Paizo Ends Pathfinder Adventure Path Softcovers, Switching to Quarterly Model

Paizo is ending its line of monthly Pathfinder Adventure Paths, with a new quarterly hardcover replacing the long-running product. Paizo announced the change yesterday on its blog, with the shift beginning next year. The new hardcover Adventure Paths will be a minimum of 256 pages and will have a retail price of $79.99, which is cheaper than the cost of purchasing four softcover adventure paths. Paizo also stated that they'll release one Adventure Path starting at Level 1, another ending at Level 20, with the remaining two falling somewhere in between. Each Adventure Path will cover 9-10 levels of play.

The first two Adventure Paths announced for this format are Hellbreakers and Hell's Destiny, which both cover the upcoming war between Andoran and Cheliax.

The Pathfinder Adventure Paths series started as an evolution of Paizo's monthly Pathfinder magazine series. To date, Paizo has released 222 Pathfinder Adventure Paths. Early Pathfinder Adventure Paths were for campaigns that lasted six issues and typically encompassed Level 1-Level 20 play. However, more recently, the Adventure Path structure has shortened and grown more flexible, with shorter length campaigns with more variable levels of play.

 

[Parmandur]

WotC does not set the industry standard prices. They are a complete outlier because they produce a volume an order of magnitude beyond anyone else in the industry.

Right, but you cited other companies.

 

[Reynard]

Right, but you cited other companies.

Right. The industry standard seems to be around $65 or more. So, yeah, $80 is ahead, but it is still less than what existing customers would have paid for the same material.

 

[chuckdee]

Core rulebooks are absurdly good value for money. Everything else drops off massively. Provided you actually play through most of the adventure in each of these volumes, yes, they'll be good value. But looking at the campaign books on my shelves, there are almost none that make the cut.

I general, core books are priced to be a loss leader. Well, not a loss, but definitely not priced as aggressively as supplements which everyone won't get.

 

[chuckdee]

Right. The industry standard seems to be around $65 or more. So, yeah, $80 is ahead, but it is still less than what existing customers would have paid for the same material.

I don't even see it as ahead if you compare it to how it was priced before.

 

[payn]

Don't get me wrong, TTRPGs are still a great deal even at that price. And I'm sure PF2E peeps will get their money worth, and the subscripers sound like they will dave money due to shipping, and $30 per softcover actually is closer to my expectations than $80 for a hardcover.

But, no, 256 pages of Adventure material is not really more than what other companies are doing at this point, while $80 is a jump ahead of the pack. I'm sure thst has more to do with broader economic headwinds than anything else...but that's a rapid jump, outpacing inflation. Princes of the Apocalypse was a packed 256 page Adventure book in 2015 for the equivalent of about $68 in 2025 money, whereas $79.99 today would have been nearly $60 a decade ago. So, ahead of the general curve.

Minimum of 256 page count and likely higher. You get the free PDF and VTT module discount as well. I know this is a matter of opinion, but id take 100 pages of Paizo over 300 pages of WotC adventures. They are just simply better at it.

 

[Velderan]

Right. The industry standard seems to be around $65 or more. So, yeah, $80 is ahead, but it is still less than what existing customers would have paid for the same material.

Paizo announced a standard price of $70 on 256 page books about 2 years ago when they revised their pricing structure, so I'm guessing current economic issues is making them revise that. I would rather they do that then pull a TSR and sell products at unsustainable prices and go out of business. As you said for existing customers it's a slight cost savings on what they were already buying so I'm not sure why people are complaining, unless you (general you) were someone who liked to buy individual books and piecemeal an adventure together.

 

[Reynard]

Something else that this may do: perhaps these adventures will be more cohesive and built with more internal consistency -- at least 3 chapters at a time.

 

[Alzrius]

This announcement says that Paizo has released 222 Adventure Paths in the monthly, softcover format, which they'll cease doing at the end of this year. But their release schedule makes it seem like the last one will be AP #221. Did I miss something?

 

[Velderan]

Something else that this may do: perhaps these adventures will be more cohesive and built with more internal consistency -- at least 3 chapters at a time.

I hope so.

In Stolen Fate at times it references something that is planned to happen in the next softcover book, but because (presumably) it hasn't been finished yet they can't say which page or encounter number. That means you can't look ahead to see what they're talking about so you have more info to answer questions the players might ask without potentially creating a conflict in lore that you need to address later. I don't recall that happening in Abomination Vaults when I ran it off of the single hardcover book/Foundry module, but I also don't have the individual softcovers of AV to compare material with.

 

[kermit4karate]

It might be the standard, but big, beautiful, full-color RPG books are underpriced at $50-60. For RPG companies to make a more sustainable profit, they should be charging more. They often don't, because they know they will get this exact reaction.

Prices are going up on everything for a variety of reasons (tariffs, cough), but RPG hardcovers have been underpriced for quite some time.

I'm assuming that part of Paizo's reasons on the format change and pricing is to correct that imbalance. $80 for a hardcover RPG book is a lot, but it IS cheaper than the equivalent softcover books and will (probably) be a quality book.

Well then why not release it twice a year instead and charge $150? Additional $10 savings, right?

Answer: because sometimes it's easier to shell out a smaller amount from time to time than a larger amount ever.

I'll miss the monthly softcovers myself.