Heist Rules

The players in my saga are about to rob the Vatican library, so I came up with some heist rules inspired by Blades in the Dark. Others might find them useful, so here they are.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G6ifWZBX3UcbU5ZMMVmwDZq8Wry6LT8j/view?usp=drivesdk

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Very cool. Thanks for posting that, I might use it very soon!

Bob

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Very cool indeed!

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For those who might be interested in robbing the Pope’s library, here’s a handout I prepared for my players with information on the site.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aQ5qky1XXW5SYbnjesHtmIbIO5lBjYsa/view?usp=drivesdk

In addition, one of my players decided neither their magus nor companion were a good fit for this story and requested a ringer. Fortunately I had an NPC handy. I offer Hudd, son of Hawk.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13elj8p8bzIM63oN_WdpiO6Phs7jhkcZh/view?usp=drivesdk

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what was the target of their job?

Bob

One of the characters is a demon hunter, and this whole thing started as an attempt to get a good book on Infernal Lore. It sort of blossomed after that, but in theory that’s the goal.

The heist takes place in a few days.

Just a follow up, for those who are interested in playtest reports.

My players used the heist rules above last session. They snuck into the Lateran Palace and robbed the Pope’s library. I have 5 players and they all uses the flashback system, spending Confidence points to do so. No one used their “banked seasons” even though everyone had some. My PCs are relatively young, and simply don’t have the lab totals to make the enchanted items they wanted. Instead, they spent Confidence Points to create flashbacks in which they purchased the items from other magi.

Flashbacks were used to:

  • Seduce a nun and persuade her to leave a back door open.
  • Persuade the same nun to deliver a non-lethal sleeping poison to a guard on duty, in a cup of wine.
  • To place one of the companions (the covenant librarian) in the building as a newly-hired “junior assistant librarian.”
  • To search the main library for useful books, marking them to be quickly taken from the shelves later during a distraction.
  • To try and recruit a couple of deniable minions to man a boat in the nearby Tiber River, for the getaway (this recruitment failed).
  • To persuade a priest to leave a sack full of unlaundered priest and servant clothing in a convenient location, which served as disguises.
  • To buy a Bag of Holding from House Mercere, a magic sack that shrinks every item put into it.
  • To buy a wand which uses ReTe magic to transport any object it touches one league, using an arcane connection. They bought this from the criminal Tytalus covenant of Rellantali.
  • To buy 5 charged uses of dust with Confusion of the Numbed Will, which they used on a priest who got suspicious and a second guard.
  • To befriend the Pope. No mechanical benefit or use in the heist, this player just really wanted to have a scene with the Pope.

Everyone really enjoyed the heist, they spent a LOT of resources (over 50 pawns of vis for the enchanted items), everyone felt like a badass, and we didn’t waste any time planning for an infinite contingencies.

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