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Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Starfinder RPG

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Mastering Intrigue / Heists / Running a Heist

Executing the Heist

Source Ultimate Intrigue pg. 123
Once the planning is finished, it’s time to actually play out the heist. For a complex heist (or if the players have come up with an excessively convoluted plan), GMs might consider splitting this portion off as another game session. This allows time to sit down with the PCs’ plan and sort through how to respond to it, how security and defenses will react, and so on. Even if the GM doesn’t want to separate the planning and the execution segments into two different game sessions, she should take a moment (perhaps a 15-minute break) to review notes and decide how things will develop, given the most likely actions and outcomes.

Step by Step: A game session featuring a heist can be tricky. The GM must run several encounters simultaneously and should take the time to track each round if necessary, take notes, and map out characters’ and NPCs’ movements. Being diligent helps maintain the big picture.

Splitting the Group: One of the trickiest parts of running a heist is overcoming the reluctance of players to split the party. As mentioned before, giving the characters reasons to split up is vital. Much of this comes down to timing, and impressing on the players how important it is that their characters keep to a tight schedule as they execute their plans. Multiple parts of the plan need to happen at the same time, so everybody staying together is rarely an option. Though keeping the group together usually helps in a task, sometimes having a crowd is detrimental. This is easiest to see with Stealth, where the lowest roll can expose the party, but social interaction can also be fraught since a group can appear more suspicious, some party members may be poor at Bluff and give the others away, and disguising an entire group is far more difficult than just disguising one person. Combats pose the greatest challenge, since few characters want to go into a fight without backup. Fortunately, in most heists combat is better used as a diversion. Heists may run slowly at the table when the PCs split up, and the GM may wish to let players not participating in the scene to control friendly NPCs to keep them involved.

Once a heist begins, PCs realistically have little knowledge of how their teammates are doing. Using an in-game means of communication can help reduce the temptation to act on knowledge a character wouldn’t have. These can include communication spells like message and sending, sending secret messages using Bluff (though this usually requires a close range), and magic items like bird feather tokens. It’s also helpful to create a set of common signals for the group before they go in. Bird calls, graffiti, and other relatively subtle signals can help communicate a PC’s success or failure to other members of the party. In extreme cases, some players might need to step outside when it’s not their characters’ turns. If this becomes necessary, GMs should keep the action moving so no one stays out of the game too long.

Complications and Contingencies: Inevitably, some aspect of a heist goes wrong, adding interest and tension without immediately ending the heist. In a game setting, the GM should specifically plan for fun twists by examining every phase and step of a heist that a group puts together, and figure out what might go wrong and how NPCs would react. In many instances in which a single die roll might make or break a task, consider treating a failure as a lesser degree of success, a time delay, or a success that comes at a heavy cost. As always, GMs should reward smart thinking and good roleplaying by the characters over punishing them for bad die rolls.

For example, if a task requires a character with a high Diplomacy skill to lure a guard away to a game of cards so that his confederates can sneak into the vault, a failed check may mean the guard wants to get other guards in on the game, too, forcing the character to really pour on the charm to the whole lot of them, rather than having the guard adamantly refuse and detect the effort.

The players might come up with their own contingency plans during the planning stage. Because heists in fiction tend to have twists and turns that require the crew to be cleverer than their opposition, be forgiving with the details when contingencies come up. Assume that the characters did have some ideas in their back pockets, and play a little loose with the rules if necessary. GMs might allow each player one contingency they have set up for the heist (typically for a moderate or complex heist). When the plan hits a snag, the characters involved can call in their contingency—turns out they had planned for just such a situation, and had the proper tools, documents, or knowledge at hand to meet the challenge. This doesn’t let them overcome an obstacle automatically, but might let them try again after a failure or attempt a check they wouldn’t have been able to even try without the advantage they revealed with their contingency.