I was recently thinking of creating a stealth based campaign where it would be a series of heists and planning and sessions leading up to one major heist or something of some sort. All the characters can be a different class because it wouldn’t be too interesting for them all to be rogues, but I’m kind of uncertain how to balance it and make sure they are all stealthy since that is the whole point. Any tips would be great because I don’t have a lot going yet.
I'm also going to be running a rogue-type guild campaign in the coming months. Here's some stuff to consider:
1. Let people not be stealthy. It'll be a fun(ny) challenge to get the clanky full-plate fighter into the king's chambers without alerting the guard.
2. Give everyone free proficiency in stealth.
3. Give everyone magic items that help with stealth, like Boots of Elvenkind or piwafwis or make scrolls of Pass Without Trace cheap to buy.
4. Give a list of pre-approved (sub)classes that boost stealth and have your players choose from them (Gloom Stalker, Shadow Monk, Trickster Cleric, any rogue, etc.).
You may also come to find that players come up with surprising builds that, on the surface, don't seem suited to stealth and yet still work well. Perhaps the Glamour bard doesn't need stealth because she relies on her charm spells to get past guards. Perhaps the bear totem barbarian pulls the iconic "YOU NO SEE GROG" and intimidates people into forgetting he was there. It's the players' jobs to come up with solutions to problems, not yours. Let them be creative and adjust from there if you have to, I say. :-)
In a proper heist, stealth is rarely a factor for multiple people. Typically you want one person who's stealthy enough to access particular locations where no one is allowed. Everyone else is typically either somewhere without guards or they're lying about whether they're allowed to be somewhere.
If you really want to do a heist centered campaign, I would suggest checking out various other RPGs that are designed for that. Even if you still want use D&D for your game, they can give you inspiration for various mechanics, such as the ability to flashback to prep that was done. In particular, I would suggest looking at Blades in the Dark (and any other Forged in the Dark system) and Leverage.
In a proper heist, stealth is rarely a factor for multiple people. Typically you want one person who's stealthy enough to access particular locations where no one is allowed. Everyone else is typically either somewhere without guards or they're lying about whether they're allowed to be somewhere.
If you really want to do a heist centered campaign, I would suggest checking out various other RPGs that are designed for that. Even if you still want use D&D for your game, they can give you inspiration for various mechanics, such as the ability to flashback to prep that was done. In particular, I would suggest looking at Blades in the Dark (and any other Forged in the Dark system) and Leverage.
I second this to the extent that Blades in the Dark is excellent and total party stealth isn't super necessary. That said, while D&D may not be the most natural platform to run a heist campaign, it's still perfectly possible. I recommend this Reddit thread for tips. It's helped me a lot in my planning stages, as has this one specific to heists.
You might find the above useful. It's basically a homebrew system for making stealth a series of checks rather than an automatic success/failure. It has varying levels of alertness for guards as well as possible actions characters could take - it includes at least one suggestion of something one could do instead of just stealth. I would personally want to adapt it a bit, but it's been something I've wanted to try using for a while.
You could try and apply some other skills in break-in specific ways:
Perception or survival checks to try and figure out the route the guards take.
Insight check to see how alert a guard is or to discern where the blindspots are.
FWIW, When I envision a stealth based campaign, my brain heads right toward "A Quiet Place", or something like the Underdark in the early Drizzt novels. In those environments, stealth is a requirement for survival. I'm not certain that a heist, or series of heists, require that the entire group be all that furtive. Heists, as a trope, usually require a vastly varied set of skills, where each member is a specialist in their chosen area, but could act as a secondary for another. Additionally, there are some examples where the people planning and executing the heist are "apprehended" by the event staff only to be released later because they were in custody and the MacGuffin went missing anyway.
So here's the tricky bits. Your players are the key to this being a heist. They have to understand, moreso believe entirely, that while they *might* have the ability to solve things with combat, that leaves bodies, causes noise, leaves people to notice others are missing... long and short, people will notice. They have to have enough information to feasibly get to the MacGuffin(s) without being apprehended. Lastly, they have a time crunch to work on.
Their goal is to steal (or kill if you want to run an assassination attempt) a specific target within a specified amount of time and not get identified as one of the operators while doing it. Do not plan a success method for anything. Set the challenge, determine it's difficulty and react to their ideas. If you set the goal as the condition for success, that's the only way to fail. If you set other conditions for success, those also become failure points.
As for challenges and obstacles, re-watch every "Ocean's 8/11/12/13", "Gone in 60 Seconds", "Mission Impossible - (whatever number we ended on)", "The Italian Job", "Kelly's Heros", "The Fast and the Furious"... the list continues. (Google: Heist Movies) Most, if not all of these stories, have the same basic construction that you're looking for and can provide you with the basis for some obstacles to put in front of your party.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
In a proper heist, stealth is rarely a factor for multiple people. Typically you want one person who's stealthy enough to access particular locations where no one is allowed. Everyone else is typically either somewhere without guards or they're lying about whether they're allowed to be somewhere.
If you really want to do a heist centered campaign, I would suggest checking out various other RPGs that are designed for that. Even if you still want use D&D for your game, they can give you inspiration for various mechanics, such as the ability to flashback to prep that was done. In particular, I would suggest looking at Blades in the Dark (and any other Forged in the Dark system) and Leverage.
I second this to the extent that Blades in the Dark is excellent and total party stealth isn't super necessary. That said, while D&D may not be the most natural platform to run a heist campaign, it's still perfectly possible. I recommend this Reddit thread for tips. It's helped me a lot in my planning stages, as has this one specific to heists.
Yea, I'm more suggesting them as things to look at to see mechanics. One of the biggest ones being flashbacks to prep. It's much easier to keep a party in a heist mode if they can come up against unexpected obstacles and say "they did x to prepare for this so now they're going to do y", instead of going to the typical D&D backup plan of rolling initiative. It also works well as it's a trope of the genre that the prep is shown when it becomes relevant instead of being shown in the order it happens.
As for challenges and obstacles, re-watch every "Ocean's 8/11/12/13", "Gone in 60 Seconds", "Mission Impossible - (whatever number we ended on)", "The Italian Job", "Kelly's Heros", "The Fast and the Furious"... the list continues. (Google: Heist Movies) Most, if not all of these stories, have the same basic construction that you're looking for and can provide you with the basis for some obstacles to put in front of your party.
There's some great books too- my favorite being Six of Crows.
Some take aways from that series that could apply:
Things don't have to go as planned- something always happens to complicate things
Not everyone needs to be stealthy. Wylan and Matthias are certainly not, but they each bring something to the team, and the plan is made around those limitations. Making the plan to fit each character's skill set and limitations could be a very interesting challenge.
I was recently thinking of creating a stealth based campaign where it would be a series of heists and planning and sessions leading up to one major heist or something of some sort. All the characters can be a different class because it wouldn’t be too interesting for them all to be rogues, but I’m kind of uncertain how to balance it and make sure they are all stealthy since that is the whole point. Any tips would be great because I don’t have a lot going yet.
So just create subclasses that are involved in stealth? I like this idea
I'm also going to be running a rogue-type guild campaign in the coming months. Here's some stuff to consider:
1. Let people not be stealthy. It'll be a fun(ny) challenge to get the clanky full-plate fighter into the king's chambers without alerting the guard.
2. Give everyone free proficiency in stealth.
3. Give everyone magic items that help with stealth, like Boots of Elvenkind or piwafwis or make scrolls of Pass Without Trace cheap to buy.
4. Give a list of pre-approved (sub)classes that boost stealth and have your players choose from them (Gloom Stalker, Shadow Monk, Trickster Cleric, any rogue, etc.).
You may also come to find that players come up with surprising builds that, on the surface, don't seem suited to stealth and yet still work well. Perhaps the Glamour bard doesn't need stealth because she relies on her charm spells to get past guards. Perhaps the bear totem barbarian pulls the iconic "YOU NO SEE GROG" and intimidates people into forgetting he was there. It's the players' jobs to come up with solutions to problems, not yours. Let them be creative and adjust from there if you have to, I say. :-)
In a proper heist, stealth is rarely a factor for multiple people. Typically you want one person who's stealthy enough to access particular locations where no one is allowed. Everyone else is typically either somewhere without guards or they're lying about whether they're allowed to be somewhere.
If you really want to do a heist centered campaign, I would suggest checking out various other RPGs that are designed for that. Even if you still want use D&D for your game, they can give you inspiration for various mechanics, such as the ability to flashback to prep that was done. In particular, I would suggest looking at Blades in the Dark (and any other Forged in the Dark system) and Leverage.
I second this to the extent that Blades in the Dark is excellent and total party stealth isn't super necessary. That said, while D&D may not be the most natural platform to run a heist campaign, it's still perfectly possible. I recommend this Reddit thread for tips. It's helped me a lot in my planning stages, as has this one specific to heists.
https://arcaneeye.com/dm-tools-5e/fixing-stealth-dnd-5e/?fbclid=IwAR1S2_o36c0e_YFmGrFcvqZqGCDFCPG7fYefhlX3A3x3u3AtE8ALohAFIVc
You might find the above useful. It's basically a homebrew system for making stealth a series of checks rather than an automatic success/failure. It has varying levels of alertness for guards as well as possible actions characters could take - it includes at least one suggestion of something one could do instead of just stealth. I would personally want to adapt it a bit, but it's been something I've wanted to try using for a while.
You could try and apply some other skills in break-in specific ways:
Perception or survival checks to try and figure out the route the guards take.
Insight check to see how alert a guard is or to discern where the blindspots are.
Animal Handling if they have guard dogs.
Hope this helps
FWIW, When I envision a stealth based campaign, my brain heads right toward "A Quiet Place", or something like the Underdark in the early Drizzt novels. In those environments, stealth is a requirement for survival. I'm not certain that a heist, or series of heists, require that the entire group be all that furtive. Heists, as a trope, usually require a vastly varied set of skills, where each member is a specialist in their chosen area, but could act as a secondary for another. Additionally, there are some examples where the people planning and executing the heist are "apprehended" by the event staff only to be released later because they were in custody and the MacGuffin went missing anyway.
So here's the tricky bits. Your players are the key to this being a heist. They have to understand, moreso believe entirely, that while they *might* have the ability to solve things with combat, that leaves bodies, causes noise, leaves people to notice others are missing... long and short, people will notice. They have to have enough information to feasibly get to the MacGuffin(s) without being apprehended. Lastly, they have a time crunch to work on.
Their goal is to steal (or kill if you want to run an assassination attempt) a specific target within a specified amount of time and not get identified as one of the operators while doing it. Do not plan a success method for anything. Set the challenge, determine it's difficulty and react to their ideas. If you set the goal as the condition for success, that's the only way to fail. If you set other conditions for success, those also become failure points.
As for challenges and obstacles, re-watch every "Ocean's 8/11/12/13", "Gone in 60 Seconds", "Mission Impossible - (whatever number we ended on)", "The Italian Job", "Kelly's Heros", "The Fast and the Furious"... the list continues. (Google: Heist Movies) Most, if not all of these stories, have the same basic construction that you're looking for and can provide you with the basis for some obstacles to put in front of your party.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Yea, I'm more suggesting them as things to look at to see mechanics. One of the biggest ones being flashbacks to prep. It's much easier to keep a party in a heist mode if they can come up against unexpected obstacles and say "they did x to prepare for this so now they're going to do y", instead of going to the typical D&D backup plan of rolling initiative. It also works well as it's a trope of the genre that the prep is shown when it becomes relevant instead of being shown in the order it happens.
There's some great books too- my favorite being Six of Crows.
Some take aways from that series that could apply:
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
Ariendela Sneakerson, Half-elf Rogue (8); Harmony Wolfsbane, Tiefling Bard (10); Agnomally, Gnomish Sorcerer (3); Breeze, Tabaxi Monk (8); Grace, Dragonborn Barbarian (7); DM, Homebrew- The Sequestered Lands/Underwater Explorers; Candlekeep