D&D 5E D&D Beyond Reveals New Golden Vault Details

Over on D&D Beyond you can read more about Keys from the Golden Vault, including information on 3 of the 13 adventures, the Golden Vault organization itself, and an overview of how the heist adentures within work.

What Is Keys From the Golden Vault? 13 Heist-Centric Adventures

Gather your crew and get to planning—you're going on a heist! The latest book from D&D takes characters of all levels on epic heists. Learn more about t...

www.dndbeyond.com

Four of the adventures include:

• The Stygian Gambit (for 2nd-level adventurers): Case a Nine Hells-themed casino and steal the prize for the Three-Dragon Ante tournament that's currently taking place.
• Prisoner 13 (for 4th-level adventurers): Infiltrate a remote prison in the tundra of Icewind Dale and extract information from an inmate.
• Vidorant’s Vault (for 7th-level adventurers): Break into the safe of a renowned thief, bypassing its many security features en route.
• Fire and Darkness (for 11th-level adventurers): Navigate the grim fortress of an efreeti and retrieve an artifact of unimaginable evil, the Book of Vile Darkness.

 

[Reynard]

Looking back at their horror book, I’m not especially worried. In fact I can’t think any “square peg round hole” books wotc has put out for 5e.

What 5e horror book?

 

[Stormonu]

What 5e horror book?

I believe that would be Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. It has a few pages on themes for different type of horror adventures.

Granted, it's no Alien or Call of Cthulhu type of RPG advice, but it'll get the DM thinking on the right track.

 

[teitan]

I don't think 5E would be the best choice for All-Heists, All-The-Time campaign...but...a book of premise one shots focused on individual heists that can fit into a broader D&D campaign...? That's something.

Exactly and I’d think such a game would be boring anyway.

 

[Maxperson]

More "because WotC", I'd say personally. There are plenty of 5E adventures which don't have these issues.

Some of it is just bizarre like the level of detail on Prisoner 13's badass tats, most of which would be absolutely never be visible to PCs, because it even specifies that she's fully clothed when the PCs meet her.

Some of the tattoos are visible and it's feasible that she and the PCs will be in combat together. After they see magic tattoos, they might have need to take an inventory.

 

[Fandabidozi]

The problem with Revels is you never know when you’ll get the coffee one.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

One of the tattoos is plot-important, others are magical, the rest are there to hide the important ones.

"We don't need prisoner 13. We only need to steal - her skin!"

 

[kapars]

It's a neat monk stat block.

Curiously it doesn’t list Unarmored Defense like the Martial Adept and other printed Monk stat blocks but does provide for a calculation of 10 + DEX + CON through the Mountain tattoo. The tattoos are fun ideas for Monk abilities or magical items.

 

[MNblockhead]

Most games don’t go above 10th level or 15th level if they’re lucky because of time, not because of the rules. You’re talking multi year commitments that most groups can’t pull off or people get burnt out on the same type of game or they’re playing, due to how 5e was marketed, official adventures that end at 15th level and then pick up the next one. I’d like to see the average length of time a group meets but Critical Role for example meets every week for 4 hours and takes 3 years to get to about 14th level but they get paid. My group has played 2 years now but we’ve played Theros, Starfinder (level 6) and now DCC for 5 months and about to hit level 2 (every other week, 3 hours, missed 3 sessions and had a baby causing some missed sessions too). So it’s really a variety of factors beyond difficult to create high level adventures. I don’t think we need WOTC to write anything to tell us how to do something. That was the problem with 3.x.

Agree with everything except, to some extent, the sentence I bolded.

We don't need WotC to write any adventures at any level, but lots of us want pre-written adventures because we don't have the time, don't feel we are very good at it, or just want to experience other styles.

And I don't think every adventure has to be a long, 1-20 adventure path. I would rather have collections of shorter adventures like Golden Vault and Yawning Portal. I would love to see a collection of adventures for 16th to 20th level play.

 

[jasper]

Dudes. Y'all have to do the Rules Lite vs Rules heavy test. Bundle the rules light book together and drop them on your non driving foot. Test the pain and how long you curse and limp. Repeat test with rules heavy bundle.
Okay you can always drop the rules heavy system on "ThAt" players driving foot.

 

[Reynard]

I believe that would be Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. It has a few pages on themes for different type of horror adventures.

Granted, it's no Alien or Call of Cthulhu type of RPG advice, but it'll get the DM thinking on the right track.

Asking everyone to get on board is fine, but there's no real mechanical heft to it.