The perfect burglary in 3.5

[kosutasu]

Share with me any succesful(or not)burglary or assassination you managed to pull out. Include any tricks or any equipment or tactic you used and how much loot did(if any) you stole in the end. Also include any trick you used to cover your tracks.funny situations are also welcomed.

[Ferrin]

Spell to Power Erudite, Remote Viewing Power, Teleport Object. Shrink Size as necesary.

Not something I did, but something that's... quite useful.

[Dr Bwaa]

In a game I DMed, there was a fantastic bank heist that one of the PCs almost pulled off. (Very) long story (very) short, he was in the capital city of a theocracy of hieroneous. He (bard) spread word to all the children he could find just beforehand that he would set off a loud noise, which was the start of a game. The game was, once they heard the loud "BANG!" they were to run and find him and tell him that the Hextorites were coming. If they couldn't find him, they were to tell every grownup they could find, and those grownups would come find him and tell him who won.

He rigged (I don't remember HOW I let him do this... he really used all those various crafting skill points) a small firework to a timer in a hidden pit in a noble's lawn near the bank. Then he (having set up this transaction earlier) got into the bank (was taken to the vault by the workers--think Gringotts and you're most of the way there for bank layout), and with a combination of advance planning, great bluffing and some clever silent images got into some other noble's vault, which he proceeded to rob blind. Things only went south for him when he failed a diplomacy roll super-horribly and instead of trying to cover it up, just stabbed the poor NPC who was guiding him. The fireworks outside went off (CHAOS ENSUES!) but he get stuck inside the bank when it went into lockdown at the death of an employee (they all had a status effect on a ring they wore). He got arrested and Mark of Justice'd, but it was an awful lot of fun (and boy, did he get close. If only he'd kept his cool...).

[Enix18]

In one game I ran, the players tried to steal an important artifact from the manor of a powerful noble/warmage, which doubled as a massive slave compound. I can't remember all the details, but it involved the Bard stealthing around with dual hand-crossbows, multiple bluetooth headsets helmets of telepathic bond, and a robot suit that the half-elf werebear cleric had gotton on Mechanus. It was quite awesome.

[true_shinken]

If you have someone with divination spells telepathically linked to a skilled stealthy character... it will probably succeed. A Climb speed (or Up the Walls), high initiative, hide in plain sight and Darkstalker should help a lot. I'd also have as high a Speed as possible and carry some means of dealing non-lethal ranged damage, so you can get the drop on guards as silently as possible, meaning a single failed Hide/MS check won't put the whole operation to waste.

[Dr.Epic]

Ask someone to play poker and cast detect thoughts before you play to know their every hand.

[Tyrandar]

While the rest of the party was asleep, The Dragon walked by, wearing the key to the Big Bad's chamber around his neck. My psion ducked his head out from our hiding spot, a niche in the ceiling, and manifested Psionic Dominate. Dragon fails his save, so I climb down and grab the key from around his neck. Then I returned to my hideyhole and manifested Modify Memory to convince him that he had walked through the room without incident, then released the dominate. Dragon walks away none the wiser... until a few hours later when he realized the key was missing.

[FlamingKobold]

One time, I ran an entire Burglary campaign. Started at level one and when they finally got the macguffin, they were level 6+37 (It was E6). Their Final, successful plan included, but was not limited to (It was a while ago and it took four of the smartest people I know more than 6 months to perfect) over 400 goblin slaves, the seduction of the King, 7 assassinations, three days, a raging barbarian, an enchanted lawn gnome, 2 demons, one man's soul, a piece of cake, an illusionist, a ninja, 15 shuriken, >1000 feet of rope and the inadvertant help of a neighboring kingdom's royal army. It was epic.

Edit: Incidentally, the cake was a lie. or, as some say, an illusion

[Grommen]

So we ride into Palt (Pissant little town) on our way to somewhere far grander and as usual the town has a problem that only the big bad adventures can solve.

Now mind you our party is split down the middle between Do-gooders and down right steal anything not nailed down (this includes things you can get with a clawhammer ) thieves. The Thieves in the group become rather put off by the compensation offered and accepted by the village (the Do-Gooders did the job for free once again).

It turned out that the dwarves mined too deep once again and unleashed something rather ugly (in this case the classic Shadow Dragon from down under). Well the party was sent in to deal with the dragon.

So here is the plan. We let the Do-Gooders charge in all big and bad and all that wile the Thieves in the party ran back to town and screamed,

"O my gods their is a giant dragon fighting with a bunch of holy men out in front to the mines. Come quickly and watch!"

So naturally all the village emptied out and went to watch the fight.

We (as in the low down thieves in the group) raided the local church of Moraden. Pulled the job off something perfect, even stole the crown jewels in the grand scepter used to administer some ritual of passage and stuff. I mean we hovered the hole place clean (and used clawhammers)

Would have gotten away with it too if the village mayor didn't feel that the party needed some type of reward for slaying the dragon. So they asked the high priest of the temple (that we just cleared out) to pony up some swag.


Do-Gooder #1 "What do you mean Jynx. You don't want any treasure for fighting the dragon? You always want half!"

The Jynx "I already got my half. Can we go now?"

Dwarven Head Priest, "Great Roirox's Beard we've been robbed!"

The Jynx , "Really we need to be going now!"

[Superglucose]

I started a war to cover stealing 35 gp from the temple collection plate.

Very, very, very much worth it.

[evil-frosty]

LordHenry and Flaming Kobold, please share the full stories they sound epically awesome

[FlamingKobold]

LordHenry and Flaming Kobold, please share the full stories they sound epically awesome

It was a months long campaign, i couldn't really remember all of the details. I should've kept a campaign journal

[the humanity]

It was a months long campaign, i couldn't really remember all of the details. I should've kept a campaign journal

give us the cliffs notes.

[FlamingKobold]

Pff. I'll try.

(spoilered for length)

Spoiler

Show

Pff. I'll try.

The game started (and, in fact, ended) with a ragtag group of friends. Grom the Gnomish Barbarian//ranger, a human illusionist named Sir Henry James Winston the third, but was nicknamed Poofy, Lirian, a kelpto elven ninja//rogue, and a halfling halfling called Smalls. (Yes. He made a monster class called halfling. And he was the must halfling halfling anyone has ever seen).

The first adventure started out with a slightly different kind of theft: the brave and valiant adventurers sought out to steal the servitude of the goblin race. Yeah. The premise of the campaign was that Grom hated goblins, and wanted to enslave them all. I had a totally different murder investigation adventure all set up. Here's kind of how it went down:

DM: You walk into town after you long night of travelling, and just inside the front gate, you see two dead bodies of what look like guards with people crowding around to get a look.
Grom: I push people out of the way with my 18 strength and get to the bodies to take a closer look.
DM: Um, okay. The crowd lets you through and you see that the bodies have small cutmarks all over them.
Grom (who, by the way, took goblinoid as his favored enemy. Every time): I examine the bodies, and yell: "This is the work of goblins! Death to those disgusting vermin!"
DM: Roll a bluff, seeing as you have no idea.
Lirian: I aid another, telling the crowd that this is Grom, hunter of goblins, who has recently saved the neighboring kingdom from a goblinoid horde.
Smalls: I help Lirian spread the word.
(They both make their checks, giving Grom a net +6 to bluff. He rolls a 19, for a 25. The villagers never beat it)
After a lot of incited anger in the crowd, Grom cuts in:
Grom: “Do not fear, we shall vanquish these foes at once. I shall track them down and make them pay!”

After mush cheering from the crowd, they set off. And, just 5 minutes into the first session, my two part political intrigue campaign was turned into a lifelong mission for the character and a campaign to enslave the goblin race.

I’ll add more later

[alisbin]

old campaign with corran (my rogue/assassin) had a recurring slaadi worshiping cult which corran had a special hatred for. see, the first time they dropped in he was in the middle of wooing a particularly lovely lady and enjoying a very nice vintage of wine (became a running gag that they tended to show up often in that situation). so finally at the end of the campaign he decides to go solo and wipe them off the face of the planet.

after weeks of searching for their hidden base, he finds it in out in the middle of a small desert, buys off their monthly food/ale shipment and infiltrates the base. after a few hours of sneaking here and there he finds the main chamber and follows the high priest into the vault, which he discovers is chock full of "chaos crystals" which the cult uses to open rifts and draw slaadi into the world. corran lets the priest leave (had to to figure out how to open the vault from the inside) and proceeds to take advantage of the fact that the chaos crystals explode extremely violently when broken (2 hp hardness of 3, if i remember right). he sets up a number of time delayed devices (he was a traps specialist, homebrew) to break a few dozen of the thousands of tightly packed gems.

on his way out he jams the door of the vault closed, kills the priest in a silent darkness cloud and disappears out as the cultists swarm about, recalling most of their people to kill corran and eventually decide on a new priest. well, being a super hider corran makes it out and heads to a nice vantage point a few dozen miles away.

he counts down with his pocketwatch and does the 3-2-1*snap fingers* thing and on snap fingers about a 6 mile radius of the desert goes up in an explosion thats felt on the other side of the continent. then he goes home and has a nice glass of wine and goes back to wooing the particularly lovely lady.

[Gamerlord]

Teleport in, invisibility,teleport out.

[J.Gellert]

We just ran a one-shot evil free-for-all adventure... DM and three players.

The DM ran a typical perilous tower. One player had the vampire lord of that tower, who possessed a powerful meteorite who could create undead. I had a tiefling Lich wizard, and was "aligned" with the last player who had a female Drow elf.

At one point we all met in the "throne room", the piece of rock standing on a pedestal in a high spot.

First round of combat: Lich wins initiative, telekinesis (grabs the rock), quickened invisibility, walk away.*

It was something of a "what just happened?" moment for everyone else, having failed to account for magic and assuming a fight was going to happen. And we duelled it out a couple rounds later mainly just for the fun of it. The wizard won.



*All this was ancient history. It would be at least a few years before the Celerity spell was conceived.

[kladams707]

2nd ed D&D, killing the captain of the guard's mother-in-law The GM's world was based on the "The Sword of Truth Series," w/ Darken Rahl, D'Haran empire, etc. Anyway, my thief and another player's mage was sent by a captain to kill his in-law, which took some effort surprisngly enough. Not having brought anything with us to take her out, we wrapped her in a carpet that was in the room. Unfortunately there was blood dripping out. When we went outside, we were stopped by a lower level soldier who had no idea of the plot, and we had no such uniforms marking our status. We froze for a moment, then the mage immediately said "This carpet is magical, we're trying to get rid of it.?" The soldier reacts "Magic? Get that out of here now!" And so we did.

[Kobold-Bard]

My 1ed Thief went on a pick pocketing spree and claimed six turnips, 4cp, 3 bits of string and a kitten before the city guards caught up with him and decapitated him with 1 hit (he had 4HP and the guard did 7 dmg, those dead at 0HP rules were brutal).

In a 3.5 game one of my players (a first timer) didn't understand that not every NPC was just filler so she tried to mug an impressive looking Elven noble. Turned out he was (as most nobles are) a trained swordsman and the person who was going to hire them in a couple of sessions time. He thrashed the crap out of her and from then on she was always more careful (and became a quite accomplished thief).