All Marathon characters and Runner Shells and how they work

Choosing the right Marathon character for you will be essential to completing missions, looting, and, most importantly, extracting safely. Each Runner Shell, a biologically printed body that you take control of, comes with its own kit to help you survive the dangers of Tau Ceti IV, the UESC, and other players. From energy shields and healing drones for providing protection and team support to grappling hooks and power slides for superior mobility. Currently, we know of six Runner Shells in Marathon and the special Rook character, all of which I've explained below.

All Marathon Runner Shells and their abilities

Each character, or Runner Shell, in Marathon has a unique suite of abilities geared towards a certain playstyle, and with the Marathon release date approaching, it's a good idea to get acquainted with the basics. By default, each Runner has a powerful Prime Ability which has a long cooldown, a Tactical Ability that is generally best used in combat and has a shorter cooldown, and two Traits, which range from passive benefits that are always active to unique features that are more like mini abilities.

These abilities can also be enhanced thanks to Implants and Shell-specific Cores which you can loot or unlock as you play Marathon. Combining them along with your weapons, equipment, and shields is how you create powerful builds for each Runner Shell, but you risk losing it all if you fail to extract. Finally, there is no limit on how many of the same Marathon Runner Shells you can have in a team. All three players can use the same character for a singular, coordinated approach or each use a different one for a varied and versatile team.

Destroyer Shell

• The Destroyer shell is primarily for aggressive combat with abilities that focus on charging into battle and avoiding damage. Great for those that want to brawl with enemy players and the toughest of the UESC's drones.
  • Prime Ability – Search and Destroy: Activate shoulder-mounted missile pods that automatically fire immobilizing homing missiles at targets that you have dealt sustained damage to.
  • Tactical Ability – Riot Barricade: Activate a frontal energy shield that blocks damage. The shield's cooldown time increases based on how long you have it deployed and how much damage it takes.
  • Trait 1 – Thruster: A quick lateral dash that can be performed while airborne.
  • Trait 2 – Tactical Sprint: An additional sprint type that is faster than usual but generates more heat.

Assassin Shell

• A stealthy Runner Shell that makes use of invisibility and smokescreens to avoid detection. If you want to sneak around, either to stay out of trouble or ambush enemies, this is the Marathon class for you.
  • Prime Ability – Smoke Screen: Throw a smoke disc that fires out a line of smoke ahead of it when it hits the ground. Smoke clouds impair visibility and disrupt the optics of those that step inside the cloud.
  • Tactical Ability – Active Camo: Become temporarily invisible. The faster you move, the less visible you become. Firing your gun, punching, taking damage, using abilities, and using consumables will briefly make you entirely visible.
  • Trait 1 – Shadow Dive: Drop to the ground and create a smokescreen on impact. This also negates all fall damage.
  • Trait 2 – Shroud: Your Shell becomes invisible every time you enter a smoke cloud, and the invisibility persists for a few seconds after leaving a cloud.

Recon Shell

• A character that's geared entirely towards revealing and hunting down enemies. This Runner Shell already seems like a frontrunner based on my time playing in the alpha in April 2025.
  • Prime Ability – Echo Pulse: Release a series of sonar pulses that reveal the locations of nearby enemies, both players and UESC, including invisible ones.
  • Tactical Ability – Tracker Drone: Toss out a little spider-like robot that scurries towards enemies and explodes. Enemies hit by the explosion are instantly overheated, massively limiting their movement and causing them to take small amounts of burn damage.
  • Trait 1 – Awareness: When an enemy player pings you, you are alerted. Additionally, performing a finisher on an enemy player pings their teammates.
  • Trait 2 – Stalker Protocol: After breaking an enemy's shields, they leave a trail of footprints behind for a short time, making them easily trackable.

Vandal Shell

• A disruptive and manoeuvrable Runner Shell that can be a chaotic force in battle and difficult for the enemy to deal with, all at the cost of high heat generation.
  • Prime Ability – Amplify: Activate to temporarily gain increased movement speed, improved weapon handling, and reduced heat generation from movement abilities.
  • Tactical Ability – Disruptor: Fire an energy projectile that deals damage and blasts enemies away from its impact area. The longer you hold the activation button before firing the projectile, the greater the blast's size and damage.
  • Trait 1 – Microjets: A double jump ability that generates extra heat.
  • Trait 2 – Power Slide: Vandal's slide goes further and faster than usual at the cost of extra heat.

Thief Shell

• The Thief character is Marathon's best looter, with abilities that focus on gathering loot, including ways to case the joint and make a quick getaway.
  • Prime Ability – Pickpocket Drone: Manually control a flying drone that can whip enemy players and UESC drones to knock loot from their backpacks. The drone can then retrieve some of this loot.
  • Tactical Ability – Grapple: Fire out a dart and immediately start reeling yourself towards it, letting you quickly climb, traverse, or swing around. If you've used Strand in Destiny 2, you'll understand exactly how this works.
  • Trait 1 – X-Ray Visor: Activate to see loot containers through walls. Enemies within line-of-sight are also highlighted. It looks like containers and enemies are highlighted in a color based on the highest rarity of loot they hold.
  • Trait 2 – Stat boosting backpack trait: We don't know the name of this trait yet, but we know the Thief gains passive benefits the more full their backpack is with loot, including a faster grapple recharge rate and improved base stats.

Triage Shell

• Marathon's answer to a support class, Triage's abilities focus on keeping yourself and your allies alive and fighting fit.
  • Prime Ability – Capacitive Gauntlets: Charge up and fire out shocking tendrils that can zap enemies and revive downed teammates from afar.
  • Tactical Ability – Med-Drone: Send a Med-Drone to hover over an ally's shoulder or your own to provide health and shields.
  • Trait 1 – Battery Overcharge: Temporarily gain improved weapon performance and grant battery weapons the ability to EMP enemies when you break their shields.
  • Trait 2 – Shareware: Teammates with Med-Drones healing them also gain the benefits of any consumables you use.

Rook Scavenger Frame

Rook is a special character in Marathon and has some unique limitations that set them apart from the other Runner Shells. Most notably, choosing Rook forces you into a solo queue for matches, so you can't play as part of a team. You will also join matches that are already in progress, but other players in a match are not notified when Rook players join, so there's no way to know precisely how many players are in a match.

When it comes to gear, playing as Rook also prevents you from bringing anything from your vault into a match and it seems to have only one ability: a UESC disguise Tactical Ability that allows you to activate a mask that temporarily prevents UESC drones from attacking you. But you at least get a starting kit with some basic gear to defend yourself.

Other than that, Rook functions like any other Runner Shell with any gear you loot and extract with being yours to keep. That means Rook is best for those who don't necessarily want to risk their best loot in every match or want to focus solely on scavenging to restock their vault of gear and supplies without having to buy everything with credits.

These six Runner Shells, plus Rook, appear to be the starting roster of Marathon characters, but there will almost certainly be new ones added over time. It's not clear how updates and content will be implemented in Marathon, but we'll be sure to update his guide with any new Runner information as we get it.

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