Arcane Tradition: The Knight Phantom (Please PEACH)

[Jervis]

https://www.enworld.org/attachments/17-nightmare-2003-dungeon-100-polyhedron-159-jpg.80487/
It's not edgy I swear

As part of my never ending quest to adapt cool stuff from 3.5 into 5e so i might actually get to play it instead of just running it, i bring you, knight phantom. The best worst ebberon prestige class for wizard gishes. It was basically just a less boring eldritch knight that got some SLAs relating to the Phantom Steed spell. It was no Abjurant Champion but it was fun and had some neat flavor too it.

As for design i made this to be a Gish that doesn't have to use Dex. Bladesingers are the strongest gishes in the game and follow the long trend of making dex the superior modifier for weapon damage. This annoys me greatly and honestly the lack of respect that sword and board or heavy weapons get in Gishes makes me angry. You have Sorcadins but thats about it, and you can make those as much a strength as a dex based fighter, and they usually go hexblade 1 anyway. from a mechanical perspective i would rather this be a sorcerer origin but it doesn't make any sense unless i scrap the porting and make it some kind of war born sorcerer or something. The lack of blade song AC in my mind justifies shield profs and the armor profs are important to not make another dex build only subclass.

Wizard: Knight Phantom

Knight Phantom is a title bestowed to wizards following in a long tradition of casters serving in times of warfare to bring magic to the frontlines as mounted skirmishers. They often serve as escorts to important dignitaries in times of conflict or elite guards to generals and other important officials.

Their martial training allows them to better defend themselves in times of trouble and their use of their illusory steeds allows them to move away from the heat of a battle and cast spells or to perform hit and run maneuvers. Their power is impressive but needs intelligent tactical choices to shine.

Battlefield Training
At 2nd level, you gain proficiency in Medium Armor, Shields, and Simple and Martial weapons. You also gain proficiency in the animal handling skill and with land vehicles if you didn't have them already.

You also gain the ability to use a shield or any weapon with the Two-Handed property with a value of at least 1 sp as an Arcane focus for your Wizard spells.

Phantom Familiar
Also at 2nd level, you learn the Find Familiar spell if you didn't already. You can cast the spell as a ritual even if you don't have it prepared or have your spellbook with you. When you summon your familiar using this spell you can choose to have it take the form of a shadowy phantasmal Pony, Mastiff, Mule, or Riding Horse. Regardless of which of these forms you choose, the familiar may serve as a mount for you so long as it is the same size as you or larger. When doing so the familiar always acts on your initiative.

A DM may allow other more exotic forms for your familiar so long as it is a creature suitable as a mount but should exorcise caution when allowing a form with a CR above 1/4th.

Extra Attack
Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. Moreover, you can cast one of your cantrips in place of one of those attacks.

Shadow March
At 10th level you gain the ability to phase briefly in and out of shadow during a charge. When your familiar takes the Dash action while serving as a mount for you, you and it gain the following benefits for the rest of the turn.

Neither you nor it provoke attacks of opportunity for the rest of the turn
You both ignore nonmagical difficult terrain
Your familiar may walk on water
If your familiar walks off of a surface it may fly for up to 10 feet in any direction but up, falling if it is not standing on a surface after moving that distance
You both have advantage on stealth checks



Phantom Charge
At 14th level and beyond, when you move at least 10 feet before attacking you may add an additional 1d8 damage to any weapon attack you make this turn.

[Loek]

Battlefield Training
At 2nd level, you gain proficiency in Medium Armor, Shields, and Simple and Martial weapons. You also gain proficiency in the animal handling skill and with land vehicles if you didn't have them already.

You also gain the ability to use a shield or any weapon with the Two-Handed property with a value of at least 1 sp as an Arcane focus for your Wizard spells.

Let me start by saying that I understand your reasoning for the medium armor/shields. But I'm not entirely sure if the end result is a good thing. That said, since we can compare it to the hexblade (hello not so good thing - in the boring/optimal sense) it probably won't break too much (that hexblade hasn't already broken).

The skills: Animal handling makes sense, and land vehicles is a Eberron thing that probably won't effect much but fluff

The 1 sp focus: I'd say this probably needs to be bumped up a bit, 5 gp maybe? The reasoning here is that none of the existing focii (barring 2 cheap druid ones) are cheaper than this. I'd probably also make the Knight Phantom spend a short rest preparing a weapon/shield to be his focus (with no limit to the amount of items they have prepared this way). (And the only thing this excludes is the great club, but still it feels good to at least make this on par with the others).



Shadow March
At 10th level you gain the ability to phase briefly in and out of shadow during a charge. When your familiar takes the Dash action while serving as a mount for you, you and it gain the following benefits for the rest of the turn.

Neither you nor it provoke attacks of opportunity for the rest of the turn
You both ignore nonmagical difficult terrain
Your familiar may walk on water
If your familiar walks off of a surface it may fly for up to 10 feet in any direction but up, falling if it is not standing on a surface after moving that distance
You both have advantage on stealth checks


While I like the entire idea/feel here, I sort of feel that some of these don't really match up that well (Dash for more speed and stealth, for example. Though I guess it might work if you limit it to audible stealth only).
Anyhow, my suggestion would be to break this feature up along the 3 D actions (Dash, Disengage & Dodge)

Dash = Speed, so that one would get the difficult terrain, water walking and walking on air.
Disengage = Avoidance, so that one would get the stealth checks
Dodge = Defensive movement, so that one would get the "no attacks of opportunity"

It makes the ability a bit weaker, because you can't "get it all", but it does mean that all of your mounts actions become cooler and maybe better suited for various situations.

[Jervis]

Let me start by saying that I understand your reasoning for the medium armor/shields. But I'm not entirely sure if the end result is a good thing. That said, since we can compare it to the hexblade (hello not so good thing - in the boring/optimal sense) it probably won't break too much (that hexblade hasn't already broken).

The skills: Animal handling makes sense, and land vehicles is a Eberron thing that probably won't effect much but fluff

The 1 sp focus: I'd say this probably needs to be bumped up a bit, 5 gp maybe? The reasoning here is that none of the existing focii (barring 2 cheap druid ones) are cheaper than this. I'd probably also make the Knight Phantom spend a short rest preparing a weapon/shield to be his focus (with no limit to the amount of items they have prepared this way). (And the only thing this excludes is the great club, but still it feels good to at least make this on par with the others).




While I like the entire idea/feel here, I sort of feel that some of these don't really match up that well (Dash for more speed and stealth, for example. Though I guess it might work if you limit it to audible stealth only).
Anyhow, my suggestion would be to break this feature up along the 3 D actions (Dash, Disengage & Dodge)

Dash = Speed, so that one would get the difficult terrain, water walking and walking on air.
Disengage = Avoidance, so that one would get the stealth checks
Dodge = Defensive movement, so that one would get the "no attacks of opportunity"

It makes the ability a bit weaker, because you can't "get it all", but it does mean that all of your mounts actions become cooler and maybe better suited for various situations.

Thanks for the feedback. The reasoning for the 1 SP rule was just to keep it simple and in line with the scagtrips. I should probably tweak it.

I should probably tweak the 10 as well. I’m actually not sure what to give disengage since disengage on a mount already stops both of you from taking AoOs from its movement since mounted movement doesn’t provoke on the rider by default. So the though was just to roll disengage and dash into the same action with some side effects that I thought could work and were in line with the PrC i’m adapting. TBH the 10 is the feature i’m least comfortable with so i’m open to any suggestions people have to change it

[Garfunion]

The theme of this Archetype is interesting but I have to wonder. You put a lot of work in altering the find familiar spell when you could’ve just provided them with the phantom steed spell a number of times per day equal to their proficiency modifier. That is what this theme is loosely based off of anyway.

When it comes to proficiencies I suppose you can keep the armor proficiency but maybe reduce the amount of weapon proficiencies down to simple and three additional martial weapons.

[Jervis]

The theme of this Archetype is interesting but I have to wonder. You put a lot of work in altering the find familiar spell when you could’ve just provided them with the phantom steed spell a number of times per day equal to their proficiency modifier. That is what this theme is loosely based off of anyway.

When it comes to proficiencies I suppose you can keep the armor proficiency but maybe reduce the amount of weapon proficiencies down to simple and three additional martial weapons.

I originally planned to just give them phantom steed but it’s a 3rd level spell and I don’t think anything gives that before 5. The original feature was “You can cast the Phantom Steed spell as an action, once you do so using this feature you cannot do so again until you finish a short rest. Once you reach 5th level you gain the ability to cast the spell as a ritual or by expending a 3rd level spell slot even if you don’t have the spell prepared or have your spellbook.” I’d prefer to separate the feature from FF but that was the most elegant solution I could think of at the time. Though I suppose they’re about as powerful as one another.

And yeah I can see what you mean about the martial weapons. I might change it to Lance + one or two martial weapons of your choice.

[Garfunion]

If I may… because I also like making unique archetypes or I should say fiddling around with other peoples homebrew archetypes.

Phantom Knight

Phantasmal Mount
At 2nd level, you may use your action to summon a phantasmal mount as if you casted the phantom steed spell. However casting this spell using this feature restricts the mount’s speed to 60ft, upon reaching 5th level the speed is restored to 100ft. You may perform this summoning a number of times per day equal to your proficiency bonus.


Battlefield Training
At 2nd level, you gain proficiency in Light and Medium Armor, Shields, and Simple weapons, as well as glaive, halberd, lance and two additional weapons that lack the two-handed property.
You also gain proficiency in the animal handling skill and with land vehicles.

Additionally while you are mounted you may use a weapon that you are proficient with as an arcane focus.


Extra Attack
Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. Moreover, you can cast one of your cantrips in place of one of those attacks.


Phantom March
At 10th level you become more in-tune with your phantasmal mount. While riding your phantasmal mount it gain the following ability.

•It ignore nonmagical difficult terrain
•It may walk on water
•It has advantage on stealth checks


Ghostly Step
At 10th level, while riding your phantasmal mount you can use your action, for you and your mount to step into the Ethereal Plane, as if you casted Etherealness spell. This effect last for one minute and you can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.


Phantom Charge
At 14th level, while riding your phantasmal mount if you move at least 10ft before making a weapon attack, you may add an additional 1d8 damage to any weapon attack you make this turn.


Notes
While some of these spell used in this archetype are higher level than the wizard could normally cast them, I believe with the limited use and diminish effects/duration it should be ok. Additionally the wizard isn’t learn/casting these spell, they are just gaining the effects of the spells. It’s also easier to reference a spell then write it all out.

Phantom March could use 1 or 2 more bullet effects.