SOURCE: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Rating the Benefits of Fade Away

Benefit #1 – 

Gain +1 to Dexterity or Intelligence, up to a maximum of 20 

Half an ASI is a common feat benefit, so consider the rest of what’s on offer as half a feat. Dex and Int are a good stat spread and are also stats many Gnomes will look for in their common classes and builds

Benefit #2 – 

After taking damage, spend a reaction to become invisible until the end of your next turn, or until attacking, dealing damage, or making something take a save

The ability refreshes on a short or long rest

Even at its worst, invisibility is disadvantage on every attack coming your way. At its best, this ability can utterly prevent enemies from targeting you until your next turn. The fact that this can potentially be used multiple times per day is also very strong

Mechanics and Requirements

Understanding How It Functions

The main benefit of the Fade Away feat is simple to understand. After taking damage, a character with this feat can spend their reaction to turn invisible until the start of their next turn, or until they take a hostile action against another creature. 

Appropriate for the gnome, this is deceptively strong. An invisible creature confers disadvantage on every attack aimed at it, which nerfs any creature that deals damage mostly through attack rolls. Better is the fact that this triggers after taking damage, and activates instantly. Is an enemy with multiple attacks targeting you? Did their first attack hit and deal damage? Pop this, and the rest of their attacks have disadvantage. 

The ability can only be used once per rest but refreshes on short rests, which means it might potentially be used multiple times per day.

The invisibility lasts from the moment the ability is used until the end of their following turn, or until the character performs one of a small list of actions, all of which are hostile. This is incredibly important to understand, as it allows the user to move before deciding to attack, making it much more likely that they get out of danger. 

Remember, as well, that a character only has one reaction, which refreshes at the start of their turn. This is important if a build has multiple out of sequence defensive abilities, because they can generally only use one, and will have to choose the best for the situation. 

How invisibility works in 5e

When a creature turns invisible in 5e, there are several major effects:

• An invisible creature can’t be seen without magic or specialist senses
• Invisible creatures count as heavily obscured if they try to hide. This means an invisible creature can hide when standing out in the open
• Invisibility does nothing to stop a character from being detected through noise, tracks, etc
• Any attack roll against an invisible creature has disadvantage
• A creature attacking from invisibility has advantage

Can I still be attacked?

Yes. Nothing in the rules for Invisibility prevents a character from being attacked in D&D 5e. 

Normally, an invisible character is hard to target because they combine invisibility with the stealth skill. An invisible character that successfully hides can’t be targeted because no one knows where they are. 

But the Fade Away feat just turns a character invisible without them moving. A particularly intelligent (or unintelligent) enemy might just swing away at where they were, hoping that they’re going to land a hit. 

It’s important to note though that spells and abilities that require seeing the target to be used, including many spells that require saving throws, can no longer target the character because they can’t be seen. 

Key Stats

The Fade Away feat is entirely stat independent, and offers a choice of +1 to Int or Dex as part of its benefits, which are useful stats for 90% of the classes in 5e. 

Ideal Characters for Fade Away

Top Classes

Warlock – Combine a class with plentiful firepower, which generally wants to hold back out of combat range, doesn’t have the spell slots for serious defenses, and takes a lot of short rests, for a class that synergizes perfectly with what the Fade Away feat offers. 

The Archfey patron fits thematically and also offers a similar defensive ability, doubling the uses a character gains from this. For something more offensively minded, the Genie Patron stacks damage on most of their bonus spells and comes with a ton of party-favored boosts. 

Cleric – Naturally pretty tough, Clerics can make great use of the Fade Away feat. Subclasses let the class push for melee or stand at range acting as primary spellcasters, and many Clerics never gain the ability to cast an invisibility spell normally.  

The Twilight Domain is already strong. Its primary ability pushes out an aura that makes the party ridiculously hard to hurt and might make the Cleric a target, once the foe realizes what’s going on. Disappearing into twilight gloom is both thematically awesome and makes a character much harder to hurt while keeping that aura up. 

Alternatively, just go Forge domain and become indestructible.  

Rogue – Left to do its thing, a Rogue has incredible damage potential but often can’t take the counterpunch. The class has its own defensive reaction, which is great against big single hits, but Fade Away offers options, letting the character sneak away from hordes, or dodge showers of ranged attacks, or targeted spells. 

Arcane Tricksters play well with spell-like effects and might be able to layer their own defenses higher than many other Rogues. The Soulknife is also incredibly cool, drawing spirit knives out of literal nothingness to cut down their foe, then disappearing back into it when the enemy looks their way.  

Fighter – The Gnome makes a surprisingly good Dex-based Fighter, able to shrug off spells that would knock out many martial characters and keep on rolling while dealing consistent damage turn after turn. 

The Eldritch Knight is defensively one of the strongest subclasses in 5e. Laying the ability to turn invisible on top of their existing magical defenses seems almost unfair. We’d also consider Echo Knight, for the incredibly thematic ability to ninja vanish when attacked, then reappear next turn in your echo’s space as it finishes the fight for you. 

Race or Subrace Choices

The Fade Away feat is only available to Gnomes. Deep Gnomes should also qualify for the feat. They are a type of gnome, after all, and synergize incredibly well with it, adding further free spellcasting plus the ability to take Stealth checks with advantage multiple times per day, which can turn the character into an actual ghost. 

Combos, Tactics, and Synergies

Complementary Feats

Fighting Initiate – Pick up a fighting style; generally good ones are Defense, for +1 AC, and Archery, for a massive +2 to hit when making ranged attacks, both of which stack incredibly well with this feat. 

Svirfneblin Magic – If you’re a Deep Gnome, their specific racial feat contains a lot of generalist power, spread across 4 separate spells. 

Shadow Touched – Learn the actual Invisibility spell to double down on the sneak, plus another spell from the Illusion or Enchantment spell lists. 

Spells that Synergize

Shield – +5 AC for a round is a ridiculously powerful defensive benefit that can be used in times when Fade Away isn’t going to help. 

Misty Step – If Fade Away keeps the characters alive until their turn, Misty Step teleports them to safety as a bonus action.  

Strategies for Maximizing Fade Away Effectiveness

Remember Your Advantage

The Invisibility granted by the Fade Away feat lasts until the end of your next turn. 

An invisible character can’t be seen by their enemies. (At least, normally. Some monsters will have Truesight or Blindsight.) The Invisibility fades after taking an offensive action, but this still means that the first attack a character makes after using this feat will be made with advantage, most of the time. 

That’s a nice little offensive boost, especially considering how most PCs will use the invisibility gained to relocate first, putting themselves into the prime position to lay out their best attacks. 

Give the enemy bad targets

Disappearing into thin air is all well and good until the monster that was busy trying to turn you inside out switches its attention to other members of the party. 

If you’re the primary tank, disappearing every third turn is a bad idea, and the Fade Away feat should only be used when it can save your life. 

In the same way, if you know that it’s closing on your turn, and there’s maybe only one more attack coming your way, probably don’t use it. 

Better is to go in as a damage dealer like the Rogue, standing right next to a burly, tough character like a Barbarian. Deal your damage, then bait the enemy into swinging for you. If they hit you, great! Disappear, and now their only real target is someone who doesn’t care. 

Already be tanky

In D&D 5e Invisibility in combat is a strange beast. Generally, it’s going to translate to enemies attacking with disadvantage. 

Because of the way the math works, disadvantage is a much more significant debuff the lower an enemy’s initial chance to hit. So, on characters with high AC, the Fighter, the Cleric, and the Artificer, the ability to turn invisible on those turns when every enemy tries to kill you can turn a build into a literal brick wall. 

Fade Away at a range

The Fade Away feat, and invisibility in general, is much stronger at range than it is up close. 

The main reason is targeting. An enemy that sees you become invisible knows where you are, so can make attacks against where they believe you to be. 

Mechanically, this translates to attacking with disadvantage, which is already a strong debuff for enemies to fight through. But what about enemies that don’t have any ranged options? An enemy fires a bow at you, and you disappear. The rest of the enemies, who wanted to run up and stab you, don’t know where you are, so aren’t likely to come running up and look for you when there are other party members in range. 

But it’s far better against spellcasters. Instead of making attack rolls, many spells target saving throws. And these spells generally can only be targeted against a creature that you can see. So turning invisible completely prevents enemies and other creatures from targeting you with this kind of ability. 

Final Thoughts on Fade Away

Fade Away is a strange feat to rate. What it does is powerful and fun to use. In a vacuum, this feat is great. 

The real problem is fitting it into a build. 

Doesn’t matter what you’re running, whether that’s melee DPS or a main spellcaster, there’s almost certainly a feat that makes your build much stronger and leans harder into your main role. But once a build is locked in, Fade Away is very strong, especially with a party that might have one or more short rests per day. 

The most important takeaway here is that a lot of builds and classes can use this feat, and using the ability feels good. Disappearing into thin air and saving your own life when the angry dragon turns your way is an immediately visceral, impactful ability that’s going to feel great at the table. While Fade Away isn’t a one size fits all feat, it’s both strong and more importantly, fun.