As introduced in the “Domains” section of Chapter 1, your active domain cards grant you special abilities. Unless a domain card states otherwise, you can use it as many times as you wish, for as long as it remains in your loadout.

Loadout and Vault

You can only have a maximum of five domain cards active at any one time, along with your subclass, ancestry, and community cards. At lower levels, you won’t have enough cards for this to be an issue, but once you reach level 5 and above, you’ll need to choose which domain cards to keep in your loadout and which to store in your vault.

Cards in your loadout can be held in your hand or placed on the table next to your character sheet; do whatever makes it easiest to access them. Any cards in your loadout are considered active and can be utilized or benefitted from during play.

Your vault holds any domain cards that are inactive and not currently in your loadout. Vault cards should be kept somewhere out of the way, but close enough that they’re available if they need to be accessed during a session.

Swapping Cards

When you begin a rest, you can swap cards between your loadout and your vault (see “Downtime” later in this chapter). You must do so before you use any downtime moves.

When you’re not resting, you can still swap cards into your loadout, but it’s stressful to do so without a chance to prepare! To immediately switch a card from your loadout, mark Stress equal to the vaulted card’s Recall Cost (see “Domains” in chapter 1 for a reminder of where to find this). When you do, switch it for another domain card, placing the previous loadout card into your vault.

Swapping During Combat

If you’re adjusting your loadout during combat or when the action tracker is in use, you must also use an action to switch cards (in addition to marking Stress). As a result, you can’t switch while a GM is making a move (see “Moves and Actions” earlier in this chapter).

Swapping When You Level Up

If your loadout is full when you level up and gain a new card, you can immediately move one of the previously active cards into your vault, and add the new card to your current loadout at no cost.

Usage Limits

Some domain cards have an exhaustion limit that restricts how often you can use that card (for example, once per long rest). If you use that card, you’ll need a way to remember that it’s temporarily unavailable; you might choose to take that card out of your hand and place it face down on the table, turn it around, or any other method to remind yourself that you’ve already used it. If a card allows for a certain number of uses, you could place a token on it each time it’s activated to remind yourself how many times you’ve done so.

A few effects require you to permanently place a card in your vault. When this happens, that card is essentially removed from play. You can’t move such a card back into your loadout by any means, nor can you choose it when you gain a level.