I am currently making my way through the first book in the Legacy of Fire AP and I was wondering if/when the pcs will find them selves in Katapesh?
Thanks for the help!
I am currently making my way through the first book in the Legacy of Fire AP and I was wondering if/when the pcs will find them selves in Katapesh?
Thanks for the help!
Playing or GMing?
Until I know your spoiler level, all I can say is "toward the middle."
I am currently making my way through the first book in the Legacy of Fire AP and I was wondering if/when the pcs will find them selves in Katapesh?
Thanks for the help!
Playing or GMing?
Until I know your spoiler level, all I can say is "toward the middle."
GMing
There's plenty of time between the 1st and 2nd books for a jaunt to the capital. Otherwise...
The third book is arguably set in Katapesh, but as written doesn't really allow the players to range free across the city and enjoy it. That's one of many issues I have with that volume. Add to this the fact that the next two volumes (4 and 5) deny the PCs a meaningful shopping trip at the very levels and in the AP where they'd expect to be able to shop most! Yuck.
I scrapped book 3 as written and made the entire segment about Katapesh, including a run-in with the pactmasters over the scroll of Kakishon and a 50-item random marketplace encounter table.
Book 3 is such a non sequitur that I'm dumping it as well. The good news is that there isn't any particular timeline for the first three books so it's not a big deal to break for a caravan to Katapesh City. I actually started my campaign there with an introductory adventure.
That said, my players have spent as much time in Solku as it is closer to Kelmarane if not as big a market as the capital. I'm looking forward to seeing Solku in the new Towns of the Inner Sea setting book.
Probably too late to help, but I'm running a group through the adventure, and I didn't scrap the Katapesh city part. There's really not much in the body of the adventure to give you the flavor of being in the City of Katapesh. It just says "Send your players out into the market, and at some point they meet these people." That kind of ramps up the difficulty level of the module, but a dedicated GM can improvise. Fortunately, there are many other resources for Katapesh outside of the adventure. The back matter itself gives some locations and hooks to amuse the players while Rayhan does his research.
I kept the module as written, including the dinner party. However, in the mean time, to build up to the dinner party, I spent four or five sessions to let the wander around in Katapesh and let them discover things. Depending on how long your sessions are that will give them the feeling that a) the research is really long and difficult, and b) Katapesh is a very cool place.
There's a whole book on Katapesh, so I just pulled things at random out of there. Between the back matter on the markets and the Dark Markets supplement, there's so much to do that you can pick and choose things tailored to your party. I also pulled the Brazen Clutch from Dragons Unleashed.
A side note: two of the players had the idea that they should put magic aura on a masterwork sword and sell it for about 3 times its worth. This started a fight in the party, because one of the players felt that made them bad people. So the next day when they went into the market, I made it so that they saw a person tied up in a pillory, with the sign saying "FRAUD" hanging around his neck, and people in the market throwing rotten food and the occasional rock at him. I figured Katapesh has probably seen that trick before. I explicitly told them that I wasn't trying to stop them from doing it, but now they know that they're not the first ones to come up with the idea.