Talent Cards

The character has the trained intuition for when a human asset is compromised, unreliable, or about to turn. Once per operation, when interacting with an asset, the GM will tell the character a single true piece of information about the asset’s current state: is the asset under duress? Is the asset being run by another service? Has the asset been compromised in the last seven days? The character names the question; the GM answers.

This talent overlaps with the Analyst’s Pattern Recognition signature. A character with both may use them in the same scene on different questions.

The character has trained in an integrated close-quarters discipline: Sykes-Fairbairn for a Shadow War operative, Sambo, Krav Maga, or national-service combatives for Long Dark and Nightscreen, or the private-contractor descendants of those systems. Once per scene at Engaged range, the character may resolve a close fight as a combined entry: elbow into draw, knife hand into pistol retention, takedown into restraint, weapon strip into counterstrike.

Roll the highest of Brawl, Melee, or Ranged that plausibly applies. The GM increases the base difficulty by one step because integrated close fighting is dangerous and crowded. On Success, resolve the primary skill normally. On a Boon, the player may also apply one secondary effect from another close-combat skill: disarm, pin, silence, shove through a doorway, or prevent the target from drawing a weapon.

Prerequisite: Brawl 2, Melee 2, or Ranged 2.

The character has internalized the Cold War surveillance-detection doctrine to reflex level. When making a Tradecraft or Surveillance check to detect, evade, or mount a tail, they gain +1 Boon die and may re-roll one die once per scene without spending a Fortune Point. In Shadow War, this talent is renamed Field Doctrine and applies to the field-officer practice of that era; in Nightscreen, it is renamed Signature Hygiene and applies to the full seven-signature attribution discipline described in Chapter Two.

Prerequisite: Tradecraft 2 or Surveillance 2.

The character recalls details with exceptional accuracy. Once per session, the character may ask the GM to describe one specific detail of a scene they observed previously in the campaign: a page of a dossier they glimpsed, the contents of a room they entered briefly, a face in a crowd at a prior meet. The GM must answer truthfully and in the detail the character would plausibly have registered.

This talent is narratively potent and should be used judiciously; it is a powerful investigative tool, not a free plot-solver.

The character has a specific weapon they have trained with exclusively for years. Pick one firearm or one melee weapon at acquisition. When using that specific weapon, the character gains +1 Boon die to Ranged, Sniping, or Melee checks. The weapon has a name; the player names it. The weapon can be lost, stolen, or damaged, which temporarily disables the talent.

Flavor varies by era: a Shadow War Signature Weapon might be a specific Welrod; a Long Dark, a specific Makarov carried since training; a Nightscreen, a specific suppressed SIG P226 the Wetworker has modified personally.

The character has trained in the deliberate denial of sign: broken-pace movement, terrain selection, false endings, split trails, and the small disciplines of leaving a trail that reads wrong. Opposing Tracking checks made against the character, or against a small group the character is leading, suffer +1 Bane die . Once per scene, the character may also choose to break the trail entirely; the next opposing Tracking check is one difficulty higher.

In Nightscreen, the GM may apply the talent to digital and camera movement patterns when the character has time to prepare the route.

Prerequisite: Survival & E&E 2 or Tradecraft 2.

The character is unusually careful about attribution. When executing an operation under a cover identity, the character may use Exfiltration cleanup to turn prepared tradecraft into defensive attribution pressure. During Step 3 of the Attribution procedure, each Tradecraft Pool die the character spends counts as cleanup if the player names the signature it addresses: a Boon die becomes one Bane die , an Ability die becomes one Trial die , and a Mastery die becomes one Crisis die . Alternatively, a spent Boon die may remove one hostile Boon die when the cleanup directly addresses that signal. This follows the standard cleanup conversion rule, but Plausible Deniability allows the character to apply it to their own cover work even when the rest of the team did not frame a full cleanup scene.

Prerequisite: Tradecraft 3 or Cyber 3 (Nightscreen only for the Cyber prerequisite).

The character has cultivated a working relationship with at least one of D5’s Quartermasters (an NPC, not a PC Quartermaster). Once per operation, the character may requisition one piece of modified or prototype equipment from the era catalog at no Requisition cost, subject to GM approval of the item. The item is borrowed and must be returned in working order at operation end; failure to return it reduces the next operation’s Requisition Budget by 1.

Prerequisite: At least one completed operation that ended cleanly, GM’s note of ongoing relationship with D5’s Q-Branch equivalent.

When mounting a tail on a specific target, the character may declare an extended tail: a multi-day, multi-city surveillance operation. The GM resolves this as a single Surveillance check with expanded narrative scope; on a Success, the character gains substantial intelligence on the target’s pattern of life (GM discretion, but typically: daily routine, known contacts, regular locations, vulnerabilities). On a Calamity, the target becomes aware of the tail and takes countermeasures. The cost is one full week of in-fiction time during which the character is unavailable for other operational work.

Prerequisite: Surveillance 3.

The character has the trained instinct for the institutional anomaly that should not be there: the report that contradicts another report, the asset whose chronology will not close, the senior officer whose access pattern has shifted in the last six weeks. Once per operation, the character may declare a counterintelligence investigation thread. Until the thread resolves, the character gains +1 Boon die on relevant Knowledge (Counterintelligence), Knowledge (Geopolitics), Tradecraft, or Perception checks, and may make an enhanced information spend to obtain specific dossier-level details about the suspect.

The thread closes when the character has confirmed the mole, exonerated the suspect, or accepted that the question cannot be answered with current evidence. The investigation may confirm or clear the suspect; the Ledger records either outcome.

Prerequisite: Knowledge (Geopolitics) 3 or Tradecraft 3.

The character is, professionally, an artist of the second face. They gain +1 Boon die on all Disguise checks, may carry a disguise kit as a permanent personal item that does not consume Requisition, and may, once per session, declare a rapid identity shift: completing a meaningful disguise change in a single scene break where the standard rule would require extended preparation. In Nightscreen, rapid identity shift defeats human observation only; biometric verification still requires equipment, Counter-Biometric specialization, or Cyber support.

Prerequisite: Disguise 3.

The character’s digital footprint is professionally managed to a degree that exceeds standard D5 practice. They are effectively invisible to routine facial-recognition and metadata systems; hostile surveillance requires specific, targeted effort to acquire them at all. Mechanically, the character ignores the first Compromise mark from digital-trail events per operation, and may once per session spend 1 Fortune Point to clear one digital-trail-based Bane die from a check or to make an enhanced information spend on a Cyber or Tradecraft check involving digital attribution.

Prerequisite: Cyber 3 and Tradecraft 3. Available only in Nightscreen; Shadow War and Long Dark tables may grant a flavor-adjusted analog with GM approval.

The character has been in the game long enough to recognize campaign-level patterns that briefing officers miss. Once per campaign season (GM discretion; typically per 8–10 sessions), the character may ask the GM a question about the meta-arc of the current campaign and receive a truthful, useful answer. Question scope is broad: “Is there a mole in Division 5?” “What is the Nemesis’s ultimate objective?” “Is the current operation a setup?” The answer may be partial; it must not be misleading.

This is a campaign-level talent with deliberate scarcity. The GM may refuse to answer if the question is too broad, but must then help the player narrow the question.

Prerequisite: A character who has survived at least one “burning event” (major Compromise spike resolved without retirement); at least two Tier 3 talents.

Given a scene’s worth of warning, the character’s E&E training lets them simply not be there. Once per operation, when the character would otherwise be captured, killed, or detained at the end of a compromised scene, they may instead disappear into the surrounding terrain or city with no immediate opportunity for pursuit to close.

The cost: the character takes one Legend hit on the cover they were wearing during the compromise, accumulates one Compromise for the operation, and is unavailable to the team for the remainder of the current scene-block. They reach the next safe rendezvous on their own unless the GM has established that no route exists.

Prerequisite: Survival & E&E 3 and Tradecraft 3.

The character has been granted reading access to the Ledger, D5’s oral-and-partially-written institutional memory. This is not an ordinary privilege; the character must have earned it through a campaign’s worth of service, and the Ledger chooses its readers. In practical terms, the character may once per operation consult the Ledger for direct guidance on the current mission. The GM resolves this as a pre-prepared piece of historical D5 experience that bears on the current situation, a prior operation that went well, or went badly, for similar-shaped reasons.

This talent represents the character becoming part of D5’s institutional continuity: their own entries will be in the Ledger after they retire.

Prerequisite: Character must have served at least two full campaign seasons; at least three Tier 3+ talents; GM approval at a narrative break.

Once per scene, when the Operative makes a skill check using a skill they have at Rating 0 (untrained), they may treat it as Rating 1 for that check: gaining one Mastery die they would otherwise not have.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the SOE generalist’s training in useful incompetence: knowing just enough to try anything. Long Dark: the working Moscow-Rules officer’s reflex to attempt the job that the specialist isn’t available for. Nightscreen: the cross-trained modern officer who handles the Cyber task when the Analyst has been compromised, at the cost of doing it imperfectly.

Once per operation, as an incidental, the Operative may declare that they have a backup plan ready for a specific contingency that has just happened. Mechanically, this introduces a single useful fact into the scene: a second exit, a pre-stashed piece of gear, a contact who can help with the immediate problem. The GM may require the fact to be plausible given the Operative’s prior preparation.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: a buried cache in a specific field, a pre-arranged signal to a specific sympathizer. Long Dark: a second apartment rented on a rolling lease, a secondary dead drop. Nightscreen: a backup burner phone pre-connected to a second infiltration network, a pre-arranged extraction vehicle in a garage nobody knows about.

The Operative leaves unusually small operational footprints. When the Operative succeeds on a check that would ordinarily generate a Compromise mark (a covered appearance in a surveilled zone, a social encounter that gave up too much information, a failure of small-scale tradecraft), they may spend two net Boon results from that check to prevent the Compromise mark. If the check did not generate enough net Boon results, the Operative may instead spend two Boon dice from the Tradecraft Pool, provided the player explains how prior preparation prevents the mark.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the Operative who leaves no second set of footprints in the snow. Long Dark: the Operative who exits the park meet without the tail officer having quite placed their face. Nightscreen: the Operative who appears in the footage, but not in a way the algorithm catches.

The Operative has developed a trained breadth-of-vision that few specialists match. Once per scene, when any other character at the table makes a skill check, the Operative may assist by offering a narrative contribution: a piece of cross-domain knowledge, a connection between things the specialists haven’t linked. The assist adds +1 Boon die to the check. This assist does not require the Operative to have any skill in the domain in question; the value is the cross-domain reading.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the Operative in the briefing tent who notices the Analyst has missed a detail from the radio traffic. Long Dark: the Operative who, mid-operation, points out that the asset’s story does not match the station’s assumptions. Nightscreen: the Operative who sees the pattern that neither the Cyber specialist nor the Face has assembled.

Once per operation, the Handler may convert a civilian NPC into an Asset with a single successful Charm, Negotiation, Leadership, Streetwise, or Tradecraft check at a difficulty set by the GM based on the target’s predisposition. A successful recruitment yields a standard Asset (see Chapter Eight for Asset rules); the NPC is now available to the Handler as a cultivated source. The Asset remains cultivated across sessions until lost or retired.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the Resistance-era recruitment of a village farmer, a railway clerk, a sympathetic schoolteacher. Long Dark: the cultivation of a Warsaw Pact official over months of patient contact. Nightscreen: the recruitment of a junior analyst at a private intelligence firm who has seen something unforgivable.

The Handler begins each operation with one pre-established safe house in the area of operations. The safe house provides a secure meeting space, basic supplies, and enough paper-trail preparation to support a 48-hour presence without triggering surveillance. The safe house is narrative, the GM and player agree on its location and character at start of operation, and can be used once per operation for a specific purpose (meeting an asset, hiding an operative, stashing materials).

Era Flavor. Shadow War: a farm in the Limousin, a boarding-house room above a café, a shepherd’s hut in the Vercors. Long Dark: an apartment behind a shop, a back room in a neighborhood bar, a borrowed dacha outside the city. Nightscreen: a rented Airbnb under a burner email, a serviced apartment in the expatriate quarter, a short-term let in a district the surveillance has not covered.

Assets personally recruited and sustained by the Handler are harder to break, the patient, specific work of preparing them for the kinds of pressure they will eventually face. When one of those Assets makes an Asset Check to resist compromise, interrogation, institutional pressure, panic, defection, or double handling, add +1 Boon die to the Asset Check. If the scene uses a full NPC statblock instead of the compact Asset profile, the NPC instead gains +1 Boon die on the relevant Resilience, Deception, Leadership, or Tradecraft check.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the radio operator the Handler personally drilled on schedule discipline and counter-capture protocol. Long Dark: the long-handled Asset who has been drilled in the rehearsal scenarios the Handler prepared over years. Nightscreen: the corporate-insider Asset whose OPSEC and personal security protocols the Handler has walked through in detail.

The Handler’s Assets begin to form a network: a web of cultivated sources with their own internal relationships. Mechanically, the Handler has permanent access to a small Asset pool (typically three to five standing Assets, GM-curated) who are available for specific narrative uses across operations. Assets in the Network may be called upon for favors, information, or small operational tasks; the Network generates one minor piece of intelligence per downtime period at the GM’s discretion.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: a small Resistance cell the Handler runs personally: names, faces, kids, the whole texture of a sustained field relationship. Long Dark: a ring of contacts across a city, coordinating through the Handler without ever meeting each other. Nightscreen: a distributed, compartmented network of sources across multiple private-sector and state environments, linked only through the Handler’s personal knowledge.

The Analyst has learned to read the Ledger with unusual care. On any Knowledge (Geopolitics) check that constitutes a Ledger Query (see Chapter Eight’s Intel Phase), the Analyst gains +1 Boon die . Additionally, the Ledger Query limit of “one per operation” is relaxed for this Analyst specifically: they may attempt a second Ledger Query per operation at +1 Crisis die (representing the increased institutional notice).

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the codebreaking sensibility that notices what Bletchley missed in a specific weekly batch. Long Dark: the desk-ranger’s trained sensitivity to historical precedent: the 1971 operation that matches the 1983 target’s shape. Nightscreen: the data professional who has read enough of D5’s archive to recognize the current target’s resemblance to a prior case.

The Analyst reads documents at professional speed and depth. When making a Perception or Knowledge check against a document, file, or data set, the Analyst may re-roll one Trial die once per scene without spending a Fortune Point. Additionally, the Analyst’s Dossier Dive checks in the Intel Phase contribute an extra +1 Boon die to the Tradecraft Pool on a Success.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the operative who can read a captured Abwehr memo in twenty minutes and extract every usable fact. Long Dark: the desk officer who goes through six months of station traffic in a weekend and surfaces the one thread that matters. Nightscreen: the analyst who can parse a target’s digital footprint, recognize the significant anomalies, and flag them by name.

Once per operation, during the Intel Phase or at any narrative break, the Analyst may declare a Pattern Hunt, a focused analysis of the target’s pattern of life, operational history, or network. The GM provides a structured piece of intelligence, typically identifying a vulnerability, an associate, a regular activity, or a prior-operation parallel: that shapes the remainder of the operation. The Pattern Hunt takes narrative time (a full evening’s focused work, or equivalent) but cannot be disrupted by external events.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the analyst who spends a night with the captured documents and emerges with the route the German convoy will take tomorrow. Long Dark: the desk officer who reviews two years of the target’s traffic and identifies the window of vulnerability. Nightscreen: the Cyber-literate analyst who correlates the target’s public behavior with their private data and surfaces the one weakness.

The Analyst’s opinion now carries professional weight of its own. Mechanically, once per operation, the Analyst may direct the Intel Phase: deciding which checks the team attempts, which order they run them in, and which sources they prioritize. The GM awards one additional Ability die to the Tradecraft Pool at the end of the Intel Phase if the Analyst’s direction was followed.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the junior analyst whose recommendations the desk chief has started reading first. Long Dark: the station analyst whose weekly summary goes on the director’s desk. Nightscreen: the senior analyst whose briefings are the ones the operational officers pay closest attention to.

The Analyst now designs operations rather than merely supporting them. Mechanically, once per campaign season, the Analyst may propose a full campaign-level operation: a multi-session arc targeting a specific outcome. The GM accepts the proposal as the spine of the next campaign arc and builds the season around it. This is a meta-level capability: the Analyst is no longer a participant in operations, but a contributor to the institutional architecture of the campaign itself.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the late-war analyst whose proposed operations are adopted by the joint Anglo-American planning committees. Long Dark: the senior analyst whose strategic recommendations shape the next year’s operational priorities. Nightscreen: the director-level analyst whose cross-theater campaigns define what D5 is actually doing across a decade.

The Face’s Legends gain one additional quality slot: each of the Face’s Legends may have up to three qualities (see Chapter Eight) instead of the standard two, more than any other Archetype manages.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the cover as a Belgian wine merchant, complete with real wine-trade contacts and a plausible twenty-year trade history. Long Dark: the cover as a Swiss art historian, with real scholarly publications and a real museum appointment. Nightscreen: the cover as a regional risk analyst, with a genuine client list, real press appearances, and a credible academic affiliation.

When initiating contact with an unfamiliar NPC under cover, the Face may make a Charm check (Average) as part of the first interaction. On Success, the NPC begins the relationship pre-disposed toward the Face: treating them as if they had one prior friendly interaction. Mechanically, this grants +1 Boon die on all social checks with that NPC for the remainder of the operation.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the first meeting at a black-market café, where the Face’s manner somehow already reads as “one of us.” Long Dark: the cocktail-party introduction that leaves the NPC certain they have met the Face before, if only briefly. Nightscreen: the conference-reception entry that puts the Face immediately on the list of people the target wants to talk to.

When making a Combat skill check in a scene that has not yet produced violence (the first attack of an engagement, the surprise round of an ambush, the silent takedown that opens a scene), the Wetworker gains +1 Boon die , the trained ability to act first, cleanly, from a place of calm preparation.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the SOE operative setting the first charge of an ambush with the methodical precision of training. Long Dark: the Wetworker executing the silent takedown in the hallway: the first, only, and complete kinetic beat of the operation. Nightscreen: the private contractor whose first shot is the one that ends the engagement.

The Wetworker has specialized in suppressed, concealed, and unobtrusive weapons craft. When using a suppressed or concealed weapon, the Wetworker may spend one net Boon result from the relevant attack, Stealth, or Tradecraft check to reduce the scene’s noise footprint by one step: a firefight becomes a quiet engagement; a quiet engagement becomes an incident the neighbors will not even report. The GM adjudicates narratively.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the Welrod used at close range; the blade used instead. Long Dark: the suppressed High Standard HDM that sounds like a dropped book, not a gunshot. Nightscreen: the PSS silent pistol, the lethal-injection pen, the garotte that leaves no ballistic trace.

Once per scene, the Wetworker may declare a called shot at a specific tactical outcome: a disabling rather than lethal injury, a silenced takedown without body damage, a specific weapon disabled rather than the wielder harmed, a specific location chosen for forensic reasons. The GM sets a difficulty one step higher than the basic combat check; on Success, the specific outcome is achieved.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the operative who shoots the radio operator’s hand rather than kill the man. Long Dark: the sniper who places a round through the target’s briefcase from three hundred meters. Nightscreen: the Wetworker who puts the opposition officer down without damaging the phone in his pocket.

For the Wetworker, choosing not to act has become a discipline as powerful as acting. Mechanically, the Wetworker may refuse to use Lethal Option in a scene where the fiction would ordinarily invite it, and the refusal converts into a one-time narrative resource: +2 Boon dice on a non-combat check later in the same operation.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the SOE officer who chooses not to kill the compliant sentry and instead uses him as a live source. Long Dark: the Wetworker who turns down a clean opportunity on a target and, three days later, uses the operational window to close the larger case. Nightscreen: the tier-one operator who lowers the weapon when the scene did not actually require firing it, and who is remembered by the extraction team for it.

The Wetworker has reached the level where their operations are, effectively, invisible. Mechanically, once per operation, the Wetworker may take a kinetic action (a takedown, a sabotage, a targeted strike) and immediately afterward declare that the scene left no forensic trail. The GM treats the action as not having attribution signatures of the standard kind; follow-up investigation will fail to link the action to the Wetworker or the team unless an independent source compromises them.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the SOE officer whose late-war operations are not fully attributed even decades after the war. Long Dark: the Wetworker whose three signature operations are still officially unsolved mysteries in open archives. Nightscreen: the specialist whose signature work simply never generates an attribution trail worth following.

The Quartermaster has specialized in defeating opposition equipment. When acting against hostile surveillance devices, counter-intrusion systems, or other opposition technology, the Quartermaster gains +1 Boon die on the relevant check (Surveillance, Cyber, Coordination, or Demolitions as appropriate). Additionally, the Quartermaster may spend one net Boon result from that check to disable an active opposition device (a bug, a camera, an alarm system) for the remainder of the scene.

Era Flavor. Shadow War: the operative who knows where the German direction-finding vans are and can jam the specific frequency they operate on. Long Dark: the Quartermaster who recognizes the Stasi’s standard-issue audio surveillance and defeats it with a pre-built countermeasure. Nightscreen: the hardware hacker who recognizes the make and model of a hostile drone and brings it down with a targeted signal.