PCs trying to rob well-prepared bank

[NightingVale]

I am a somewhat new GM of a party of four at level 11: a CE half-elf wizard, CN elf rogue, LG (but slowly converting to CN due to party influences) elf fighter and a CN tiefling sorcerer, who currently want to rob an extremely rich clan's vaults. They are planning to dominate the only person seen able to open the trapdoor to the clan's vaults, and while most of the clan is off fighting a war, sneaking in with a cauldron of flying and a portable hole to take as much gold as they can in as many trips necessary. The clan has multiple large steel vaults held underground.
I want this to be a very difficult challenge for them, and seeing as this clan has enormous amounts of wealth, costs are not an issue. I do not know many of the magic items and spells very well and would like some help thinking of defenses, spells, and traps to help defend the vaults, the riches inside, and the man who opens the door to the vaults. Rare or expensive limits are not a problem here, and they are extremely protective of their money, so they will take as many as countermeasures as they can think of.
I would be grateful for any and all help, you could send to me, thanks!

[Vizzerdrix]

Golems and undead come to mind. As well as hoard scarabs (bugs that look like gold coins and like to live in treasure). Maybe they keep their gold in a form that is hard to move or use, like melting it into giant blocks or something, or mix it itno cement for long term storage.

They could also pump poison or acid into the vaults when they are closed. Failure to pump the stuff out from another location would send it washing down the hallway when the door was opened. Combine with a pit trap as sort of a catch basin back a ways down he hall, and animated arms at the bottom to grapple and throw harpoons at anyone that gets washed into the pit. Hopefully you will drown a few players in acid, or get some when they pull the harpoons from themselves.

[nyjastul69]

The vaults are empty. The money is held elsewhere or tied up in investments.

[Pugwampy]

Something as simple as an alarm trap would put a wrench in their works .

Another thing that could really mess them around is a magic trap or a few that zaps one of them with the curse of opposite alignment. You just need one lawful good or chaotic good hero and thats the end of this robbery .

If your Rogue is Lawful Good theoretically he should not agree to this and alert the authorities.

[Enguebert]

Idea : each vault has only an average amount of gold and a portal to the real bank.

And the real bank is on a demi-plane where the real bank owner lives : a dragon and his minions
Only some trusted/dominated bank employees are allowed to use the portal and know about the real vault, most of them just use the normal vault

[Sian]

They run into another party busy looting the joint before reinforcements arrive, :smallcool: and they escape quickly letting the party take the fall

[Necromancy]

The vault is an extradimensional space

*evil laughter*

Actually the ladder shaft into the vault is the extradimensional space

There's a magic item - gold coins that rupture bags of holding and such. Extradimensional bomb or something is the name.

Cauldron of flying is kinda big....

Vault gold is mostly trade bars, 50lbs ea at 2500gp..... Coated in contact poison

[NightingVale]

If your Rogue is Lawful Good theoretically he should not agree to this and alert the authorities.

The rogue is Chaotic Neutral, the elf fighter was Lawful Good. However, at this point in time I think it is safe to say he is no longer Lawful Good as he is one of the main advocates for robbing the bank.

Thanks everyone for all the help and ideas, I will be sure to use some of these!

[animewatcha]

What was that thing with Bag of holding and the astral plane. Pretty much send anything within like 100 feet into the astral plane and another spell-trap or whatever puts the money ( and only the money ) back into the vault.

[ComaVision]

I have not heard a better opportunity to use a treasure golem.

[Waker]

Include an Arcane Mark on several of the coins/bars of gold, gotta do the old sneak the tracking device into the bank money trick. Gold has a low melting point, so maybe have a flame trap designed to intentionally force the PCs to slough through a bit of molten gold. Animated Objects are always a hoot, hopefully that necklace doesn't choke anyone. Include a Mimic in that cluster of actual treasure chests. It doesn't expressly do so, but you could rule that Dimensional Anchor interferes with a Bag of Holding, so having it tied to the area via an effect like Hallow could slow down the robbing process. These notes of credit include Explosive Runes in the fine print. You could annoy your players by building the vault itself from gold (disguised of course) and let them steal gold-plated lead bars. Alternatively most of the actual wealth is in some other form, such as paintings and contracts that were likely overlooked on the way down.

[Ahus]

Permanent Antimagic field covering most of the vault the exception being the very corners where the sensors from four crystal balls are located.

A large rack of ornately carved quarter staffs with magic aura cast on them.

Contingent tunnel swallow

[NightingVale]

Ok, update:

Instead of dominating the guard, the're just going to beat him up, and use an Anti-Magic Field to get through the vaults and use large tarps to bring gold through a gate ring (they'll leave this outside of the AMF) of theirs, and later load it onto a boat to leave with.

[Necromancy]

If they think it up well enough without metagaming, let them have it. But then they're going to be scry targets for bounty hunters pretty quick

[Telok]

My favorite was to have the ceiling of the room paneled in wood. Polymorph Any Object a bunch of logs into paneling.

Behind that is two of every Power Word spell. Evenly spread out to catch the whole room in at least a couple of them.

The Everburning Torch in the room has Glyph of Warding cast on it. The glyph will go off if any unauthorized person enters the room, the authorization is one of several signet rings that the owners wear.

The glyph casts Dispel Magic. It is a dispel from the same person who cast the polymorph spell, and it targets the polymorph spell.

[FocusWolf413]

My favorite was to have the ceiling of the room paneled in wood. Polymorph Any Object a bunch of logs into paneling.

Behind that is two of every Power Word spell. Evenly spread out to catch the whole room in at least a couple of them.

The Everburning Torch in the room has Glyph of Warding cast on it. The glyph will go off if any unauthorized person enters the room, the authorization is one of several signet rings that the owners wear.

The glyph casts Dispel Magic. It is a dispel from the same person who cast the polymorph spell, and it targets the polymorph spell.

I love it.

Also, PAO some paper into floorboards, and put acid underneath it. Use the same trick after the logs fall.

[Barbarian Horde]

Security could consist of rotating divination users using Prying Eyes spell. Concept is equal to security footage.

[trikkydik]

Guards and wards - 6th level abjuration spell, used to reinforce a stronghold. it casts several area affecting spells in the various locations of the stronghold (caster designates where) the effects are abundant. (Can also be made permanent with a permanency spell, which means certain aspects can regenerate 1d4 rounds if you want.) Call it GM modifier :-)

Fog in every corridor (which you can cancel if the action gets too slow)

Arcane locks on all doors (again you can cancel it if it seems to get in the way of gameplay.)

Webs on all staircases (which could be dope with some monsters) you could really get creative here and have PC's roll to keep their weapons. (Plus if you have magic users that destroy the webs, you can have them magically regenerate if you want.

Confusion: whenever the PC's make a choice between 2 or more paths, there is a 50% chnce they go the wrong direction, thinking theyre going in the right direction. (Be careful with this one, it can really mke gameplay halt if you use it incorrectly.)

illusionary doors (Again, if the door is important, the PC's are gonna have to get through the door anyway, so kind of a useless tool from a DM's perspective.)

Honestly, i just ran a session last week and tested out a Maze type scenario with a bunch of traps, and it was not fun for the players and it was frustrating for me as the DM because they didn't react correctly to the varying traps.

I would use a few of the above area affects and throw in some easy monsters, sprinkle in a few tougher monsters, (Maybe a shadow stalker or an ooze block monster) and have an end boss guarding the big payload.



If you really dont want them to have access to all that insane cash, you could do a few things. (even if they end up getting the loot somehow, and back to their hideout.)

It could just get stolen from them, considering news has spread of a robbery.

You could make it so they stole the money from the wrong people (Some gang or mob)

You could have the end boss somehow securing the money as his/her last living action

You could have an alarm that goes off and alerts the towns police force, and get them sent to jail.



Try to assess the long term consequences and use that to your advantage. im excited for your campaign, good luck.