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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 8269907" data-attributes="member: 6704184">Success with consequences and failing forward (failure with opportunity, or mitigated failure) are rules in the DMG. Likewise, skill challenges and group checks also make skill tasks less binary. I haven’t ever had a heist, or other infiltration job that wasn’t intended to murder enough of the inhabitants to make the rest go to ground, end with more than a few deaths, at most.  For one, I’m not letting a guard sound the alarm when they have surprise, which has saved the PCs a few times.  For another, I do two things that help avoid that outcome, because it isn’t a fun outcome.  1) Group checks and use of the “don’t roll when it’s not in question” rule. 2) I run it more like a skill challenge than a step by step, dungeon crawl style, progression through the facility. A failed roll brings up a complication, and the players then have to figure out how that complication is dealt with, and roll for that.  Oh, I guess 3) The job has multiple goals and multiples paths to success in the main goal(s), so things going wrong in one area can be used to make opportunities elsewhere.  Also it helps that my players are willing to run and hide and play cat and mouse rather than stand and fight.</blockquote>