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]

Which is why these theme-specific adventure books tend to expand on the core rules--or at least remind you that the DMG exist and give examples of how to use variant rules from the DMG. Curse of Strahd comes to mind. I don't recall the DMG giving suspicion mechanics--but I keep forgetting that the DMG exists.

It isn't even really about rules in general. The problem is that the density of PC options outside of combat is so low that you can't actually make a good crew. A book like this should be paired with a PC facing "heist PHB" -- but WotC would not and probably could not provide that. Maybe some DMsGuild folks will offer some mechanics, but I think people would just be better off choosing a game that provides actual options outside of combat.

 

[MNblockhead]

Nah, they are so many options that scale exponentially it becomes really hard to prepare challenges, without utterly shutting down the PCs.
Hopefully the book finds a nice balance.

D&D is really a different game at high levels. But it is a game where high entities, including gods, get imprisoned. High level breakouts and heists can be done, but they are not going to look anything like what comes to mind when most people hear "heist" or "prison breakout." At this point, WotC really needs to put out an adventure + guide for tier 4 play. I run high level 5e games, but it is a lot of work and I can understand why most games never go above 15th level and many stop at around 10th. Once you have parties running around polymorphed as dragons, with similacrum's, their own created golems, and access to Wish — it is a very different game.

 

[MNblockhead]

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.

You've obviously never played with groups that abuse the spirit of medicine checks.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Because it has to be targeted to new DMs as much as experienced DMs. I'm hoping some of the adventures allow for more party planning, but it makes sense that they would have at least one adventure that holds the DM's and player's hands and that this would be the one that they would release for free.

Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr have you read this adventure? This is not a hand-holding adventure, it's a railroad of the most dangerous (to the PCs) kind.

If there's any significant deviation from the plan, the most likely single outcome for any party which isn't full of highly experienced players is that a probably good-aligned party is forced into a massive prison-fight with like 70+ CR3 (!!!) monsters (who are part of an LN/LG organisation). Which I guess will end up with the PCs all in jail? And if they talk, their LG backer will presumably be in quite a lot of trouble, or at least opprobrium.

Most OSR adventures are far safer and easier to run. This is DANGER MODE stuff. It's just that the peculiar kind of danger is deviation from the railroad.

 

[Loren the GM]

I haven't seen this pop up in this thread yet, so if anyone is looking for a 5e adaptation of Blades in the Dark rules, this DM's Guild product is a really solid option.

Edit: I'll also add, I hope the book provides some guidance like this when we have the whole thing, but in case it doesn't, this is a great resource to add some additional heist mechanics into the mix.

 

[Zaukrie]

I haven't seen this pop up in this thread yet, so if anyone is looking for a 5e adaptation of Blades in the Dark rules, this DM's Guild product is a really solid option.

Edit: I'll also add, I hope the book provides some guidance like this when we have the whole thing, but in case it doesn't, this is a great resource to add some additional heist mechanics into the mix.

This looks interesting. Thanks

 

[MNblockhead]

Mark me as someone not enthused.

Yes you can run a heist in D&D, you could run a dinner party in D&D.

I've done both. And once as part of the same one-shot adventure.

However other systems can give you so many more interesting options for heists IMO, frex: Mission clocks in The Sprawl, flashbacks in BitD, astral security in Shadowrun, investigative skills in gumshoe, etc.

But isn't that true of any aspect of D&D? Kinda the strength AND weakness of generalized systems.

I love D&D for dungeon crawling, especially with random encounters, reaction rolls and morale, but it'd be one of my least favourite systems for a heist campaign.

Yeah, but then someone will argue that various OSR games do this better.

I'm hoping (not optimistic, but hope) that we see more modularity in One D&D. I heard a lot about that when I started looking into getting back in the hobby, but WotC seemed to back track on this. I think core rules can stay mostly the same in One D&D but would hope that the DMG will be more of a kit-bashing guide full of variant rules and tips for home brewing to help customize the play experience for use in different themes and with different play styles.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Why do some people find it necessary to trash someone as "poor DM" whenever they raise questions about whether D&D handles certain themes well? I can see how fans of D&D may be irked by people criticizing or questioning the game, but responses like this just come across as petty.

Poster 1: "D&D is not a good system for X type of games."
Poster 2: "Not true. You just suck."

D&D 5e is designed to accommodate a wide variety of playstyles and themes. Unlike games that are specifically tailored for a specific style of play or theme, it does make 5e a bit more reliant on examples and, often, variant mechanics to aid DMs into running a theme or play style that hasn't received as much official support. A DM can been an amazing DM running amazing games in one style or theme but struggle running others (horror and heists come up a lot). Even the designers of the game realize that the standard core mechanics don't give a lot of support, which is why Curse of Strahd devoted a good amount of space to advice on running horror-themed games and this book apparently devoting space with advice and mechanics for running heists games.

Yeah not sure why some people do that. But I hardly think that qualifies as ‘trashing someone.’ But I stand my the overall point. 5E is incredibly rules light so much of the experience is based on the DM and the players to be flexible.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah not sure why some people do that. But I hardly think that qualifies as ‘trashing someone.’ But I stand my the overall point. 5E is incredibly rules light so much of the experience is based on the DM.

Emphasis mine.

That statement suggests to me you haven't played many rules light games. 5E is literally thousands of pages of rules at this point.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Emphasis mine.

That statement suggests to me you haven't played many rules light games. 5E is literally thousands of pages of rules at this point.

Well then you inferred incorrectly. I have played rules light and rules heavy games over the past 30 plus years. 5E does not have thousand of pages of rules at least what I consider rules. I don’t included classes subclasses as rules per say.