#heister

Funny heister fellas Part 1-5

A Sheep in Wolfs Clothing

It’s christmas at the safehouse...not really, there was no snow because it would take another 1GB to update the game for a snow map.

Any thug with a sharp stick can rob a person, any thief with a set of lockpicks can break into a place. However, the most infamous and legendary acts of larceny are so amazing because of how difficult they are, the danger involved, and the sheer planning involved for it to even be possible. These heists are almost works of art in their own right, and at the center of them is a particular sort of rogue, oftentimes called a heister.

Despite their specialization being tied to such acts, all of these rogues recognize that a heist rarely succeeds because of only one person, instead gathering a group of like-minded allies, each with their own skill set, doing their own part to strip away the defenses of their target, making it as easy as possible to let the heister do their job and get out.

While not as dramatic as a phantom thief, heisters may very well be the most notorious, even if their true identities are never known, their exploits make them infamous.

 Expert lockpicks, these rogues are skilled at using improvised tools to open locks, a handy skill when carrying a proper thieves’ tool set would not be possible, such as when wearing clothing that leaves little room for storing them as part of a disguise.

Sometimes a heist involves slipping through an entrance typically thought of as impassable, flattening themselves as much as possible to slip through, and even dislocating their shoulders to worm through gaps as big as their head.

At home in cities and the underground, or more specifically, buildings, underground complexes, and the like, and learn to masterfuly hide almost anywhere within, using detritus and architecture to keep hidden.

The talents associated with heisters typically involve speed, performing their various tasks with haste and agility, all the better to make use of limited time.

Interested in planning a heist in your game, try out this archetype or suggest it to your players. Used with the guidelines for heists in Ultimate Intrigue, the very same book this archetype comes from, you should be able to get a lot of fun out of it. I could recommend pretty much any sort of rogue build, both unchained and vanilla, to go with this archetype, so go as specialized or broad-focused as you like and discuss with the rest of your players on how to create a party with diverse skills.

 Running a heist is very different than simply marching into a dungeon and slaying all that is in your path. With that in mind, many heisters may be more cerebral than bloodthirsty, quietly collecting data with every act to use later if they need to.

  Surrounded by fields of webbing, and guarded by both mundane and magical arachnids alike, the drow palace of Tsenatassen seems inpenetrable, but that’s exactly what the adventuring company Nurdicar’s Ne’er do Wells plan to disprove with a heist, going after the legendary circlet of spiders. One slip-up, however, could spell any one of a myriad of dooms.

 The Vault of Ordilae has been robbed, and without being noticed for weeks to boot! As such, all material trails have gone cold. However, a divination spell reveals that one of the perpetrators was none other than Hemensio Ordilae, the young heir to the family fortune! Is this some elaborate illusion, or did he truly have some involvement with the crime?