Feedback taken, the visual advice flying by at the same time I narrate a story was too jarring and fast paced. Will figure out a better way to handle this if I ever do a video like this again.

Imagine having a group coordinated enough to pull off a heist.

"Never should have come here!" ......... "Must have been the wind."

"There's no way you don't know who you're working with." I probably recognize 5% of the people at the company I work for, and 80% of the people in my department. Hell a hitman could dress up like the office TV repair man and I'd have no idea.

Pro Tip: The only way to run a stealth heist is have the "Mission Impossible" theme on loop

Expectation: *Super sneaky stealth mission* Reality: *The stealth mission goes sideways.... AGAIN*

Thank god you posted this. I've been trying to figure out how to run a scenario for my 5 man party where 2 players are Rogues

"Let's expect the party to be low level!" *druid casts spells in wildshape*

"Wardenforged" that killed me

"There's no way you don't know who you're working with." Stop you there for a moment. In the office I worked at we've been regularly reprimanded because some people just let in total strangers, without a corp ID card or anything, because they assumed that a.) surely the guy works here, he just forgot his ID card or something or b.) the fella must be a delivery guy or something. And we, the other people were just going along with it. Why? Because... I mean, come on, I see someone walking around the upper storeys I just assume that surely he couldn't have gotten past the reception if he shouldn't be here, right? Sometimes you don't even need a disguise or an insignia or anything, just a good, confident stance and you're in.

You know Logan, everytime I'm thinking of writing something for my campaign, you make a video about exactly that. Stahp! It's creeping me out! Oh, and uh thanks bb.

The one heist one-shot I've ever played in was a blast. It was set in Ebberron, on a lightning rail owned and operated by House Cannith. The group (a half-elf warlock (me), a kenku rogue, a goblin rogue, a kobold wizard and a kobold artificer) were only given a couple minutes to plan, and the location of our target: a massive vault car at the back of the train full of treasure, gold, jewels, etc., before we were set to board. Luckily, our wizard, using illusion and a couple good charisma rolls, managed to convince the guard that he had a first-class ticket, allowing him to Through a combination of stealth from the rogues, distraction from the artificer, and scouting with my pseudodragon familiar, we managed to suss out that we were nearer to the front of the train. Then we leapt into action. While the kenku rogue and I stayed back in the starting car, our artificer managed to convince one of the guards onboard to let them into the bathroom a couple cars down. What the guard didn't know is that the goblin rogue had hidden himself in the artificer's Bag of Holding. As soon as they were let in and given privacy, the goblin rogue climbed out and began to search for any way to the back of the train. ...Unfortunately, there was only one, and while the artificer created an audio/smell distraction to continue fooling the guard, they both climbed through the toilet, ending up on the underside of the train and slowly making the dangerous, electrified climb to the vault car. Meanwhile, back in coach class, the kenku rogue was trying to distract the guards, while I pretended to be asleep, continuing to use my familiar to communicate and do recon. Eventually, we had to do something, as the climbers were making their way to the back and the wizard was one car over. Thinking quickly, I cast Hypnotic Pattern on the whole car, knocking out everyone except for two of the four stationed guards. Immediately, they went into high alert, one guard staying to fight us head-on while the other sounded the alarm. When it became clear that we were going to be heavily outnumbered in a few rounds, we did some quick thinking, dashing past the one remaining guard here and barging into the engine car up ahead, locking the door behind us and casting Arcane Lock. Our wizard was having a splendid time in first class, weirding out everyone there until he noticed something: the car right next to the vault was a bar. Quickly, peeked in, to see two Warforged guards blocking the door. One of them, having just heard about the possible heist in progress, went to see what was going on, and as soon as he closed the door behind him, he was one-shotted by a well placed Thunderwave, sending him careening off the train. Immediately, the wizard cast Disguise Self to take on the appearance of the warforged he just killed, walked into the bar, quickly distracted the other guard, and teleported into the vault before it could turn around. At this point the party was quickly converging; the climbers had just barely clung to the train long enough, avoiding multiple nat 1s and blowing a hole in the roof using a turret, and using a magic item I gained a spell slot back, grabbing the kenku and Dimension Door-ing into the vault. As we stood there, in awe of the sheer wealth we were beholding, it began to move, and shifting out from under the piles of gold and jewelry was a giant, Cannith-emblazoned golem, just barely big enough to fit in the car. It swung and missed at us, and my turn came around. With an insanely lucky nat 20 on my Dispel Magic roll, I was able to successfully deactivate it, rendering it completely inanimate. Giddy, we quickly loaded up as much gold as we could carry, and climbed out through the hole in the roof, where our benefactor was waiting with a flying carpet. And that, my friends, is how we stole 500,000 gold from House Cannith.

When I first saw the thumbnail, I thought it said “How to run atheist.”

"So the threat will be human guards, watchtowers..." Me: "yeah pretty standard stuff" "Other prisoners" * *Shows Pri Pri Prisoner* * Me: "this is a suicide mission"

Include healthy doses of logic. Especially in security protocalls, and how much the party knows. And if plans to a building are stolen, the authorities will know, and plan accordingly

2:42 Nonsense, no one would ever do a heist for that pokemon card. You'd risk damaging it, better to buy it from the owner, then do a heist to get back the money.

I am about to run a heist this Sunday, and have been checking out nerdarchy, how to be a great GM, and nerdarchy. Thank you!

"The most imortant things are a plan and an escape" my party litterally walked up to the tavernkeeper, asked where their money is kept, punched him in the face, broke in and took the money. They just ran out in the middle of the barfight. This was a pro plan.

Thank goodness he snuck this past the KZfaq algorithm, although I was never worried such a great video would be caught, this is just amazing, thank you runesmith.😄

I'd love to see someone put this into practice in a one-shot

I think a good solution for high-level stealth missions would be to prevent players from using all their strength somehow. For example: In the story, they need to rob a bank. However, it has a special magic detector that triggers an alarm if someone uses level x or higher spells , and even if the security in this bank is quite weak compared to the players' characters, if the alarm is triggered, they get huge reinforcements.

Oh my god, like a divine intervention, Runesmith has come down to save my session with a guide to stealth. My group is currently in a large city and are going to rob a bank and run for the hills, with the session in a few days, and it JUST SO HAPPENS THAT RUNESMITH SHOWS UP IN MY RECOMMENDED TO GIVE ME INFORMATION ON A SILVER PLATTER! Also, using Sly Cooper as a basis for heisting is always a win.

I was litterally just remembering my first adventure as a Dm waterdeep dragon heist and was looking to make my own improvement so thanks for the video and get out of my head magic man

The content was great but having text thats different than what being said (and changing quickly) caused a need to pause and rewind more than I'd have liked.

I've been planning a "reverse heist" as it were: The party's patron informs them of a high stakes card game going on between some political elite. The patron claims he thinks the side he disfavors is planning to cheat, and he'd like them to swap out a tampered deck with this good one. And then keep an eye on things. If the party succeeds, it still doesn't go as planned. As the deck he gave them is a modified Deck of Many Things with delayed onset. So assuming that everyone's opening hand causes an *immense* amount of chaos. It's traced back to the patron, and he's arrested. Yes, the patron did lie. But it was still a setup - he was asked by a higher up to rig the game, and provided a bad deck. So it's now about uncovering the conspiracy, and was the patron a fall guy, or was framing the patron an actual goal? I don't have answers to those questions yet. But I also need to figure out the timing for this arc - framing the patron will work better if the PCs actually like the patron. And I was planning for the patron to be a little slow to warm up, and even after that, limited in his ability to help the party. Basically, got his foot in the door with an empty promise, and now making an honest effort to (1) make good on the promise, and (2) provide consolation prizes until #1 is resolved. But that depends on the players seeing it that way too. So I've got a possible backup patron.

Step one: buy Blades in the Dark. Step two: learn the rules. Step three: play your heist.

4:00 Okay, several things: firstly, he's describing how to make an encounter balanced for the party, If you or your players value any semblance of realism in your campaign setting, DO NOT BUILD THE PRISON TO THE PARTY'S SPECS. If adventurers are not very rare in your setting, then chances are that local law enforcement has had to arrest them in past. That means that any prison an ally of an adventuring party will be put into is designed to be able to repell adventurers, or when one party breaks in, all the murder hobos in gossip distance will hear about a prison that can be broken into, and cause region-wide havoc unless said prison makes upgrades fast. If your campaign setting is one where your players are not the first Adventurers in history to _ever_ try the heist you want to prepare for them, then any realistic, heavily-guarded institution will be equipped with defenses designed to repell *at least* up to a mid-level party. Edit: a lot of you don't seem to understand what I mean by "realism". What I should have said was "believability". Basically, if the players start finding simple, desinged solutions for their problems, it can very easily break immersion and seem too good to be true. Also, remember: any preparations any facility can make can be overcome by a party's greatest strengths: Creativity and Luck. You want a heist to seem like a believably difficult, (Albeit solvable), problem, a defense meant to be practical, instead of a mind-game-playing puzzle in a B.B.E.G.'s dungeon.

1:16 hey is that a clip from Northernlion? Supreme taste

I was almost in a heist, even had silence readied for that session. One of our party members tricked a traveling drow into selling us some magic armor for much less than it was worth. She visited the party member later on and gave them three options. Retrieve an item from a, I forgot the word, merchant lord (that's not the actual word, I just can't remember what it was). Pay for the armor for more than it was worth, or she kills them on the spot. As I said, we almost had a heist. We had found a flying carpet earlier, and convinced the man we were merchants looking to sell a magic carpet. We were invited in, we played our ploy, the carpet was legit, the deal went through, we got enough money to more than pay the debt and still have a nice amount of money left over. The drow was unhappy, but accepted the agreed upon payment. After we finished the campaign, we the players were informed that the drow later went to sneak into the manor and got caught and arrested. Oh well. Still had fun planning it out, before remember we had an uncommon/rare magic item.

Always love to receive a Runesmith notification

I'm normally not into ads, but Frank Herbert's Dune is an excellent book recommendation, and I'm proud of you for the Spotify sponsorship. Alas, I have little disposable income, and my state is trying to send me back to college way too soon to finish a book, but you have thoroughly earned even more of my respect.

Damn Logan I literally just searched for 30 minutes looking for a video like this and as soon as I hit the YT home this came up in my subscriptions....

Quite liked the way this video turned out explanation wise. It's always fun seeing the greenscreen performance, but theres just something about having the heist being broken down bit by bit this way. Actually hope to see more videos done this way.

Yes, this is what I was looking for!!!

Stealth is all about distraction, cover, and camouflage. As long as you can avoid being seen long enough to get where your going and get your shit done, you’re golden. A disguise works as long as you don’t stay in an area for long. You get past people, preferably without getting too close to people so they don’t see your face. You don’t walk up disguised and try to strike up a conversation with them. Though none of this has anything to do with the video, since it’s about making a heist adventure. I am furiously taking notes with this video, because your advice is solid gold.

One of my favouurite youtubers talking about my favourive videogame and my favourite tabletop game in the same video?! This must be heaven

How to run a heist: do everything dragon heist didn't.

If you haven't done so already, could you make a video about writing mystery DnD adventures?

Hey I hope you are taking care of yourself man. Don’t feel like you need to do all this extra stuff just for us, do whatever you want to do with your videos and I bet that we will still love them because you are amazing. And don’t let anyone tell you different.

I know it’s been said before, but I thought I would add my two cents as someone who works in a maximum security prison. Prison Correctional Officers are often moved around to areas where they are needed depending on sick days, shift changes or Emergency Response teams. So in a prison that boasts around 300 correctional staff, it is easy for someone to be placed in a unit they’ve never been in before where they recognise no one. 100% would they know everyone normally in that unit, but it definitely isn’t unusual for someone they’ve never seen before to be there. If they’re in uniform and can at least name a unit in the prison - most COs won’t bat an eyelid.

I wrote a heist for my friends a few days ago (we are playing this week) and this video couldnt be more timewise appropiate

Thank you for this! I remember one of the greatest D&D games I have ever DMed was about the party trying to break a prisoner out of Tartarus, a giant prison plane. To this day my best friend and me laugh out loud remembering it.

The antagonists: - The Wardenforged - The Tabaxstabber - The "Gith me your lunch" guy - The Gnome trouble-maker

I'm glad you made a video on this. I've always wanted to be in or run a campaign with a party of sneaky characters where we break into fancy places 🙃

This is absolutely perfect for a campagin style I'm going to try with two players. Your content is always so informative and comedic. Keep up the good work!

The key is letting the players create the plan. Use your prep time to prepare the location, npcs and certain events that may happen during that time Awesome video man, great topic not talked about enough

1:13 ah yes, the ol' egg behind the door trick. Great for killing enemies, but not much else.

You beautiful D&D smart man! I was just starting to make a heist quest. Please keep making these guides they are so helpful and inspiring.

One major bit of advice for setting up a heist of any kind, make sure your players know what information you gave them and about the level of it. You also want to know your players a bit before dumping this kind of thing on them because it can, very easily, go very wrong in horrible ways...both in failure, and in players going into some rather dark territory over it. There's a pretty good example of how things can spiral out of control in one of Spoony's old counter monkey episodes...and his went even further off the rails than most do, but it's a good thing to think about before running it.

> Should be like Sly Cooper Finally! Its ok to 2 shot my players!

Holy cow, that narration was tense just to listen to. Excellent work!

I loved the calm in the video, I also love you zooming about Logan but tbh it’s a nice change of pace! Ty!

"A wardenforged" as a warforged called warden you made me chuckle.

I really liked how you explained a scenario with how/why pieces were being implemented in the second half. Amazing job as always!

Thank god you posted this, now I can mess with my dm running a heist for a magic pickle that can detect all forms of magic

I think the show Dimension 20 did a great job on a mini-heist campaign called Tiny Heist. In order to get info on the place they're infiltrating, they first had to get a dossier with all the information, which insured they wouldn't miss any small details. Also, the heist itself operated on initiative turns in order to keep order, and the party got three collective luck points. I really recommend watching it as it was a great series overall!

You really are coming into your own Runesmith. This was put together and edited fantastically. Seriously. Well done, and thank you.

One of my favorite things to do during a prison escape is to confiscate spell books (if there’s a wizard) but allow them to make a hasty one but with a chance of the spells either not working, or using a wild magic surge because my thinking is that the copied spells are hastily made and from memory so there’s some flaws. The chance gets less with higher intelligence and arcana bonus

depending on the "uniform" of the guards, disguises can work great, hard to see the faces of your coworkers who are wearing full plate and the only part of their face you can see is covered by darkness from the helmet

Hey I just wanna say from the bottom of my heart thanks for uploading. Ima love for dnd stems directly from you and I don’t think I would be where I am without it. Thanks

Much appreciated. Was looking for some ideas for my current campaign!

Excellent, I was planning on trying to run a heist in my next chapter

I actually enjoyed this video. I used to be a prison guard and as I was listening to this I can say it would be a fun one-shot. Another thing to note is that you need to account for guards who aren't as keen as others. At the prison I worked at, a lot of the guards didnt really care about what was going on, so having that be a slip up on the facility could be a boon to the party.

I love heist games. The planning can take hours, with a thousand ideas culminating in a single grand scheme. That's a lot of fun, despite the lack of action. When the action does begin the entire plan disintegrates the instant the party meets it's first complication. Then the real fun begins.

Best way to get into somewhere is what TV Tropes calls a "Bavarian Fire Drill". Basically, have a clipboard and a confident attitude and you can go anywhere you want. I have actually done this before, working pest control. I've not really gone anywhere that I shouldn't, but with a hat bearing the company logo and a clipboard in hand, no one ever even asks why I'm there.

What great timing, I've been trying to figure out a heist in my prequel campaign

Dude, don't worry about doing longer sections sometimes. This was really good and the extra detail was appreciated ^^

I desperately needed this. I did not expect the heist, not even post but directly after the prisonbreak. They're still in the keep haha.

I had this cool idea for a heist campaign; It starts with a normal heist, with premade characters they can choose which fulfill a specific role. Each person also has a secret agenda only they know about. But halfway through the heist, I reveal it was actually a trap set by some psycho and genre-flip the one shot. Suddenly, a fun heist has now turned into a survival horror.

I've actually wanted this book for a long time. You're the best

From 1969-1975 the slogan for pepsi was "You've Got a Lot to Live, and Pepsi's Got a Lot to Give"

I love running heists when I need to buy time for a week. The part will spend all night debating what to do

A great video on heists and a shout out to the greatest heist games of all times, Sly Cooper, now that's one excellent video!

That Audible sponsor is totally worth it! I got the book, but haven't finished it yet. Now I get the book again but for FREE? That's really cool.

Thank you so much this is absolutely amazing it is definitely encouraged me to try and run a heist for my DND table!

This is good. The video provides a more general guide, and the audio gives examples.

Cool video, enjoyed the new narration style!

You read my mind. I've been planning a Museam Heist for a little bit, and this is very helpful. Thank you

I've only ever done a heist once as a player--we were missing a few people so it was basically a trickery domain cleric and a path of the shadows monk trying to steal the macguffin from a museum. We spent HOURS planning everything out and managed to get in and out before anyone noticed. The actual heist was tense but very quick. Definitely going to incorporate these tips into my campaign when i get around to running it!

Now to do vehicle chases/races, hahah. I appreciate the heist idea, I put it on my..... long list of things to run.

i was considering a heist quest for my campaign, but sick logan has convinced me to make it real.

I think my biggest takeaway from this was that it needs to be a low-level party. It's easy to see how higher-tier spells (and heck, just having a larger pool of resources like money and spell slots) could render a lot of complications inconsequential.

My party recently heisted one of the three most powerful organizations in my DM's world. We knew very little going in, and made a mess on the way out, but we somehow managed to free like the most wanted person in the world, as well as a now brainwashed party member from them. I mean two of us died (but not fully because of stuff in the world building, lore, and plot that is too long to explain in a comments section), and now we are highly wanted but that organization.

Damn dude. This was in depth. Thanks :)

Brilliant video !

A big issue I find with stealth missions is that a single mistake can screw up everything. Which is why I do those things : 1) I keep descriptions simple to limit mistakes. 2) when a player fails a roll, they succeed at a cost instead. It means instead of overcoming an obstacle, they push it back but it is still there.

Dude this is great, thanks

I'm DMing for the first time, doing a heist two-shot and good lord this helps my planning so much. Thank you for this, and your video on guards, too. Party's heisting the vault of a casino run by one of the richest guys in the entire city, and still a lot of this stuff is gonna translate well.

Thank you for taking care of yourself

Bold of you to assume that players wouldn't try to brute force their way through the front entrance and get TPKed.

This was really cool!

Going back to this video after taking lessons in social engineering, disguising yourself as an employee is actually extremely effective. Like, that is how most security breaches happen even today. Someone sneaks in pretending to work there after copying a badge and just physically logged into a workstation.

Wardenforged... just beautiful

You made me want to play sly2 and 3 again, even though I only replayed them a few weeks ago.

Helpful tips on overall structure. I know I forget the importance of the escape. Mostly because the group is dead enough that I dont want them murdered on the way back to base. if you like heists id recommend Blades in the Dark. The system is set up for it better.

Very handy. I'm playing 2 campaigns right now and both are planning heists. The first one is without the DMs knowledge (we're gonna steal a power wizard's spell book). And in the other campaign we're just bitter that we weren't invited to a huge party

I recommend Blades on the Dark. Instead of planning you do everything mid heist; roll for flashbacks, etc

i would buy books from audible as long as they are narrated by you. love your vids! keep up the great content!

Another great example for a heist plot is Dimension20 side quest Tiny Heist... but amazing video keep putting that great work in.

Thanks for the copy of Dune! Been wanting to to start it for year!