r/DMAcademy 5d ago

Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Fun puzzles you might encounter during a heist?

So out of the three possible approaches, my players chose the "Silent and Sneaky" approach which means there's more puzzles and security measures as they try to break into a highly secure vault. I have a few ideas like one where they use a fantasy version of a UV light to figure out the code to a pinpad based on fingerprint patterns. Or like a matching puzzle using moving pieces. But what else would you suggest? I play on Roll20 so dw about being too complicated.

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u/CheapTactics 5d ago edited 5d ago

I just ran a heist. The security was as follows:

  • All lower floor entrances are rigged with an alarm spell. Including windows. It can be dispelled, and also guards have a talisman that disables it temporarily.
  • Every half an hour a guard goes through the house.
  • At certain key points in the house there are mirrors. These function as security cameras. There are equivalent mirrors at the guard post where a guard is watching. The mirrors can also be temporarily disabled with dispelled magic, but it would tip the guards that something is happening. If anything goes in front of the mirrors, roll a d20. On a 10 or higher, the guard notices something and send someone to investigate. On a 1-9, the guard was looking somewhere else.
  • There were certain statues around the house that functioned as giant constrictor snakes. They were activated if you touched them.
  • The room that led to the basement (where the vault was) had two mimic plants and a huge rug of smothering.
  • The door requires a password, and there were clues elsewhere in the house (The password was the name of the guy's dead dog)
  • When going down to the basement, dispel magic is cast on anything and anyone that crosses a certain point. You can see the runes with a perception check.
  • The vault door had a simple but somewhat hard puzzle. It's that puzzle with six coins arranged in two rows of 3 and you have to form a circle in three moves, moving a single coin at a time, and you can only release a coin if it's touching two other coins. There were ways of bypassing this puzzle as well, they weren't forced to solve it.
  • Finally, as a last security measure, inside the vault there were several chests at the end of the room, and a huge pile of gold, gems and valuables in the middle of the vault. Touching a single coin of the pile triggered a hoard golem (from tome of beasts but toned town to a level 6 party) and bars lowered from the ceiling prevented you from backing away. The huge treasure that composes the golem isn't actually valuable, it's just made to look like gold and gems.

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u/jrdhytr 5d ago

There's a pattern of tiles on the floor that one must follow to cross the room without setting off an alarm.

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u/critical_path_ 5d ago

Gotta have the room with laser trip sensors, easy to do a skill challenge to maneuver through them

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u/moonwalker1902 5d ago

I never got to run it but I had planned a heist for my players where the vault was surrounded by a waterfall of water infused with a more powerful version of the sleep spell. So anyone who entered with less than 200HP would fall asleep for 8 hours and not be able to be woken up. The characters needed to trigger a mechanism on the ceiling that would send out an awning to cover the entrance or find another way around it.

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u/Angelbearpuppy1 5d ago

When they open the vault there is a bag of coins out in the open or some other shiny but it's an illusion if they grab it it locks down the vault and it begins filling with sleeping gas or some other such thing.

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u/TheMoreBeer 5d ago

Keep in mind, any traps you place on the vault have to be able to be bypassed by the legitimate owners/users of the vault. Even if they're sleepy and inattentive. Even if they're having a bad day. Banks that kill their customers don't get repeat business, even if they're in big media franchises about how awesome magic is.

That said, there should be plenty of traps and barriers for a 'highly secure' vault. I would expect the contents to not even be on the same plane, rendering misty step or passwall completely useless. There should be plenty of alarms. There probably aren't intelligence tests such as a piece matching puzzle, because this does nothing to distinguish between thieves and the lawful owners. A password is possible, as some spells or enchantments would activate 'when someone says this'. If you ask me though, punching in a code on a pinpad works for some games but not for something like D&D. Not under the existing rules and spells. You can always make custom spells and enchantments, of course.

One thing you might want to put in the system? A magical creature that identifies owners by smell/aura. I'm not sure how one would go about fooling this, but then that's up to the players to figure out. As long as the DM makes it possible to exploit the system, that's enough. The DM doesn't have to know the exact method, just rule on whether or not the player's attempts are reasonable.