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Keys from the Golden Vault is about creating a heist crew to tackle several scenarios to retrieve and sometimes replace a particular item in the most subtle way possible. You’ve probably wanted to do aDungeons & Dragonsheist, and this adventure book gives you the hooks to do so. But what happens if this becomes too easy for your party?
Related:Dungeons & Dragons: Every Adventure In Keys From The Golden Vault, Ranked
More importantly, how do you build a challenging rival crew your players will be excited to compete against? Adding rival crews and heist complications to the adventure can provide a sense of urgency and potential incentive for your players to beat their rivals to the objective.
Creating Heist Complications
Heist crews count asheist complications,actions the DM can take to switch things up. It could be something like moving the item the group is searching for or throwing in a rival crew at a different moment than the party but having them go after the same object.
Any unforeseen complication you create that’s not explicitly labeled in the book can be a heist complication.
What the rival crew does and how they interfere will also be seen as heist complications. However,do not make too many heist complications per adventure, or you may end up discouraging your players.
Before just throwing a rival crew into an adventure,decide what heist complications you’ll have take place.Not every adventure needs your players to fight another crew.If you’re going with a rival crew, don’t double down and add more complications.
If you’re leaving the rival crew out, determine whether this adventure needs another complication based on how it’s played. Remember,a rival crew does not need to be your only heist complication.
If you are running the adventure as a full module, you may want your rival crew showing up in every adventure in some way, or you may choose to spread out their appearances, making their involvement more noticeable instead of an expected plight.
Once you’ve decided how you want your rival crew to work as a heist complication, it’s time to design a crew for your players to compete against.
How To Build Rival Crews For Your Players
Decide how you want to implement your rival crew. Then, create a group that will entice and intrigue your party while being a fun, competitive aspect rather than an annoyance.
Rival Crew Size
When building a rival crew, try tohave one more rival crew member than your player’s party size.So if you have a party of four, create a rival crew of five. This will allow you to play with an extra rival member.
That extra rival member can do things such asgain intel on the party, create a distraction, or steal a treasure while your party is occupiedwith the other rival members. Whether you use this extra NPC, it’s always great to have an extra, just in case.
If your players are going to eliminate your rival crew, it’s great to have one extra member to get away and tell the organization while the others are engaged with your players, it’s imperative to have a backup to keep the crew running if necessary.
This will also ensure you aren’t making your players feel cheated by an unnamed NPC continuing the dirty work. They can see and interact with this extra member, but as the DM it can be used as your safeguard.
Rival Crew Motivations
While there’sa table in the Keys from the Golden Vault adventure module, consider a motivation that canplay into your player’s motivations. If you’re running this as an adventure, maybe a player’s backstory coincides with a rival crew, always chasing what your crew is after.
A fun experience is tomake a rival crew member an informant from the same Golden Vault, informing the opposing group of every step your players are about to take.
There are a few adventures where an emotional attachment can be involved, and if your crew is empathetic, create a rival crew that just wants to survive and is taking jobs to make it in a rough world.
While the possibilities are endless,create motivations that will make your party fearful of actual competition and consequencesbut also viable ones that are believable, allowing the crew members to come in and out as necessary.
Consider Your Player’s Interest
Each adventure has multiple themes; when running the adventure, you maychoose to change themes or elements to fit your table, and you’d do the same when creating a rival crew. Consider the following questions:
Having a session zeroand establishing these answers and your group’s willingness to compete against a rival crew is a great place to start.
If your players are more into roleplay, you may create a generic rival crew of thieves, bandits, scouts, rogues, and subtle classes to go against your party or use the rival group provided.
Take the information you know about your group to determine how the rival crews will react. You canuse any of the prescribed rival crew motivations for each adventure and tweak themfor your group.
How To Make Rival Crews More Threatening
It’s one thing to have a rival crew to compete against; it’s another tomake them more of a challenge than an annoyance. Sometimes the Challenge Ratings and motivations can be just too easy in the adventure module, and you want to make it seem like the stakes are high, and the competition is fierce.
If that showdown with a rival crew does come to fruition, you’ll want the rivals to be a step ahead of your group in terms of what an encounter would look like. You also want it to be a fair competition. There are a few things you can do to ensure this.
Build Against Your Player’s Strengths
If your group enjoys competition, you’ll want tobuild a rival crew that thwarts your players. Keep this crew at orslightly above your player’s level,andcreate opposing classesfor their rival.
Utilize characters withabilities that can identify your crew, making it more complicated than just hiding in plain sightto achieve their goals.
If you have a mage on your player’s team, create a rival crew member that can rush in and deal significant damage to them, outfitting them with the mage slayer feat to make short work of spellcasters. An Echo Knight fighter can thwart the crew with its strength and utilize its shadow to help go against your players.
Giving magical items with the truesight ability can ensure that a rogue in stealth or an invisible wizard can still be seen.
If your crew is methodical at planning and executing the heist, create a fast and efficient rival to challenge them. This rival crew will have already started the mission while your group is still planning, putting your players at a slight disadvantage.
Even if your rival crew is at an advantage, you shouldadjust on the fly to make things fair.Rival crews may also fail to heist complications, and a poorly planned heist from a rival can result in the players getting the drop on them if they mess up. Encounters should never feel unfair.
This rival crew should meet your party and possibly be already mid-heist, or maybe they’ve already stolen the relic in the time it takes for your party to decide. They may show up ahead in every adventure, pushing your group to have more of a sense of urgency before losing another item to a rival crew.
Play With Real Time
A real ticking clock can drastically change the atmosphere in a heist. A fun way to keep your players on their toes is toset a timer and have actions take place in real-timeas they go through the heist.
Give them a certain amount of time to plan before executing the heist. If they take too long, rival crews will get a head start. The intensity of timing the heist and adding in complications after a set amount of real-world time has passed can create a fun layer of challenge for your players.
This heist complication can result in quick decision-making and ideas and executions they may not have considered had they not felt the pressure of the ticking time.
Be sure to give more time during combat and adjust as necessary.One minute per turn usually works well,keeping players on their toes and ready for their turn in combat while also keeping the sessions moving forward.
Be prepared to throw the timer out if your party cannot adjust or are feeling left behind.
Have Variety In Your Approach
Keep your player’s on their toes. Level up as they do, andavoid creating predictable outcomes. It’s ok to have the rival crew mid-heist sometimes; other times, it’s ok to have your players face off against the rival crew to gain access to information for the job or to get back the item they need for the heist. Keep things dynamic.
If this rival crew always shows up at the beginning of the adventure, try having them show up at the end. Conversely, if they’re always ahead of your group, throw your players a mission where they’re in front during a heist andsee how they react to being chased instead of doing the chasing.
you may create an internal struggle if the rival crew and your party operate from the same Golden Vault. Judge your group on performance based on their interests. If they enjoy planning, how well did they plan? Will they execute their plan before the rival crew? Is the reward at stake? Is there a showdown within the Vault to determine who wins and keeps the spoils if the adventure allows the players to keep it?
Determine who the rival crew works for, their motivation for each adventure and whether they’ll be the perfect heist complication to implement. If they are, prepare stat blocks and classes that counteract those of your party, but always keep things fair and keep rotating their interests for each adventure.
