Phantom won't drop Phantom Membrane

Phantoms do drop phantom membranes on 1.7.0, for me.

You probably just had a spell of bad luck. Phantoms have a random chance of dropping membranes. A run of 15 of them with no membranes isn't common, but it's not wildly improbable either. If you had a run of 50 with no membranes, that would be more convincing.

Please keep monitoring for membrane drops. If it persists for a long time, comment here so we can reconsider whether this report needs more consideration, and be sure to tell us what method you're using to kill the phantoms.

Hello! Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my report.

I figured out the problem! It was, in fact my fault. The method I used to kill the phantoms was faulty. I used an iron sword with fire aspect. Killing it with that tool made it not drop any loot; i'm not sure why. I haven't seen this problem anywhere else. But, killing them with a different iron sword that didn't have fire aspect gave me loot. 

Edit: Alright, wait, I went to my brother who has Java edition v1.13.2, on a P.C.

He tried killing multiple phantoms with a fire aspect enchanted iron sword on creative. Hitting the phantom 2 times, then letting the fire finish it off in a slow burn yields no loot, but does give exp. That was what I was doing to kill the phantoms on the Xbox.

Killing it with three hits, no slow burning, however, does give both Phantom Membrane and exp. 

We did these same methods with another un-dead mob, the zombie. It drops loot and exp with both methods.

This is long , i'm sorry. Thank you very much for helping me.

Thanks for the update, but...hmmm...I don't see why fire aspect on an iron sword should make a difference either. It's possible that the phantom doesn't drop anything because it dies from the fire, but I don't think fire aspect is supposed to work that way (and even if it is, you shouldn't get XP in that case, so something is still wrong). I'm going to reopen this ticket until I have a chance to test it myself. There may yet be a bug here.

Bella: I've been testing as well, and getting results consistent with yours, namely if they die right after I hit them they sometimes drop loot, but if they fly back up and burn to death they only drop XP. I need to test it a few dozen more times before I can be confident it's not just bad luck, and then I need to verify that fire aspect is supposed to work the way I think it is. As of right now, though, I consider this a bug. Thank you for the report!

I have completed my testing. My results agreed with yours: Phantoms never drop a membrane when they burn to death, even if the fire was started by hitting them with a sword enchanted with fire aspect.

After thinking some more, I decided this makes sense. It's similar to other examples, such as the way you don't lose popularity in a village if you set fire to a villager, or the way zombie pigmen don't get aggro on you if you push one off a cliff (and it doesn't die from fall damage). These actions don't have negative repercussions because the damage isn't considered player-caused damage.

I decided to try another, closer experiment. Similar to phantoms, spiders only drop spider eye when killed by a player. So I killed a bunch of spiders by hitting them with a fire aspect sword and letting them burn to death, and sure enough, none of them dropped an eye. I think this demonstrates that fire from fire aspect is the same as fire from any other source: If it kills a mob, the player who started the fire isn't blamed for the death (but he does get XP from it if he inflicted any damage within the prior few seconds). It also demonstrates that phantoms only drop membranes when they are killed by a player, which is something nobody seems to have known before now. (The wiki didn't mention it anywhere, for example.)

Although I'm now confident that this works as intended, we'll pass this report on to the developers to let them confirm it, just to be sure.

Alright then. I appreciate you looking into this! 

Repro steps (Bedrock):

1. Equip an iron sword with Fire Aspect 2 and Looting 3

2. Give yourself strength with the command /effect @s strength 9999 2

3. Spawn a phantom

4. Hit the phantom with the fire aspect sword

Observed Results:
The phantom will die of fire damage a second or two after being hit, but won't drop membranes.

Repro steps (Java):

1. Equip a stone sword with Fire aspect 2, looting 3, and smite 2

2. Apply strength with command: /effect give @s minecraft:strength 9999 2

3. Spawn and attack phantom with stone sword

Observed Results:
Phantom will die of fire damage, and has a chance of dropping membranes.

I don't think this is as intended (for all mobs, not just phantoms) because I have to NOT enchant my sword with fire aspect (or bow with flame) in order to get the drops for a player kill (or I have to craft a new sword/bow without said enchantment).

This means that these enchantments are a lot like curses in this way, but ones that cost XP.

Please tell this to the devs if you can, thanks!

My issue was marked as a duplicate but it doesn't happen from Fire Aspect. For me it doesn't drop when I kill it with a Looting iii sword and a couple other enchantments.