D&D 5E Phantom Steed duration beyond damage.

[Dausuul]

I would rule that a dead horse, phantasmal or not falls down. The body may last for a minute if someone really wants to sit on a dead horse.

It could be very useful to draw off attacks from overly-pedantic opponents.

 

[Pauln6]

See, if I were rewriting phantasmal steed from the ground up, I'd have made it so that once the steed starts to fade away – the rider desperately WANTS to dismount.

The rider of a fading phantasmal steed would have to make Charisma saves against their spell save DC at the end of each of their turns they remain mounted or be whisked away along with the steed, either being transported to the Ethereal or becoming a ghost or an illusory phantasm themself!

Shame that the few interesting "drawbacks" to certain spells were dropped in modern D&D. It gives the magic so much more flavor if those kinds of "drawbacks" are integrated into the spell description. IMHO.

Yeah I think the usefulness of the spell is severely curtailed in this edition and I'm not sure what problem they were trying to fix. Why not have scaling like in earlier editions? Paladins can obtain a more durable permanent flying mount. I'm not sure that allowing a phantom steed ignore difficult terrain for an hour with a 4th level slot would have been overpowered.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

How can this be interpreted in any way other than that you have one minute to use the horse once the spell ends?

Because loony toons.