I have an outlined adventure which I'm fleshing out, and in one part of it the party will need to recover an artefact which is currently up for auction in an esteemed auction house.
The players will have the usual free reign to try to recover this artefact in any way they want to, which means that I will need to get the details together so that they can plan and execute a heist, should they choose to. The alternatives are to bid for it, or to attempt to steal it from the winning bidders, both of which I've got reasonable plans for thus far. I'm falling down on the ideas for the option of stealing it.
My initial insticts are to work outwards - have a vault room filled with the auction sales, and then have several routes in - it's going to be moderately guarded but it's not a royal mint or a treasury, so it'll be a few guards who can potentially raise the alarm and get them arrested. I would then decide on 3 ways in which I think are viable (distract the guards & get in that way, drop from a window on a rope, or infiltrate in daytime and then hide). Then I'd put obstacles in place for the options I have and make them involve skill checks to overcome. I am a fan of cumulative skill checks rather than all-or-nothing ones, so for example I might request 3 strength checks over the course of lowering the rogue in on a rope, with any amount below 15 adding up, and if the total exceeds 15, then the rogue is dropped. That sort of thing.
I know there are books out there which involve heists but I'm regrettably skint at the moment so need to find free info on it, if possible! Does anyone have any tips for planning out things for a heist to deal with?
Don’t plan the heist. Plan the floor plan and plan the security. Let the players plan the heist. You don’t have to come up with the ways in, just what is being done to prevent the theft. How those measures are overcome is up to them.
If you need inspiration try watching movies like Ocean’s 11 and/or The Italian Job, or maybe even Ronin. I’m sure some of those are streaming free somewhere and if not the service will likely recommend other movies that might do.
Also! Be wary if they're higher level! I learned the hard way that a regular heist is something better left to lower tiered adventures.
My party got a floor plan of the building (which I accounted for) and saw that the relic was trapped in a vault 500' below the surface that had several security features (voice locks, "DNA scanners", pass codes) and the session was supposed to be them finding ways to disarm and figuring out how to get to the vault.
Bard turned invisible, snuck in to above the vault, dimension doored directly to the vault.
luckily I happened to have already planned for the owner of the relic to know they were coming and thus the bard trapped herself in a room with an ambush meant for the party. But if I WOULDN'T have had that idea, they would have completed the heist in minutes lol
Don’t plan the heist. Plan the floor plan and plan the security. Let the players plan the heist. You don’t have to come up with the ways in, just what is being done to prevent the theft. How those measures are overcome is up to them.
If you need inspiration try watching movies like Ocean’s 11 and/or The Italian Job, or maybe even Ronin. I’m sure some of those are streaming free somewhere and if not the service will likely recommend other movies that might do.
Exactly this. Pretend you're in charge of security. You wouldn't plan to allow a couple routes that might let thieves in, you'd do everything you can to keep them out. Unless you secretly hate the auction house, so you put in a small thermal exhaust port that's only 2 meters wide and hope someone is clever enough to find it. And this is a world where, I assume, there is magic, and everyone knows there's magic, so the security folks would both use it (alarm, glyph of warding, guards and wards, etc.) and protect against it. An anti-magic field would be a lot to keep up, but maybe they've hired some group of wizards to do it, or had an artifact created that prevents teleportation effects in and out of the area, because that would be the first, most obvious thing to try and prevent.
I fall into this trap a lot - trying to figure out how the players will deal with something and sign posting it.
Let those lazy bums do some of the work for a change! Seriously, how much work do we put into these campaigns already? Plan the security, give them the objective, then let them plan and execute, and then decide if it works or not. They've got more brains than you, they should be able to come up with a better plan than you ever could.
[Edit - I mean more brains purely numerically, not implying they are necessarily smarter than you!]
I fall into this trap a lot - trying to figure out how the players will deal with something and sign posting it.
Let those lazy bums do some of the work for a change! Seriously, how much work do we put into these campaigns already? Plan the security, give them the objective, then let them plan and execute, and then decide if it works or not. They've got more brains than you, they should be able to come up with a better plan than you ever could.
My wife DM's a campaign and she showed me her notes for a particular puzzle and they said, "Wait until they do something cool enough" lol She put NO solution, just assumed that if we screwed around enough, we'd do SOMETHING and she'd be like "Wow! You figured it out!" lol
I fall into this trap a lot - trying to figure out how the players will deal with something and sign posting it.
Let those lazy bums do some of the work for a change! Seriously, how much work do we put into these campaigns already? Plan the security, give them the objective, then let them plan and execute, and then decide if it works or not. They've got more brains than you, they should be able to come up with a better plan than you ever could.
My wife DM's a campaign and she showed me her notes for a particular puzzle and they said, "Wait until they do something cool enough" lol She put NO solution, just assumed that if we screwed around enough, we'd do SOMETHING and she'd be like "Wow! You figured it out!" lol
I fall into this trap a lot - trying to figure out how the players will deal with something and sign posting it.
Let those lazy bums do some of the work for a change! Seriously, how much work do we put into these campaigns already? Plan the security, give them the objective, then let them plan and execute, and then decide if it works or not. They've got more brains than you, they should be able to come up with a better plan than you ever could.
My wife DM's a campaign and she showed me her notes for a particular puzzle and they said, "Wait until they do something cool enough" lol She put NO solution, just assumed that if we screwed around enough, we'd do SOMETHING and she'd be like "Wow! You figured it out!" lol
Tell your wife she is my new DM inspiration!
She follows me on DnDB so she's prolly already seen it! lol
Quote from LeBattery>> My wife DM's a campaign and she showed me her notes for a particular puzzle and they said, "Wait until they do something cool enough" lol She put NO solution, just assumed that if we screwed around enough, we'd do SOMETHING and she'd be like "Wow! You figured it out!" lol
Yep. Pretty much my go-to approach for both planned or spontaneous scenario nowadays. I can't plan for all contingencies or wacky what-ifs. I feel okay to set-up some environmental or static truths about a situation or location (to know what might not be possible), but honestly all you need to do is adjudicate their various ideas (saying things like "Are you sure you wanna do that?" is pretty fun to mess with heads, too) and take a fun suggestion and roll with it to give the session some spice.
Thankyou all for the responses, I feel I didn't phrase the question properly but you've answered well regardless!
I was trying to plan a heist encounter rather than a heist - as you all said, that is for the players to work out. My concerns were in either making the place uncrackable by over-securing it, or making it too easy by under-securing it. It's not a bank vault, it's an auction house which flogs all the stuff from foreclosed shops and repossessed items, but similarly I don't want them to face one inept guard and an unlocked door! I want to make sure I give them a challenge with no fixed answer, but it has to be a challenge!
I will just design the building and floorplans, and then sprinkle some weaknesses which the auction house wouldn't compromise on - an ancient stained glass skylight without bars over it, a guard changeover where the guards stop to chat for a while instead of strictly patrolling. That sort of thing, things for them to notice when they case the joint. I expect the players to be somewhere in the level 5-8 range by this point, at a guess. I'll have to check for any spells which might invalidate them. I might also add an antimagic sphere in the auction house (as an item for sale) which might let them teleport in but not out without dealing with it first!
Thankyou all for the responses, I feel I didn't phrase the question properly but you've answered well regardless!
I was trying to plan a heist encounter rather than a heist - as you all said, that is for the players to work out. My concerns were in either making the place uncrackable by over-securing it, or making it too easy by under-securing it. It's not a bank vault, it's an auction house which flogs all the stuff from foreclosed shops and repossessed items, but similarly I don't want them to face one inept guard and an unlocked door! I want to make sure I give them a challenge with no fixed answer, but it has to be a challenge!
I will just design the building and floorplans, and then sprinkle some weaknesses which the auction house wouldn't compromise on - an ancient stained glass skylight without bars over it, a guard changeover where the guards stop to chat for a while instead of strictly patrolling. That sort of thing, things for them to notice when they case the joint. I expect the players to be somewhere in the level 5-8 range by this point, at a guess. I'll have to check for any spells which might invalidate them. I might also add an antimagic sphere in the auction house (as an item for sale) which might let them teleport in but not out without dealing with it first!
In that case I'd plan the strength of the guard detail and other security based on the largest threat I think the auction house would reasonably anticipate. Is the McGuffin valuable in general, or just to the party? Has the party been good about planning in secret, or does the bard run their damn fool mouth in public places?
If they cased the place, or otherwise investigated in some way I deemed worthy, I'd tell them about shift changes and break timing - things that are unavoidable weak links in the chin. Perhaps they'd notice one particular guard with a very predictable bathroom/break schedule. If they choose to discover the guards' names, and investigate the guards themselves, I'd give them some personal information that they could use as leverage. Just anything really that rewards creative thinking and investigation.
I'd also think about how the auction house security would sound the alarm, and what those consequences would be - how far away are the city guard and what's their demeanor - are they keen as mustard or apathetic to calls for assistance? If the party was smart and chose to do the heist under cover of a big event, I'd reward that by ruling that the city guard was spread thin and response time was increased (or even eliminated altogether.)
Ultimately if they decide that the right approach is a "full frontal daytime assault across the mine field (it's the last thing they'll be expecting!)", then the auction house should be pretty much impregnable. If heists were easy, everyone would be doing them. So I'd personally err on the side of too secure rather than not secure enough. You can always introduce cracks if you feel you over did it and they aren't having any fun. And I might throw them a bone by throwing in an NPC to periodically say "are you sure you've thought this through?" if their plan is underdeveloped to the point of obvious immediate failure.
You’re trying to plan a heist as a location-based adventure. That doesn’t usually gel well together because of how heists are played and how they are narratively experienced. Do stat up the place and put stuff in all the locations likely to come up. Then plan an EVENT based adventure.
So. How to do that?
You already have the party’s goal which is to steal an artifact from an auction house. That’s great. Now make a villain or antagonist. It’s a heist so they’re likely to be the security in charge of the operation. Stat them up and introduce them to the PCs at the start of the adventure. Have a real “this guy is a badass investigator” moment in the game where you show the PCs that the villain is no slouch at their job.
Now plan the villain’s actions throughout the adventure. Make a timeline of everything that’s going to happen if the PCs do nothing. Once you have a timeline, make a bunch of reactions and contingencies the villain planned. The villain isn’t you. You are not trying to outsmart your players. You are portraying a villain and their reactions to likely or unlikely events is a portrayal of who they are. They can be awesome, cool, and amazing villains - but always remember that the villain is NOT a DMPC. They’re not supposed to win. They’re supposed to lose dramatically and in the most entertaining ways. The PCs are the main characters. The villain is a supporting character.
Don’t decide on what’s viable or not. Have the villain plan defenses around what they are guarding. Make those defenses plausible, reasonable, and forbidding, but not impossible. The players will plan to defeat those defenses. Be open to their plans. If they’re planning daring stunts, let them shine. Awesome escapades deserve Inspiration to help it along. Just be careful not to do it to the extent that the players lose respect for your villain.
The core rule of improvisation is “Yes, and.” You make the scenario. The players come up with a daring scheme. Tell them the twists and turns but don’t turn down their offers.
Regrettably, this campaign fell flat somewhat. However, I still have it all written up, though I never finished designing the heist as this was around the time that people stopped being interested!
Definitely some good info on here worth noting for heists in future! I had the players improv a mini-one when I told them a shop was closed and, instead of just waiting until the morning, they broke in! They met the very fat bear who guards the shop (who they had met before, and loved. They did not remember the name on the shop!) and managed to escape with some potions.
I have an outlined adventure which I'm fleshing out, and in one part of it the party will need to recover an artefact which is currently up for auction in an esteemed auction house.
The players will have the usual free reign to try to recover this artefact in any way they want to, which means that I will need to get the details together so that they can plan and execute a heist, should they choose to. The alternatives are to bid for it, or to attempt to steal it from the winning bidders, both of which I've got reasonable plans for thus far. I'm falling down on the ideas for the option of stealing it.
My initial insticts are to work outwards - have a vault room filled with the auction sales, and then have several routes in - it's going to be moderately guarded but it's not a royal mint or a treasury, so it'll be a few guards who can potentially raise the alarm and get them arrested. I would then decide on 3 ways in which I think are viable (distract the guards & get in that way, drop from a window on a rope, or infiltrate in daytime and then hide). Then I'd put obstacles in place for the options I have and make them involve skill checks to overcome. I am a fan of cumulative skill checks rather than all-or-nothing ones, so for example I might request 3 strength checks over the course of lowering the rogue in on a rope, with any amount below 15 adding up, and if the total exceeds 15, then the rogue is dropped. That sort of thing.
I know there are books out there which involve heists but I'm regrettably skint at the moment so need to find free info on it, if possible! Does anyone have any tips for planning out things for a heist to deal with?
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Don’t plan the heist. Plan the floor plan and plan the security. Let the players plan the heist. You don’t have to come up with the ways in, just what is being done to prevent the theft. How those measures are overcome is up to them.
If you need inspiration try watching movies like Ocean’s 11 and/or The Italian Job, or maybe even Ronin. I’m sure some of those are streaming free somewhere and if not the service will likely recommend other movies that might do.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Also! Be wary if they're higher level! I learned the hard way that a regular heist is something better left to lower tiered adventures.
My party got a floor plan of the building (which I accounted for) and saw that the relic was trapped in a vault 500' below the surface that had several security features (voice locks, "DNA scanners", pass codes) and the session was supposed to be them finding ways to disarm and figuring out how to get to the vault.
Bard turned invisible, snuck in to above the vault, dimension doored directly to the vault.
luckily I happened to have already planned for the owner of the relic to know they were coming and thus the bard trapped herself in a room with an ambush meant for the party. But if I WOULDN'T have had that idea, they would have completed the heist in minutes lol
Exactly this. Pretend you're in charge of security. You wouldn't plan to allow a couple routes that might let thieves in, you'd do everything you can to keep them out. Unless you secretly hate the auction house, so you put in a small thermal exhaust port that's only 2 meters wide and hope someone is clever enough to find it. And this is a world where, I assume, there is magic, and everyone knows there's magic, so the security folks would both use it (alarm, glyph of warding, guards and wards, etc.) and protect against it. An anti-magic field would be a lot to keep up, but maybe they've hired some group of wizards to do it, or had an artifact created that prevents teleportation effects in and out of the area, because that would be the first, most obvious thing to try and prevent.
I fall into this trap a lot - trying to figure out how the players will deal with something and sign posting it.
Let those lazy bums do some of the work for a change! Seriously, how much work do we put into these campaigns already? Plan the security, give them the objective, then let them plan and execute, and then decide if it works or not. They've got more brains than you, they should be able to come up with a better plan than you ever could.
[Edit - I mean more brains purely numerically, not implying they are necessarily smarter than you!]
My wife DM's a campaign and she showed me her notes for a particular puzzle and they said, "Wait until they do something cool enough" lol
She put NO solution, just assumed that if we screwed around enough, we'd do SOMETHING and she'd be like "Wow! You figured it out!" lol
Tell your wife she is my new DM inspiration!
She follows me on DnDB so she's prolly already seen it! lol
Yep. Pretty much my go-to approach for both planned or spontaneous scenario nowadays. I can't plan for all contingencies or wacky what-ifs. I feel okay to set-up some environmental or static truths about a situation or location (to know what might not be possible), but honestly all you need to do is adjudicate their various ideas (saying things like "Are you sure you wanna do that?" is pretty fun to mess with heads, too) and take a fun suggestion and roll with it to give the session some spice.
Boldly go
Thankyou all for the responses, I feel I didn't phrase the question properly but you've answered well regardless!
I was trying to plan a heist encounter rather than a heist - as you all said, that is for the players to work out. My concerns were in either making the place uncrackable by over-securing it, or making it too easy by under-securing it. It's not a bank vault, it's an auction house which flogs all the stuff from foreclosed shops and repossessed items, but similarly I don't want them to face one inept guard and an unlocked door! I want to make sure I give them a challenge with no fixed answer, but it has to be a challenge!
I will just design the building and floorplans, and then sprinkle some weaknesses which the auction house wouldn't compromise on - an ancient stained glass skylight without bars over it, a guard changeover where the guards stop to chat for a while instead of strictly patrolling. That sort of thing, things for them to notice when they case the joint. I expect the players to be somewhere in the level 5-8 range by this point, at a guess. I'll have to check for any spells which might invalidate them. I might also add an antimagic sphere in the auction house (as an item for sale) which might let them teleport in but not out without dealing with it first!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
In that case I'd plan the strength of the guard detail and other security based on the largest threat I think the auction house would reasonably anticipate. Is the McGuffin valuable in general, or just to the party? Has the party been good about planning in secret, or does the bard run their damn fool mouth in public places?
If they cased the place, or otherwise investigated in some way I deemed worthy, I'd tell them about shift changes and break timing - things that are unavoidable weak links in the chin. Perhaps they'd notice one particular guard with a very predictable bathroom/break schedule. If they choose to discover the guards' names, and investigate the guards themselves, I'd give them some personal information that they could use as leverage. Just anything really that rewards creative thinking and investigation.
I'd also think about how the auction house security would sound the alarm, and what those consequences would be - how far away are the city guard and what's their demeanor - are they keen as mustard or apathetic to calls for assistance? If the party was smart and chose to do the heist under cover of a big event, I'd reward that by ruling that the city guard was spread thin and response time was increased (or even eliminated altogether.)
Ultimately if they decide that the right approach is a "full frontal daytime assault across the mine field (it's the last thing they'll be expecting!)", then the auction house should be pretty much impregnable. If heists were easy, everyone would be doing them. So I'd personally err on the side of too secure rather than not secure enough. You can always introduce cracks if you feel you over did it and they aren't having any fun. And I might throw them a bone by throwing in an NPC to periodically say "are you sure you've thought this through?" if their plan is underdeveloped to the point of obvious immediate failure.
I love this approach. It's more realistic this way too. Like just plan it and engineer the traps as if it were your artifact you're trying to protect.
You’re trying to plan a heist as a location-based adventure. That doesn’t usually gel well together because of how heists are played and how they are narratively experienced. Do stat up the place and put stuff in all the locations likely to come up. Then plan an EVENT based adventure.
So. How to do that?
You already have the party’s goal which is to steal an artifact from an auction house. That’s great. Now make a villain or antagonist. It’s a heist so they’re likely to be the security in charge of the operation. Stat them up and introduce them to the PCs at the start of the adventure. Have a real “this guy is a badass investigator” moment in the game where you show the PCs that the villain is no slouch at their job.
Now plan the villain’s actions throughout the adventure. Make a timeline of everything that’s going to happen if the PCs do nothing. Once you have a timeline, make a bunch of reactions and contingencies the villain planned. The villain isn’t you. You are not trying to outsmart your players. You are portraying a villain and their reactions to likely or unlikely events is a portrayal of who they are. They can be awesome, cool, and amazing villains - but always remember that the villain is NOT a DMPC. They’re not supposed to win. They’re supposed to lose dramatically and in the most entertaining ways. The PCs are the main characters. The villain is a supporting character.
Don’t decide on what’s viable or not. Have the villain plan defenses around what they are guarding. Make those defenses plausible, reasonable, and forbidding, but not impossible. The players will plan to defeat those defenses. Be open to their plans. If they’re planning daring stunts, let them shine. Awesome escapades deserve Inspiration to help it along. Just be careful not to do it to the extent that the players lose respect for your villain.
The core rule of improvisation is “Yes, and.” You make the scenario. The players come up with a daring scheme. Tell them the twists and turns but don’t turn down their offers.
ThorukDuckSlayer, so, how did that heist go?
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Regrettably, this campaign fell flat somewhat. However, I still have it all written up, though I never finished designing the heist as this was around the time that people stopped being interested!
Definitely some good info on here worth noting for heists in future! I had the players improv a mini-one when I told them a shop was closed and, instead of just waiting until the morning, they broke in! They met the very fat bear who guards the shop (who they had met before, and loved. They did not remember the name on the shop!) and managed to escape with some potions.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!