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.

 

[carmachu]

This makes no sense. The price point is $10 less.

If we’re citing outlier purchase situations, then I can wait a year and get it for $50. Or buy it from a friend in a couple of years for $20. Or get it as a gift for free. The point is, the book costs less.

It makes no sense to you, because youre unwilling to listen and understand.

You keep repeating over and over its $10 less. To you. To others who wait, its $10 to $20 more

 

[Staffan]

It makes no sense to you, because youre unwilling to listen and understand.

You keep repeating over and over its $10 less. To you. To others who wait, its $10 to $20 more

You're comparing an MSRP of $80 to a price of $60-70, which presumably includes then includes some form of discount from the MSRP of 3 x $30 = $90. Wouldn't whoever discounted the current model have a similar discount for the new one?

 

[Morrus]

It makes no sense to you, because youre unwilling to listen and understand.

Knock off the ad-hominems, please. If you're unclear about the rules, you can review them here.

You keep repeating over and over its $10 less. To you. To others who wait, its $10 to $20 more

But why have you decided that the softcovers get cheaper when you wait, but the hardcovers for some reason won't? If you want them cheaper than RRP, then wait and buy them cheaper than RRP, just like you do with the softcovers.

 

[GreyLord]

But why have you decided that the softcovers get cheaper when you wait, but the hardcovers for some reason won't? If you want them cheaper than RRP, then wait and buy them cheaper than RRP, just like you do with the softcovers.

I think it depends on buying habits.

For me it will utlimately be more expensive. When I play we generally only go up to around level 6 at maximum.

I like the low level games for the system. That means that I read through descriptions of the APs very carefully. I normally only buy the first, or the first two of an AP and no more. I do this with APs that sound like they could be easily adapted to be an entire campaign with only the first few books.

So, for what I need it would be 30-60 USD. Obviously 80 USD is more than that and includes stuff that I would probably not use in my adventures.

In that light, it could be more expensive.

The cheapest though is to get things via Humble Bundle. A 50 USD splurge there with most of what they have when they come out equals a lot more overall. I've gotten APs that I will probably never run (as I said, I like to keep to the first few levels of the game with PF2e) as they have things that go far beyond what I want...or...at times even the first portions cannot be adequately resolved on their own to make a complete adventure in the first one or two books of an AP.

PS: I'm a sucker for hardcover APs though, so it probably won't matter in the end...I'll just buy the hardcovers even if they cost more than what I would have spent in the past on an AP.

 

[nevin]

They're $30 monthly, so $80 every 3 months saves you $10 off the existing price, saves you 2 shipping charges (~$15 for me), and you get a hardcover instead of a softcover. IMO that's a huge upgrade all around and something I asked for when they had a survey not too long ago asking for feedback.

problem is it leaves the realm of impulse purchase now. Id love to see the number of people that buy one or two but not all three of the quarterly softcovers. I'll be interested to see if they increase profits or not taking out the cheaper option for someone that may only be interested in part of the quarter's product.

 

[Velderan]

problem is it leaves the realm of impulse purchase now. Id love to see the number of people that buy one or two but not all three of the quarterly softcovers. I'll be interested to see if they increase profits or not taking out the cheaper option for someone that may only be interested in part of the quarter's product.

Considering none of us have the slightest idea how many books Paizo is selling, it is worth reading what James Jacobs wrote in this thread to better understand why they're doing this. We at least know those impulse book 1 purchases you mention end up making it hard to predict how many book 2 and 3s to order, while still being the same cost for writing, art, and such.

Considering they already shifted from a 1-20 6 volume model to a 1-10 or 11-20 3 volume model to trim down on later books not selling as well, this is really the only move left to deal with later books selling worse than book 1s.

 

[Velderan]

Ah! Further incentive to keep it up then.

Looks like we have some clariry on the Foundry discount if you have the PDF in your library.

paizo.com - Community / Paizo Blog

Foundry VTT: We’ve been offering two different versions of Foundry VTT products: one that includes the PDF and the code together, and one that offers just the code at a discount for customers who already owned the PDF. The new store unfortunately can’t support gating a product behind PDF ownership, so we’ll be offering our Foundry modules exclusively as code-only items and pricing them similarly to the code-only Paizo products already available for purchase on the official Foundry storefront.

While that does mean that our existing PDF + Foundry bundles and discounts for PDF ownership will be going away with the launch of the new store, we fully plan to explore new options in the near future that can offer a similar combined value to customers who invest deeply into digital content.

The existing PDF discounts will remain in place until the launch of the new store, so if you already own the PDFs for any FVTT products you've been planning to pick up, you still have a chance to get them at a substantial discount!