How to run a great Heist adventure

[Maugan22]

First off, if you're in my campaign, don't read this.

So my level 14 group has got it in their head that they want to rob a bank... They want the loot to fortify their home town against a growing threat of minions run by the big bad.

Not just any bank mind you but the richest, most highly guarded, bank on their continent of my little home brewed world.

So now I'm looking at writing a heist adventure, as with any good heist story I'm hoping that half (or more) of the adventure will be spent plotting and scheming.

Presuming PFRPG magic, and practically unlimited resources how would you build a bank vault to be not only seemingly impregnable, but also really fun to knock over.

So far I'm thinking the usual suspects like:
Walls that can, with difficulty, be tunneled through from next door.
Antimagic fields
Teleportation barriers
guardian constructs (even inevitables)
encounters that require social engineering/disguise/bluff work.
Traps
Labyrinths
And a head honcho for said bank who the party should love to hate.

I'm looking for your ideas, particularly stuff you have used in your game, on a similar note does anyone know of heist adventures, ideally for pathfinder or 3.5 that may be applicable/available?

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

The bank needs to have some job vacancies in the security and telling departments so the PCs can infiltrate as they case the place.

Magic Keys for the Bank's longboxes. All of which are on the Bank Manager's key ring.

Devils bound to the most expensive longboxes as guards, willing to look the other way if a clever player can annul the contract.

[deusvult]

Don't forget that while banking systems exist in historical and fantasy settings, they're not really comparable to modern banks...

their wealth, like most wealth in feudal societies, is in the decidedly non-portable form of land and real estate (and in the banks' revolutionary case, debts owed). A vault full of gold & treasure stuffed safety deposit boxes is wrong for a fantasy setting... people would just rather keep what portable wealth they have safe under their own control rather than entrust it to someone else's security.

But still such a modern-era bank heist CAN work in a fantasy setting with sufficient inspiration and persperation (on your part).. as J.K. Rowling demonstrated in a certain popular novel series.

[MrVergee]

Dungeon magazine had two adventures about robbing a bank or vault:
- Vlindarian's Vault in Dungeon # 141 for level 18 characters;
- The Aundairian Job in Dungeon # 147 for level 5 characters.

I haven't played either of these, so I don't know if they are any good. I remember that I liked 'The Aundairian Job' better and I think it will fit in better with your heist idea, although it is only for 5th level characters.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

deusvult wrote:

Don't forget that while banking systems exist in historical and fantasy settings, they're not really comparable to modern banks...

their wealth, like most wealth in feudal societies, is in the decidedly non-portable form of land and real estate (and in the banks' revolutionary case, debts owed). A vault full of gold & treasure stuffed safety deposit boxes is wrong for a fantasy setting... people would just rather keep what portable wealth they have safe under their own control rather than entrust it to someone else's security.

But still such a modern-era bank heist CAN work in a fantasy setting with sufficient inspiration and persperation (on your part).. as J.K. Rowling demonstrated in a certain popular novel series.

Magic Items, Gold Bars and Other cool stuff are easily portable with shrink item. Forget realism, there's FUN at stake!

[Bruno Kristensen]

Not necessarily what you were looking for, perhaps, but deserves mentioning.

A friend of my wrote (and was awarded for) two con scenarios.

The first was called Reservoir Elves, where five elves are trying to steal something, but things go wrong, like in the movie.

The second is called Magician Impossible, where a group of agents have to break into a castle in Cormyr and steal something (a list of secret identities, I think), complete with "masks" (disguise self), lowering yourself down from the ceiling (levitate), disarming magical traps through clever use of spells, finding hidden sensors ("laser beams") by using smoke bombs, etc. Ended with double crossings and a get away in a zeppelin from the top tower of the castle.

He's planning Apocalypse Drow (The Heart of Underdarkness), about a group of drow being sent up a river (to the surface) to find a drow general who has gone insane (LG).

[Egoish]

Just off the top of my head, fake underground vault with no doors that the bank "teleports" you too the actual vault is a demiplane. The enire building is teleport trapped to dump you into the fake vault unless you have the key item in hand, if you attempt to teleport out of the fake vault you end up back in there takes out the normal teleport in/out plan.

The only way to infiltrate the bank is in person so having a strong security force is essential, the chief should be a cleric who constantly scans the bank staff and customers with deect spells and reads surface thoughts. An interview for a job should be like the worst kind of gaming commissions lie detector test but with magic, the security should be well paid and evil determined to stop theft but do so without killing people just brutally putting them down, make them a challenge for your pc's in an antimagic field and outnumber them.

Let the pc's hear stories about what happened to the guys who've tried it before, for over xxx years the banks been safe and the rumour is the one guy who saw natural light after trying to rob the place is still alive, somewhere.

All banks have alarm systems, what if yours was the original banker, level xx lich who casts silent alarms and other wards all over the bank at closing time, the current manager is his great great grand nephew and the key is some family blood in your veins (this opens up the possibility that the pc's have to find a way to transmute or transfuse their blood with the managers or one of his relatives, this might be an evil option the party might not wish to take). Also if you trip an alarm a pissed of liches apprentice showing up with some horrible undead guardians is a nasty suprise, obciously you can bypass your own teleport trap.

Don't even have them encounter the lich, just have him plwn revenge. Personally i would steal their entire castle while they were out adventuring, as well as all the people who have worked with them, spoke to them or think they are "neat" and trap them in the plane of shadow.

Finally vault guardian, mythril or adamantium golems(s), some hideous traps, symbols and death effects, heightened confusion, permanent paralyais, delayed dominate trap to hand yourself into the bank the day after the heist and tell me who your friends are...

The basics are inaccessable vault, well background checked and well paid motivated workforce, instant and deadly response to threats, overwhelming and insane revenge, traps that would make a 20th level rogue who specialises in dealing with traps have second thoughts and most importantly a lich, cause all bankers would become one if they could.

[Set]

In your typical heist movie, someone who seemed to be a threat to the bank-robbers turns out to be an old friend, or someone who was paid off, at a critical moment.

If ye olde fantasy vault has otherplanar guardians, such as an inevitable, there should be some sort of contract or agreement of the binding that has an exploitable loophole. For anything other than an inevitable, it could be something as simple as the devil or archon owing a favor that can be cashed in (or some sort of ridonkulously high DC social check to convince the outsider that allowing the vault to be robbed is in the best interests of their moral alignment, for an evil devil or good archon, which may temporarily trump their lawful-ness).

For an inevitable, it needs to be more 'fine-print-y.' Perhaps part of the agreement was that the binder never committed X lawless deed, to retain the services of the uber-lawful outsider, and if the party can, before the heist, arrange for the conjurer to get horribly wasted on spiced rum and end up committing a deed that violates the contract, the party can then, when they encounter the inevitable in the vault, produce proof that his contract of service was violated, and he'll promptly vanish in a puff of logic (perhaps with a brief stop to explain his displeasure to the person who summoned him, who is probably waking up with a hangover, surrounded by evidence of his oath-breaking, and wondering where it all went wrong...).

[RizzotheRat]

This may help with your design - http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/90/bad-trap-syndrome/

[EvilMinion]

You might want to start by thinking up how you would protect such a place, given the availability of magic and nefarious critters. Then, put in possible loopholes for what you come up with that the pc's can then attempt to learn about and then figure out how to bypass.

For instance, you'd want the entire vault/banking area to be under the effects of a Hallow spell with Dimensional Anchor tied to it. (To avoid the obvious problem of folks teleporting in or going in ethereal or the like).
But perhaps the folks who put the spell in place allowed for certain folks to bypass it as per the spell description. Now you can have way for the pc's to learn about it, and make use of it... perhaps not to get in, cause that's boring, but perhaps as an escape route.

Perhaps the head of security casts Status on all his guards at the beginning of their shifts, so he'd know instantly if any of them were disabled in some way.
Now the PC's have to not only learn about this (perhaps from one of the off-duty guards, or ex-guard) but think of a way to either a) take out the head of security first, so the status has no one to report to, or b) bypass the guards without triggering the Status effect.

A powerful Screen effect or a Permanencied Mage's Private Sanctum, to prevent remote casing of the joint via scry's and the like. Forcing the pc's to case it out in person, This just gives lots of fodder for disguises and bluff checks and other fun pre-heisty stuff

A few judiciously placed 'lantern' of revealings (or other Invisibility Purse effects). Thus the pc's might have the option to 'disable' these somehow... especially if combined with some judiciously placed magic mouths who's only job is to start yelling for help if they see someone unauthorized.

Then of course a 'vault' proper, which might be in a pocket dimension (perhaps they break into the bank only to acquire the 'attuned metal rod' they'd need for the focus to then gate/plane shift to the spot they're after. (or hell, to replace that focus rod with another rod, that would then cause the bank to send all the loot to the wrong dimensional pocket)
Heck, even a prismatic sphere/wall can add some spice if not all the 'countering' spells are available to the pc's... forcing them to find sources for cone of cold, gust of wind, disintigrate, passwall, magic missile, daylight, and dispel magic) (Kinda like Die Hard where the thieves are trying to break through the successful security walls of the vault)

Design a bank. Design the vault. then throw all the powerful spells you can at it, to see how you'd protect against them! (you don't want them just disintigrating their way in!)