Spot check help

[Hairy Minotaur]

Hello,

The PCs have been tasked with tracking down an individual at a large party (3000+ attendees at a large estate). What kind of Spot/hide check modifiers do you think would be appropriate? both the PCs and their quary have seen each other before, the party will do it's best to hide and try to locate this individual. The "victim" has lots of enemies and would be on "high" alert and the presence of the PCs at this party would be out of the ordinary.

The party is on a time limit and so can't take 20s on spot checks all night in hopes of locating this individual. Should there be a negative hide check modifier if they try to hide and spot at the same time? How hard would it be to locate 1 man amid thousands in a finite space?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Demoquin]

Do you have the area mapped out? If so, i would put him in one area then have the PCs freely walk the map, in hopes of finding him. If the PCs are in the general vicinity, have the victim make Spot check vs party and vice versa. If the vicitm sees the party and bolts, i would give the party another spot check with a bonus.

After a given time, move him to another area of the city then repeat until night or has been found. If the night goes by ... if i was the victim i wouldnt be in town anymore.