D&D 5E Golden Vault - need help preparing for going off-script *SPOILERS*

Hi all,

I am currently running "Vidorant's Vault" from the Keys from the Golden Vault anthology. SPOILERS AHEAD!

If you're unfamiliar with that adventure, it involves two former partners-in-crime, a dwarf named Goldenbeard and an elf named Vidorant, who have had a falling out. Goldenbeard hires the PCs to break into Vidorant's treasure vault to steal an heirloom diadem. My PCs managed to get the diadem, but they triggered an alarm in the process that brought Vidorant to investigate. She confronted them and made them a counter-offer: some magic items in exchange for letting her keep the diadem and telling Goldenbeard that her vault is impenetrable so he'll stop sending thieves to try and break in.

The PCs declined the counter-offer and attempted to get away with the diadem, which they'd placed in their bag of holding. I decided to use the Enchanting Infiltrator stat block from The Book of Many Things for Vidorant instead of the generic Assassin stat block. Vidorant managed to use her Beguiling Whispers action to stun the PC carrying the bag. She then took it off him and made a run for it. The PCs took too long to start following her, so she managed to get out of the vault and could now be pretty much anywhere. What's more, the party is now split!

Here's the situation as it currently stands:

The PCs do not know where Vidorant is. She has their magic bag, which has their surplus magic items plus a few other valuables (along with the stolen diadem) in it. We did establish prior to the heist that Vidorant had been hosting a soirée at her mansion (she masquerades as a wealthy socialite). The vault the PCs broke into is her high-security treasure depository. I think it would be unlikely that she would have somewhere else as secure to stash loot, but she might have some secret "loot drops" around the city, and she might have a safe in her mansion.

The vengeance paladin managed to make it out onto the vault balcony (the inside of the vault is warded against teleportation magic) and misty stepped to the roof of a building across the road. She is badly injured, even after using Lay on Hands on herself, and intends to drop down to the alley behind the building and make her way back to the party's inn to wait for the others.

The shadow monk attempted to pursue Vidorant but lost her trail in the room with the secret door to the outside (he didn't pause long enough to look for secret doors because of all the guards). He's so fast that he managed to get out and through the front door before all the guards could stop him. He then shadow stepped back up onto the balcony and went into Vidorant's office to rescue the armorer artificer, who is the one who'd been stunned and then relieved of the magic bag. He had been taken out by guards but had self-stabilized. The monk revived him with a healing potion. They can probably get away.

The swarmkeeper ranger is alone in the middle of the ground floor of the vault (which they didn't scout beforehand, so it's unfamiliar terrain for her). There are numerous guards (all of whom use the veteran stat block) and an invisible stalker nearby. I suspect she will either be taken prisoner or die trying to escape. (If she goes back the way she came, the invisible stalker will attack her.)

The players want to regroup at the inn, take a long rest, then go to Vidorant's mansion in the morning, where the paladin will cast Locate Object to see if their magic bag is inside. (The spell has a radius of 1000 feet ... but given that I am running this in Eberron, there may be a way to amplify the radius somehow, perhaps with a dragonshard or something. They could also potentially hire a House Tharashk agent to help them track down Vidorant and/or their magic bag.)

If you were in my shoes, what plans would you make and where would you focus your prep time for your next session?

We're very much off-script, and I'm just not sure what to do. I'd like to give the players a fun time as they seek to recover their stuff. I don't want to just say, "You can't find Vidorant or get your magic bag back." That being said, I wouldn't mind if they lost a few of their extra magic items. They do have more than they can all attune to.

I also think that Vidorant, being a master thief, would be able to acknowledge that the PCs are skilled infiltrators. She would not want to make enemies of them, as they might become a thorn in her side. So she might be willing to 'make peace' by returning their stuff (sans the diadem) if they promise not to bother her again. She might also have stayed nearby to observe how things went at her vault rather than run all the way back to her party.

Perhaps Vidorant stashes the magic bag somewhere she considers "safe" then heads back to the party, and if the PCs do indeed wait till morning to go to her mansion, she can negotiate with them without having to worry that they'll just beat her up and take back their stuff that way.

I'm also not sure what effect capturing one (or more) of the PCs would have on the situation.

I would very much appreciate your thoughts and advice! (Let me know if there's anything more you'd want to know.)

Thanks,
Jonathan

I'm thinking what I might do is this:

In the vault room that has the secret door to the outside there is also a concealed pit trap. What if Vidorant quickly dumped the magic bag in the pit and closed it up before slipping out the secret door? I think she would have had time since the PCs tarried fighting her guards for a few rounds before deciding to chase after her.

I'll have Vidorant cross paths with the paladin as she slinks back to the inn. She'll taunt her about a Silver Flame templar running away (and maybe also remark about a Silver Flame templar turning to thievery). She'll attempt to negotiate with the paladin alone: "You guys are good, but I did warn you ... Look: I'll give you your bag back, minus the diadem and a few choice pieces, if you promise to go back to Goldenbeard and tell him my vault is impenetrable. And then you have to promise never to show up around here again."

Vidorant might just let the paladin go and nurse her wounds and wait for her companions. If one or more of them gets captured, that will just give Vidorant more negotiating power later on: "I'll give you your bag back and let your friend/s go ... if you tell Goldenbeard to stop sending thieves my way, and you promise never to come back."

Theoretically, if the PCs make it out and get back together and then think to circle back to the vault, the paladin could cast Locate Object and they could retrieve the bag from the pit trap without too much trouble.

I've been looking for an opportunity to give the paladin and her player some more spotlight time and challenge what it means to be a Silver Flame "dark knight". (Having a Silver Flame templar as part of a group of "do gooder" thieves is a bit weird, so I'd love to have the chance to ponder that in-game.)

I think the elf speaking with the paladin alone first would be a good first tactic, especially because you could wrap this up nice and quick if your players really weren't interested in expending this adventure by trying to track Vidorant down.

If the paladin says 'No' though and you need to figure out what to prep after that... an interesting and fun idea might be for rather than having the bag of holding being the only item the players need to hunt for (whether via locate object or a Tharashk hireling)... what about if Vidorant actually returns to the location and then empties the bag of holding of all their stuff... and then just hides all their own magic items all over the vault area? So if/when the party arrives to find their bag of holding... maybe the bag sits in the center of the foyer on the floor along with one of their important magic items next to it? Then when they check the bag and find it empty... they see a second item of theirs on a shelf somewhere else in the room? And then in the next room they find a third item? And in the next room a fourth, and so on... thus forcing the party to have to to hunt down and reclaim all their own items? Searching all the different rooms trying to find all their own crap? By the time that wraps up, they might be so sick of trudging through Vidorant's vault location that if there was a note on one of the last items that restated her request of the paladin of "take your stuff and just leave, and tell the dwarf you couldn't get in... and we'll call it even", they might agree at this point just to end this whole adventure. ;-)

Nothing would be worse for treasure hunters than having to waste all their time hunting only for treasure they themselves had already previously gotten. But you get to have some fun by choosing different rooms and places within these rooms to place all their stuff, making them having to actually "search" each room to find their own goods like an irritating Easter Egg hunt. And then at the end if the party finally gives up after reclaiming a lot of their stuff because they are just tired of the whole experience... any items they ended up not finding just get "claimed" by Vidorant as payment for the party putting her through all this.

I didn't run this particular adventure, but it looks to me like an opportunity to go for a classic heist movie double-cross. Vidorant (in the guise of evil crime boss) offers to return the party's stuff, and not have them killed, if they will do a job for her. Pick something else from the book. The PCs will want to do a double-cross, where they get their stuff back (and land Vidorant in it) without handing over the McGuffin.

However, I would also borrow-and-repurpose a mansion from another adventure (there are quite a few you could use) so I don't have to say "you can't do that" if the players want to have a go at her mansion.

DEFCON 1 said:

If the paladin says 'No' though and you need to figure out what to prep after that... an interesting and fun idea might be for rather than having the bag of holding being the only item the players need to hunt for (whether via locate object or a Tharashk hireling)... what about if Vidorant actually returns to the location and then empties the bag of holding of all their stuff... and then just hides all their own magic items all over the vault area? So if/when the party arrives to find their bag of holding... maybe the bag sits in the center of the foyer on the floor along with one of their important magic items next to it? Then when they check the bag and find it empty... they see a second item of theirs on a shelf somewhere else in the room? And then in the next room they find a third item? And in the next room a fourth, and so on... thus forcing the party to have to to hunt down and reclaim all their own items? Searching all the different rooms trying to find all their own crap? By the time that wraps up, they might be so sick of trudging through Vidorant's vault location that if there was a note on one of the last items that restated her request of the paladin of "take your stuff and just leave, and tell the dwarf you couldn't get in... and we'll call it even", they might agree at this point just to end this whole adventure. ;-)

Nothing would be worse for treasure hunters than having to waste all their time hunting only for treasure they themselves had already previously gotten. But you get to have some fun by choosing different rooms and places within these rooms to place all their stuff, making them having to actually "search" each room to find their own goods like an irritating Easter Egg hunt. And then at the end if the party finally gives up after reclaiming a lot of their stuff because they are just tired of the whole experience... any items they ended up not finding just get "claimed" by Vidorant as payment for the party putting her through all this.

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Funny you should mention that because last night I was looking at what all they had in their bag and thinking about what could go where - for instance, they have some scrolls and potions that Vidorant could shelve in her "Potions and Scrolls" room. They have a magic dagger that she can put in her Armory. Etc. This could be a good way to use the ground floor content that the players mostly skipped over before.

Paul Farquhar said:

I didn't run this particular adventure, but it looks to me like an opportunity to go for a classic heist movie double-cross. Vidorant (in the guise of evil crime boss) offers to return the party's stuff, and not have them killed, if they will do a job for her. Pick something else from the book. The PCs will want to do a double-cross, where they get their stuff back (and land Vidorant in it) without handing over the McGuffin.

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Hmm. That's a possibility. The next one in the sequence is "Shard of the Accursed".

Paul Farquhar said:

However, I would also borrow-and-repurpose a mansion from another adventure (there are quite a few you could use) so I don't have to say "you can't do that" if the players want to have a go at her mansion.

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Yes. I might use the merchant prince mansion from Tomb of Annihilation.

pukunui said:

Yes. I might use the merchant prince mansion from Tomb of Annihilation.

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There are several mansions in Candlekeep Mysteries.

What about using the dwarf that hired them in the first place? Maybe he knows some of the old places they used to hang out or where the elf would go. This may introduce another hideout.

You could also leave a clue at the place where the elf escaped. Maybe hi dropped a note, maybe on purpose.

The elf could meet the first PC to return to the inn. I'm not sure if killing him to leave as a message to the others who did not take the deal he gave is the best action. Unless if the PCs can raise dead easy enough.

aco175 said:

What about using the dwarf that hired them in the first place? Maybe he knows some of the old places they used to hang out or where the elf would go. This may introduce another hideout.

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Goldenbeard is in Sharn. The PCs are in Starilaskur, which is nearly 1000 miles away (1.5 days via lightning rail). Yeah, I suppose they could go find the closest House Sivis message station and send him a telegram. But he basically told them when they met with him before that they were the professionals and not to "let" him tell them how to do their job.

aco175 said:

You could also leave a clue at the place where the elf escaped. Maybe hi dropped a note, maybe on purpose.

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Interestingly enough, the secret door in the back wall of Vidorant's vault is a weak point in her security. It's relatively easy to find. It's just that the PCs didn't bother to search for anything like that. They have a pet tressym that they found in the Mournland, and they often use it for scouting (with the ranger having cast Beast Sense on it first). In this case, they just had the cat do a quick fly around the building without attracting attention from the guards. It didn't get close enough to notice the secret door.

But yeah, if they go back and they even just physically go into the back alley, they should be able to find the secret door without any problems.

aco175 said:

The elf could meet the first PC to return to the inn. I'm not sure if killing him to leave as a message to the others who did not take the deal he gave is the best action. Unless if the PCs can raise dead easy enough.

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I think Vidorant is smart enough that she wouldn't want to make enemies of the PCs if she doesn't have to. I also don't feel like she's desperate enough to do something like that. I'm thinking she might let them have their beauty sleep at the inn and then send them an invitation to meet with her in the morning. She would want to show them that she is in control, not them.