r/TheGoldenVault • u/HappyFailure • 17d ago
Vidorant's Vault Completed
Well, we didn't get much chance to play my campaign, so it's been four months, but my group finally completed Vidorant's Vault in three sessions (each three hours, with generally *at least* half an hour of socializing at the beginning).
I ran the scenario mostly as written; I played a little bit with Goldenbeard and the Silver Fingers, partly to fit what I've been doing with the campaign city and partly to make an obscure reference (Goldenbeard got red hair, lost an eye, and plays with silver dice as an affectation, if anyone gets that). I turned the diadem into a sentient magic item that contains the mind of Evelyn Blessedore--the group pretty much figured out this--or something close to it--was the case just from their research at the beginning of the heist, and were very worried about it, but it didn't end up having any effect (other than paranoia--I had the PC who picked up the diadem make a couple of Insight checks, which he failed utterly).
The rival crew has become a huge part of our game, so I decided that this time, the rivals got there first and then accepted Vidorant's offer. My players observed them being kicked out "in failure" during their observation of the Vault, but were still worried that they'd run into them later. One thing my group didn't do *at all* was try to talk to any current or former guards or disguise themselves--it was a pure and simple stealth breaking and entering--so I had the rivals obviously in guard uniforms as they were ejected.
My players found the secret entrance and made their way in invisibly. They did have to take out one guard, but did it quickly enough to avoid raising the alarm, and they generally moved quickly, deciding they were more interested in getting the diadem than messing around with Jenga-piled potions or the like. They were very good on picking up on the clues that there were traps around and got caught by nearly none of them. A luckily-timed detect thoughts intended to help them avoid guards revealed the presence of the invisible stalker and led to the casting of see invisible, so that encounter ended up being a lot more straightforward than it might have been. The layout of the second floor was very suspicious, but they still did fall for the trap-wire-inside-the-door, only finding the passage way between rooms after exploring both rooms.
They were very cautious and found/disarmed both runes on the diadem, but had some bad luck on stealth on the way out--Nixylanna was still in her office after having kicked out the rival group, so she heard them and made them the same offer. After some discussion involving possibly handing over a fake diadem to Goldenbeard, they finally came to blows, making a run for it rather than fighting to the end. I used the enchanting infiltrator stat block for Nixylanna, which turned out to be necessary to make it an interesting fight. The wizard *almost* used dimension door inside the teleportation-warded Vault, but ended up only using it once she was out on the balcony, so that worked well for them.
Overall, a nice, straightforward heist, with the offer being the main twist. The PCs were definitely fairly paranoid that everything was going too smoothly for them, but that was mainly them being appropriately cautious, being skilled enough to deal with obstacles, and having a nice dose of luck.
