Grey Key Infiltrator

A common burglar opens a window. A Grey Key Infiltrator persuades the building that the window was never closed.

These Rogues are specialists in systems rather than individual locks. They study how credentials are issued, where guards become complacent, which clerk approves deliveries, how often warding sigils are inspected, and what explanation causes an inconvenient stranger to become someone else’s responsibility. By the time an Infiltrator reaches a vault door, much of the security protecting it has already been neutralized.

The tradition is most closely associated with the Grey Key, Helbrann’s clandestine network of burglars, smugglers, forgers, informants, fences, and illicit couriers. Grey Key instruction is rarely formal. A prospective Infiltrator learns through compartmentalized assignments: copying a seal without knowing where it will be used, observing a checkpoint without crossing it, or moving a harmless package through a supposedly secure building. Only after proving both competence and restraint is the initiate trusted with genuine operations.

Grey Key Infiltrators are criminals under Helbranni law, but they are not indiscriminate predators. Most Grey Key circles forbid trafficking slaves, preying upon children, selling Chasm maps, transporting corruptive relics, or knowingly assisting hostile foreign powers. These prohibitions do not make the organization virtuous. They reflect the conviction that certain crimes threaten the entire wall of Helbranni society, including the hidden spaces within which the Grey Key survives.

In an adventuring party, the Grey Key Infiltrator excels whenever an objective lies behind laws, guards, wards, records, or controlled access. The subclass combines the Rogue’s traditional stealth with forgery, bureaucratic manipulation, magical-security bypass, and the ability to create temporary openings through which an entire party can pass.

Origins in Aetheris

The Grey Key emerged as Helbrann’s trade routes, banking houses, canton offices, military storehouses, and magically protected archives became increasingly interconnected. Greater security created greater demand for people who understood how that security worked.

Early Grey Key operators were smugglers, dismissed clerks, locksmiths, debtors, seal engravers, warehouse inspectors, and caravan guides. They discovered that the strongest Helbranni institutions rarely failed because their walls were weak. They failed because authority was divided among dozens of officials, each trusting that someone else had checked the details.

The Infiltrator tradition developed from this understanding. Its practitioners learned to defeat security through a sequence of small, plausible acts:

• Entering through the door appropriate to their clothing.
• Carrying documents that looked tedious enough to be genuine.
• Knowing which official would resent being asked to repeat an inspection.
• Placing a false correction beside a legitimate record.
• Allowing one guard to assume another had already searched them.
• Passing through a ward during a scheduled maintenance interval.
• Removing an object in a container intended for something else.
• Leaving evidence suggesting the theft occurred at a different time.

The tradition is strongest in Helbrann’s Watch substrata,/notebooks-ish city? Tolmara, Silberhafen, Weissbrück, and Chasmfall. Individual Infiltrators also travel with merchant caravans, adventuring companies, diplomatic households, and salvage expeditions.

Some former Grey Key Infiltrators enter legitimate service as security consultants, customs examiners, investigators, or ward auditors. Their employers rarely ask how they acquired their expertise.

Philosophy and Doctrine

Grey Key Infiltrators are taught that no security system is a single object. A locked door depends upon its key, the person entrusted with that key, the record identifying that person, the official who approved the record, and the habits that determine whether anyone verifies it.

This philosophy is summarized in the Five Lessons of the Key.

Every Lock Confesses

Security reveals what its owner fears. The thickness of a door, placement of a guard, language of a warning, and frequency of an inspection all indicate what lies beyond.

Routine Opens More Doors Than Force

People defend themselves against the unexpected. They often assist anything that appears tedious, authorized, and familiar.

Access Is More Valuable Than Possession

Stealing an object once is profitable. Learning how to enter the place where it is stored can remain profitable for years.

Take Only the Risk You Understand

An unknown relic, unmarked package, or unrecorded prisoner may be more dangerous than anything written in the contract.

Some Doors Remain Closed

The Grey Key’s prohibitions protect the network as much as they express morality. An Infiltrator who traffics captives, sells defenses to hostile powers, or moves corruptive relics invites enemies capable of destroying every cell connected to them.

The great tension of the tradition is that its practitioners depend upon trust while making a profession of violating it. An Infiltrator may be loyal to companions, lovers, or household members yet instinctively test their locks, recognize their lies, and maintain escape routes from their homes.

Visual Identity

Grey Key Infiltrators avoid a single recognizable uniform. Their clothing is selected to belong wherever they intend to operate.

A typical field wardrobe may include:

• The sober coat of a banking clerk.
• A weathered courier’s mantle.
• A warehouse inspector’s reinforced vest.
• A servant’s unobtrusive livery.
• A maintenance worker’s tool harness.
• A merchant’s traveling clothes.
• Formal eveningwear suitable for a Roseglass salon.
• A Warden’s coat with carefully imperfect insignia.
• Reversible garments with different colors and silhouettes.
• Concealed pockets sewn into hems, cuffs, belts, and linings.

Their tools are similarly disguised. Lockpicks resemble writing implements, a seal press becomes a belt buckle, and a coil of thin cutting wire is hidden within a corset stay, boot edge, or collar seam. Weapons are compact and easily explained: short blades, fighting canes, suppressed pistols, sleeve darts, and weighted cords.

The Grey Key’s whispered emblem is a simple iron-grey key whose teeth resemble the skyline of a fortified city. Infiltrators seldom display the complete symbol. A single tooth, notch, or angular keyhole incorporated into jewelry or stitching is more common.

Role in Aetheris

Grey Key Infiltrators serve as:

• Burglars.
• Forgers.
• Smugglers.
• Illicit couriers.
• Vault penetrators.
• Document thieves.
• Extraction specialists.
• Security consultants.
• Customs evaders.
• Impostors and false officials.
• Covert investigators.
• Safehouse keepers.
• Informants inside legitimate institutions.
• Recoverers of stolen inheritances or concealed evidence.

In combat, an Infiltrator is a mobile Striker and Controller. They exploit openings, deny enemies the protection of formation and cover, and use confusion to reposition themselves or their companions.

In exploration and social encounters, they specialize in controlled spaces. A wilderness tracker finds a path through a forest; a Grey Key Infiltrator finds a path through a registry office, guarded estate, customs checkpoint, or warded archive.

Subclass Integration

The Grey Key

The Grey Key is not a unified guild with a single master. It is a web of compartmentalized circles, many of which know one another only through coded marks, couriers, and intermediaries.

An Infiltrator may belong to one local cell without knowing the identities of regional leaders. This structure protects the network but creates constant uncertainty. A mission delivered through correct channels may still have been manipulated by a compromised courier.

Roseglass Society

Roseglass members provide introductions, social intelligence, private meeting rooms, and warnings concerning predatory clients. In return, the Grey Key may protect a threatened member, remove compromising records, or quietly relocate someone endangered by a powerful patron.

Neither organization admits the full extent of this relationship. Roseglass confidentiality is not supposed to serve criminal enterprises, while the Grey Key resists becoming the Society’s private enforcement arm.

Twelve-Seal Pursuit Office

The Twelve-Seal Office is the Grey Key’s principal institutional rival. Its investigators study the same jurisdictional gaps, altered records, and transit networks used by Infiltrators.

Despite this opposition, the two groups sometimes exchange information concerning slavers, kidnappers, foreign agents, and corruptive relic traffickers. An individual Infiltrator may simultaneously be a wanted criminal, a confidential informant, and the only person capable of entering a location the Office cannot legally search.

Collegium of the Bound Lantern

Bound Lantern wardwrights design many of the magical defenses Grey Key Infiltrators seek to bypass. The Collegium considers the Grey Key a serious civic threat but quietly employs former Infiltrators to test new wards.

A private contest has persisted for decades between certain ward architects and Grey Key operatives. Each regards the other as intolerably arrogant and professionally indispensable.

Stonechain Exchange House

Stonechain vaults, ledgers, and bonded transfers are tempting but exceptionally dangerous targets. The House’s security is procedural as much as physical, forcing an Infiltrator to compromise several independent systems before reaching anything valuable.

Some Grey Key circles refuse to rob protected family trusts, expedition shares belonging to the dead, or funds reserved for widows and orphans. Others see those accounts as no different from any other wealth.

Optional Grey Key Techniques

With the DM’s permission, a Grey Key Infiltrator may gain one of these techniques through specialized training, a faction reward, or an appropriate feat.

Borrowed Seal

After handling an official seal, signet, stamp, or embossed mark for 1 minute, you can reproduce its mundane impression with a Forgery Kit. The copy remains recognizable as false to magical examination.

Clerk’s Memory

After studying a ledger, schedule, manifest, or registry for 10 minutes, you can accurately recall its visible contents for 30 days.

Innocent Package

You can conceal one Tiny object inside an ordinary container without visibly altering the container’s dimensions. A creature has Disadvantage on checks made to find the object unless it empties or dismantles the container.

Second Exit

Whenever you spend at least 10 minutes inside a building, you can identify the nearest likely service exit, maintenance route, roof access, drainage passage, or lightly guarded boundary.

Corrected Record

Given 10 minutes and access to institutional paperwork, you can alter one nonmagical entry so that it appears to be an ordinary correction. Discovering the change requires a successful Investigation check against your Infiltrator save DC.

Playing the Grey Key Infiltrator

Intended Playstyle

The Grey Key Infiltrator is a Utility and Control-focused Rogue with a secondary Striker role. It is designed for campaigns involving cities, institutions, heists, investigations, prisons, secure estates, customs offices, and magically protected locations.

The subclass doesn’t depend entirely upon urban adventures. Read the System can target creatures, traps, vehicles, doors, and constructed battlefield features, allowing the Infiltrator to function in ruins, dungeons, military camps, ships, and fortifications.

Strengths

• Exceptional at penetrating secured locations.
• Creates reliable temporary credentials.
• Combines forgery, deception, stealth, and tool use.
• Can suppress magical and mundane alarms.
• Helps companions pass through security.
• Maintains Sneak Attack in constructed environments.
• Produces plausible contingency resources.
• Can reposition or escape when attacked.
• Eventually appropriates magical access permissions.

Weaknesses

• Less effective in featureless wilderness.
• Many abilities require preparation or plausible surroundings.
• Intelligence is more important than for most Rogues.
• Can’t simply negate every magical defense.
• Forged authority collapses when contradicted by strong evidence.
• Limited direct damage enhancements before 17th level.
• Strongest infiltration abilities require successful checks.
• Social deception doesn’t compel cooperation from suspicious creatures.

Tactical Identity

Use Read the System on a dangerous enemy, fortified position, locked objective, or battlefield mechanism. Position yourself near walls, doorways, vehicles, and Cover so Exploit the Blind Point can enable Sneak Attack.

Ghost in the Procedure helps the party penetrate a location without destroying its security. This is important when the characters want their intrusion to remain undiscovered.

At higher levels, It Was Already Arranged gives the party an exit, a disguise, a tool, or a local contact when a plan begins to fail. Steal the Key turns successful infiltration into temporary command of the enemy’s defenses.

Roleplaying the Grey Key Infiltrator

Grey Key Infiltrators often notice the small indicators of authority: the quality of a seal, the placement of a key ring, which servants enter without knocking, and which guard pretends to read the documents placed before them.

Common personalities include:

• The courteous professional who dislikes unnecessary violence.
• The irreverent burglar who views every secure building as a personal challenge.
• The former clerk who understands how institutions conceal wrongdoing.
• The smuggler who specializes in moving people out of danger.
• The cynical forger who believes all authority rests upon convincing paper.
• The loyal household agent who maintains secrets for a patron.
• The Roseglass confidant who moves comfortably through elite society.
• The repentant thief employed as a security consultant.
• The relentless criminal who obeys the Grey Key’s prohibitions but little else.
• The infiltrator who remembers every favor and every betrayal.

Narrative Tensions

A Grey Key Infiltrator may struggle with:

• Whether loyalty to the Grey Key outweighs loyalty to companions.
• Discovering that a profitable client is involved in trafficking.
• Protecting a source whose crimes are becoming harder to excuse.
• Falling in love with someone whose trust depends upon a false identity.
• Keeping professional secrets from a spouse or household.
• Deciding whether to expose corruption or exploit it.
• Learning that a stolen document could destabilize an entire canton.
• Being asked by the Twelve-Seal Office to betray a Grey Key cell.
• Discovering that their own credentials were prepared by someone else as part of a larger deception.

Faction and Organization Connections

Grey Key Circles

An Infiltrator’s closest allies are usually members of a local circle: a forger, fence, lookout, courier, safehouse keeper, or compromised clerk. Most circles are small enough that personal loyalty matters as much as profit.

Roseglass Society

Roseglass salons provide access to merchants, officers, diplomats, and wealthy households. Infiltrators may work as musicians, attendants, escorts, security staff, or discreet companions while gathering information.

Twelve-Seal Pursuit Office

The Office hunts Grey Key operators but also recruits them as informants. A Twelve-Seal investigator and an Infiltrator may spend years alternating between cooperation and pursuit.

Stonechain Exchange House

Stonechain regards Grey Key intrusion as a threat to public confidence. Its auditors maintain detailed files on known forgers, compromised clerks, and recurring infiltration methods.

Collegium of the Bound Lantern

The Collegium develops wards specifically designed to resist procedural manipulation. Some masters secretly circulate failed security designs to trusted Infiltrators, hoping the Grey Key will expose weaknesses before a hostile power does.

Adventure Hooks

The Honest Forgery

A Grey Key document is proven authentic by every known test, including magical examination. The official whose seal appears upon it insists that she never created it—and was nowhere near Helbrann when it was signed.

The Closed Account

The Stonechain Exchange House hires the party to enter one of its own vaults. The vault’s authorization system no longer recognizes any living employee, but someone continues withdrawing money from within.

A Key Against Chains

A Grey Key circle asks the Infiltrator to open a remote warehouse used by traffickers. The captives can be rescued, but doing so will expose several Grey Key informants embedded in the network.

The Roseglass Ledger

A stolen Roseglass appointment ledger could ruin marriages, diplomatic negotiations, and intelligence operations. The Society wants it recovered without anyone learning that it was ever missing.

The Ward That Learned

A Bound Lantern ward has begun changing its authorization requirements after each intrusion attempt. It now requests personal memories rather than passwords and appears to be constructing identities of its own.

Twelve Seals, One Lie

The Twelve-Seal Pursuit Office possesses a lawful warrant bearing all required approvals. The Infiltrator discovers that one seal was produced with a Grey Key technique known only to a person presumed dead.

Notable NPCs

Liese Vann, the Fourth Clerk

Liese is a human Infiltrator who maintains several identities within the administrative offices of Helbrann’s Watch. No one is certain whether “Liese Vann” is her true name.

She specializes in altering the movement of documents rather than their contents. Investigations fail because the necessary record always reaches the correct office one day too late.

Dorren Ashkey

A dwarven vaultbreaker formerly employed by the Stonechain Exchange House as a security engineer. Dorren insists he left the House over a contractual disagreement; Stonechain records describe a substantial and unresolved loss.

He refuses assignments involving family trusts, funerary deposits, or expedition shares belonging to missing adventurers.

Mariel Rosengrau

A human Grey Key Infiltrator with close ties to the Roseglass Society. Mariel uses salon invitations, household introductions, and social obligations to enter places that no burglar could approach unnoticed.

Her current identity has developed genuine friendships and a serious romantic attachment. Completing her assignment may require destroying the life she built while pretending to be someone else.

Balance Notes

Category	Assessment
Intended Role	Utility / Controller with a secondary Striker role
Damage Profile	Standard Rogue Sneak Attack progression; improved access to Sneak Attack in constructed environments; limited reaction-based second Sneak Attack at 17th level
Survivability	Relies on movement, Cover, concealment, and Turn Their Attention rather than increased Armor Class or Hit Points
Utility	Extremely strong against locks, traps, credentials, inspections, alarms, wards, and controlled-access locations
Resource Economy	Read the System uses Proficiency Bonus per Long Rest; It Was Already Arranged has two uses; Steal the Key has one use per Long Rest
Primary Limitation	Many abilities require plausible institutional, architectural, or security elements
Comparable Subclasses	Shares the Thief’s tool expertise and the Assassin’s identity work, but emphasizes systems, credentials, party infiltration, and magical access rather than speed or assassination

Read the System broadens the circumstances under which Sneak Attack is available but doesn’t increase its damage. Its requirements encourage interaction with Cover and constructed terrain without guaranteeing Sneak Attack in every environment.

No Door Between Us can produce a second Sneak Attack during a round, but it appears only at 17th level, requires a Reaction, and depends upon the target moving through a predictable controlled space.

Steal the Key is intentionally powerful in specialized situations but doesn’t dispel magic, rewrite permanent enchantments, dominate creatures, or eliminate physical evidence.

Summary

The Grey Key Infiltrator is a Helbranni Rogue who steals access rather than merely stealing objects. They forge authority, recognize weak procedures, suppress alarms, conceal companions, prepare escape routes, and eventually appropriate the permissions of magical security systems.

The subclass is especially suited to heists, investigations, urban intrigue, prison escapes, covert rescues, and adventures centered upon fortified institutions. Its strongest abilities reward preparation and intelligent observation while preserving the Rogue’s mobility and precision combat.

“You built the wall. You numbered the doors. You wrote down who may pass. All I did was read your instructions more carefully than your guards.”

Institutional Tradecraft

Your training encompasses forgery, covert transport, and the observation of institutional habits.

You gain the following benefits.

False Papers

You gain proficiency with the Forgery Kit and the following skills: Deception, Investigation, and Sleight of Hand.

If you already have proficiency with the chosen skill, you gain Expertise in it instead.

Concealed Implements

You can conceal a set of Thieves’ Tools, a Forgery Kit, or an object small enough to fit in one hand upon your person. A creature searching you must succeed on an Intelligence (Investigation) check against a DC equal to:

8 + your Proficiency Bonus + your Dexterity modifier

On a failure, the concealed item isn’t discovered.

You can conceal one additional qualifying object at 9th level and another at 17th level.

Routine Authority

When you make a Charisma check to impersonate a clerk, courier, maintenance worker, inspector, servant, guard, or other functionary whose presence would be routine, you can use your Intelligence modifier in place of your Charisma modifier.

Action Type: Passive
Uses: At will
Duration: Continuous
Scaling: Additional concealed objects at 9th and 17th levels

Read the System

You can study a secured creature, object, or location and identify the weakest point in its defenses.

As a Bonus Action, choose one creature, door, container, trap, ward, vehicle, or section of a structure you can see within 60 feet. It becomes your Studied System for 1 minute. The designation ends early if you use this feature again.

While a target is your Studied System, you gain the following benefits against it:

Controlled Entry

You have Advantage on ability checks made with Thieves’ Tools, a Forgery Kit, Deception, Investigation, Perception, or Sleight of Hand to bypass, inspect, deceive, disable, or gain access to the Studied System.

Exploit the Blind Point

Once per turn, you can deal Sneak Attack damage to a creature designated as your Studied System if you don’t have Disadvantage on the attack roll and one of the following is true:

• You are within 5 feet of Cover.
• You are Hidden from the target.
• The target is within 5 feet of a doorway, window, container, vehicle, wall, or other constructed feature.

All other rules for Sneak Attack still apply.

Read the Guard

When the Studied System is a creature, you learn whether it has proficiency in Perception, Investigation, or Insight. You don’t learn its exact bonuses.

You can use Read the System a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, regaining all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

If you roll Initiative with no uses remaining, you regain one use.

Action Type: Bonus Action
Uses: Proficiency Bonus per Long Rest
Duration: 1 minute
Scaling: Additional effects at 9th, 13th, and 17th levels

Temporary Credentials

During a Short or Long Rest, you can use a Forgery Kit to prepare one set of temporary credentials. These might take the form of transit papers, a work order, a cargo manifest, an invitation, a delivery record, a registry copy, or another nonmagical document appropriate to a specific institution or settlement.

A creature inspecting the credentials must succeed on an Intelligence (Investigation) check against your Infiltrator save DC:

Infiltrator save DC = 8 + your Proficiency Bonus + your Intelligence modifier

A creature has Advantage on the check if it possesses the authentic document being copied or has direct access to records that contradict your forgery.

The credentials remain convincing for 24 hours. They become obviously unreliable once they are formally checked against complete institutional records, used after the stated authorization expires, or contradicted by your behavior.

You can maintain one set of Temporary Credentials at a time. Creating another causes the previous set to lose the exceptional accuracy granted by this feature.

This feature can establish plausible authorization but can’t create legal rights, alter magical records, or compel a creature to ignore clear evidence of wrongdoing.

Action Type: Short or Long Rest activity
Uses: At will; one active set
Duration: 24 hours

Ghost in the Procedure

You have learned to move through inspections and security intervals as though your presence had already been approved.

Inspection Gap

When you or a willing creature within 5 feet fails a Deception, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, or tool check made to pass an inspection or bypass security, you can use your Reaction to add your Intelligence modifier to the roll, potentially turning the failure into a success.

You can use this Reaction a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, regaining all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

Quiet the Alarm

When you successfully disable or bypass a trap, lock, alarm, or ward designated as your Studied System, you can suppress rather than destroy it.

For the next 10 minutes, the security feature treats you as an authorized creature. It doesn’t activate against you, reveal your presence, or record your passage.

When you suppress the feature, you can authorize a number of additional willing creatures equal to your Intelligence modifier, with a minimum of one. An authorized creature must pass through or interact with the security feature within 1 minute of you.

Quiet the Alarm can affect magical security created by a spell whose level is no higher than your Proficiency Bonus. It doesn’t dispel the effect or allow you to control it.

A magical ward may require an Intelligence (Arcana) check in place of a check using Thieves’ Tools. The DC is the creator’s spell save DC. If that DC is unavailable, it equals 10 + the spell’s level.

Misdirected Notice

If a suppressed security feature would normally create a record, signal, visible mark, or magical notification, you can cause that notice to appear up to 10 minutes later. You can’t change the information it contains.

Action Type: Reaction or part of disabling security
Uses: Inspection Gap—Proficiency Bonus per Long Rest; Quiet the Alarm—at will after a successful check
Duration: Up to 10 minutes

It Was Already Arranged

You prepare routes, tools, identities, and contacts so thoroughly that your companions may not realize a contingency exists until you invoke it.

As an Action, or as a Reaction when a relevant obstacle appears, you can declare one of the following preparations.

Hidden Route

You identify a concealed, overlooked, or procedurally neglected route out of the immediate area. You and a number of willing creatures equal to your Intelligence modifier can move up to half their Speed without provoking Opportunity Attacks.

This movement must end in a space you could reasonably reach through doors, windows, passages, crowds, service corridors, scaffolding, or similar terrain. This feature doesn’t create a passage through solid matter.

Necessary Tool

You produce one nonmagical item worth no more than 100 GP that weighs no more than 10 pounds. The item must be a tool, disguise component, container, common adventuring item, or similar object that could reasonably have been concealed or stored nearby.

The object is real and remains until lost, destroyed, or discarded.

Prior Introduction

You declare that you previously established a minor contact connected to the current location or institution. The contact can provide ordinary information, a safe meeting place, a routine introduction, or a minor service that doesn’t place them in obvious mortal danger.

The DM determines the contact’s identity and what they reasonably know.

Secondary Identity

You reveal a prepared disguise and supporting credentials. For the next hour, you have Advantage on Charisma checks made to maintain that identity. The identity must be plausible for the region and can’t impersonate a specific known individual without an appropriate disguise.

Concealed Compartment

You reveal a previously prepared hiding place large enough to conceal one Medium or smaller creature or an equivalent amount of equipment. The hiding place must be plausible for the environment, such as a false cargo panel, maintenance recess, unused office, covered cart, or cellar cavity.

You can use It Was Already Arranged twice, regaining all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest. You can’t select the same preparation more than once between Long Rests.

Action Type: Action or Reaction
Uses: Twice per Long Rest
Duration: Varies by preparation

Turn Their Attention

When a creature you can see targets you with an attack while you are within 5 feet of another creature or an object that provides Cover, you can use your Reaction to move up to half your Speed.

This movement doesn’t provoke Opportunity Attacks from the attacker.

If this movement places you behind Cover or outside the attack’s range, the triggering attack misses. Otherwise, it is resolved normally.

You can then take the Hide Action as part of the same Reaction, provided you have Cover or are Heavily Obscured.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a Short or Long Rest, unless you expend one use of Read the System to use it again.

Action Type: Reaction
Uses: Once per Short or Long Rest; additional uses expend Read the System
Duration: Immediate

Steal the Key

You can briefly appropriate the authority upon which a security system depends.

When you successfully use Quiet the Alarm against a magical ward, lock, alarm, portal, or other access-controlled magical effect designated as your Studied System, you can steal its authorization for 1 hour.

For the duration, you gain the following benefits:

Master Authorization

The affected security system treats you and a number of creatures equal to your Intelligence modifier as fully authorized. Chosen creatures can pass through, open, close, carry, or otherwise interact with it without triggering its hostile or restrictive effects.

This feature can’t grant control over a creature, Artifact, sentient magic item, or effect created by a spell of 9th level.

Borrowed Command

As a Bonus Action while within 60 feet of the affected system, you can issue one simple command appropriate to its function. Examples include:

• Open or close a warded door.
• Suppress or restore an alarm.
• Redirect an alarm to another valid receiver.
• Cause a magical portal to accept an authorized destination.
• Make a detection ward ignore or identify a designated creature.
• Lock or unlock a secured container.
• Cause a recorded access log to register an authorized identity.

The effect can’t attack a creature, alter its fundamental purpose, or continue beyond the duration of Steal the Key.

Stolen Protection

If the security system would deal damage to an unauthorized creature, you gain Resistance to that damage while Steal the Key remains active.

Leave No Entry

When the duration ends, you can choose whether the system remembers your passage. If you erase the passage, mundane and magical records created solely by that system show no evidence that you or your authorized companions interacted with it.

Physical consequences remain. An opened container remains open, an object removed from a vault remains missing, and witnesses retain their memories.

Once you use Steal the Key, you can’t do so again until you finish a Long Rest.

Action Type: Part of Quiet the Alarm; Bonus Action for Borrowed Command
Uses: Once per Long Rest
Duration: 1 hour

No Door Between Us

Your mastery of controlled spaces lets you exploit even momentary access in combat.

While a creature is designated as your Studied System:

• Its Half Cover and Three-Quarters Cover don’t affect your attacks.
• It can’t gain Advantage on attacks against you solely because it is Hidden or Invisible.
• When it moves through a doorway, portal, opening, or into or out of Cover, you can use your Reaction to make one weapon attack against it.
• If that attack qualifies for Sneak Attack, you can use Sneak Attack even if you have already used it during the current round. Once you deal Sneak Attack damage with this Reaction, you can’t do so again until the start of your next turn.

Action Type: Passive; Reaction attack
Uses: At will while Read the System is active
Duration: Until the Studied System designation ends