I finally started this campaign in 2020 and my play group just started this book. We've been having a ton of fun so far, and I've added some story bits to help fill out some of the down time.
One question I had was regarding the chariot race: do the group of PCs win as long as one PC wins, or should I keep the winner individual?
Also, I have 6 players - what's a good way to scale the library research for 6 players (arcanist, alchemist, druid, cleric, fighter, and barbarian)? At this point, I've increased the complexity DC of each library stack by +1-+3, and added 2d10 kp, but the scaling of the kp unlock amounts are very subjective and manual. Not sure if there's any better ideas.
Finally, I've read lots of posts here on the nameless assassin attacks being confusing. I'm not sure if I read it correctly now, but I was assuming that one assassin drops down on a PC from a roof at point A with the studied death attack (which would be melee), and then that assassin high tails it through the alleys to point B, where the other two assassins were waiting to ambush with ranged attacks from the rooftops. But everyone else here seems to have read it very differently.
Thoughts?
PCs win. But this is an odd question so it makes me wonder what you think the difference is. Either way wouldn't Mumminafrah actually provide assistance to the group? As for the rewards of a more tangible nature it would be that the winning chariot would get what they get and then it's up to the group to decide how the rewards are given out.
In my group one pair of players won, the others didn't. It wasn't an issue.
I think I misread the Winning the Race paragraph. For some reason I thought that it said all the PCs had to finish the race within 10 rounds to win, but then at least one PC had to do it within 10 rounds...I just got overly confused.
My group will be starting the library research at our next session this Friday, so I'm just guessing that it will go quickly. It's a high knowledge group, even the cleric and fighter. The research mechanic is maybe my favorite part of this AP, so I don't want to just blaze through it, but I understand your points. It doesn't really matter how quickly it goes, but I was curious if anyone had worked through scaling it up any before me.
Thanks!
For the library, you could increase the.... I don't remember what they're called.... the various amount of points you need to learn things.... you could set them 50% higher to make up for a 50% larger group.
(But as Asciiman said, it doesn't really make a difference. Having it take longer means you could send them on more side-quests though. One of my players spec their character to go through the knowledge checks as fast as possible and when he found out the group "missed out" on quests he was upset.)
Or increase the DCs by 5 or something and allow everyone to assist in the checks.
Okay so with a full session of research complete, my group is being the most. Three days of research with different players researching each day and two of them focusing on much more personal interests. Also had to deal with druids Ancestral Memory(?) spell when he's basically a first generation immigrant from Tian Xia.
They did clear out the research from the Outer Stacks and found out about the Spiral Archive (but not where it is yet, lol), and the party leader fighter has been trying to gain audience with the haty-a just to update on the Wati undead situation (not even mentioning Hakotep yet). The pacing is seeming to go okay, it's just a lot of split-party management as they go. They're about to meet Muminofrah.
Old, tightly-packed, hidden library made sense to me so I didn't think anything of it.