you miss your attack.

Also, most of the out of combat abilities you use trinkets for aren't very powerful if you just use a rat from a pet shop. It can give you temp HP, and allow you to ghost walk, but that's it.