Introducing Paizo Plus

Oh this works really well for me I think. I objectively spend a lot of money but didn't get advantage since I'm only gonna be subbed to 3 lines.

What is Paizo doing associating with twitter in any way? Offering any sort of reward for supporting something as hateful and bigoted as twitter is disgusting.

Will Venture Captains have to purchase scenarios with gold now? There's a chance that could cripple my local Society.

No, the Venture Officer scenario grants are unaffected by the new rewards system.

I like the look of the webpage.

After rollout of the new store, could there be a chance for more redemption options?

For example, redeeming 1,000 gold to throw a coconut cream pie at Cosmo?

Looking forward to the new store page?

I'm confused by the people who have a problem with transitioning from the free scenarios to the gold that is enough to get those scenarios anyway. Specifically if the only criticism is the loss of that automation. An extra step is added there, but now we get to spend that gold on discounts for whatever else we want. Pretty easy net positive! And an extra net positive for those of us that unfortunately don't get much mileage out of society scenarios.

I should say that I think this will A.) Incetivise me to buy from Paizo directly, and B.) Reward me for doing so. So: success!

But, maybe you should stop associating with the racists and homophobes at twitter. And you should probably not reward others for doing so.

Looks like you'll need to be spending approximately $340 at once to make 500 gold for 10% off to have the same value as just redeeming it for straight money.

So if you're just barely skirting Legendary, you'll get about 1000 gold a year to spend, which hopefully can be spent on subscriptions. There's a threshold where just barely being legendary and just taking sub discounts isn't sustainable - your discounts will cost you the status.

I think if you spend $850 per year(so $1000 before the 15% discount), you can then turn your ~1275 points into $85 worth of discounts and still be above 750.

The amount you have to spend to keep legendary against the cash discounts climbs slightly with the extra gold earning activities like reviews and birthday.

If you just take free scenarios then they don't count against you.

I like doing math :)

I think I'm pretty good with this. Quick question, would foundry purchases count toward gold/tiers, or only books/pdfs? Can gold be spent to purchase foundry scenarios?

Yeah loss of automation for the free society stuff is a bad move for me, and frankly this does nothing but make stockholders feel good. It is what it is.

What stockholders? Paizo isn't a publicly traded company.

Yeah loss of automation for the free society stuff is a bad move for me, and frankly this does nothing but make stockholders feel good. It is what it is.

It's kinda wild to say 'this does nothing but make stockholders feel good' when it's better for anyone without several subscriptions, which themselves are pretty absurdly expensive if you live anywhere but North America. This benefits plenty of people - perhaps at the cost of long-time subscribers to multiple lines, and I understand that frustration. But it is noticeably better for many, many people too.

This really looks like a much worse system for me and will probably lead me to drop some subs.

I absolutely hate having to manually manage/apply the discount to the society scenarios.

Ok, I went back and made full calculations based on my own last 12 month.
For the full 12 months (from this June back to last July), I spent ~1025.19$. I made a mistake before, I have 5 subs. Oops. (I didn't count a couple of digital fictions I would have bought with my extra gold, if it was available.)
27% was from accessories,
25% was from AP,
18% was from Lost Omen,
11% was from rulebook,
9% was from Adventures, and
9% was from non-sub purchases.

That would be 1537.78 gold (assuming they count decimals...) +25 birthday bonus. More than enough for all society scenarios, and between 30$ and 35$ off of other purchases (or 10% off of a very big purchase, which has the potential to be more), OR 100$ off total from anything, or 3x 10% off, if you don't want the society scenarios.

Also to note, my AP purchases have been made under the legacy 30% off, it would be ~50$ higher if it was just the 15% from Legendary, and thus a bit more gold. xD We don't know what will happen to the old legacy advantage, but looking at the numbers, the impact is lower than I expected if lost. The rest of my purchases are all made under the base 15% discount I have.

There's also the caveat that we have seen the remaster of the spell cards in the last 12 month, that HAVE inflated the Accessory line a bit. The next 12 months will probably be more representative. (And I'll probably start buying Starfinder books too because of the inter compatibility, so... yeah... xD )

Ooooh, I hate so much of this.

Announcing items exclusive to higher tiers to drive up fomo-based anxiety.
Teasing that some special rewards will require gold (along with money) to purchase encourages hoarding gold, which runs opposed to the stated value proposition of the system of saving the consumer money by buying direct and spending that gold.
That same gold expiring a year after creation so mild to moderate consumers don't actually benefit from the new system at all.

Encouraging cutting the LGS out of the supply chain.

Making reward redemption manual instead of automatic, making it more likely that gold expires so the actual value is the rewards received are less, even if the theoretical value is higher.

I do heavily dislike the legendary loot, auto-expire and spend-more-to-earn-more features (reminds me of google, and that is seldom a plus), but looking as I am not the target audience (for now) I just hope it turns out well for the community.

On the Plus side, I love the sneak peek!

I am anything but thrilled about rewarding people to follow Paizo on a lot of platforms, that feels more like something a free-to-play game would do.

There are other aspects I do not love but those get the strongest gut reaction right now.

I think I'm pretty positive about all the changes generally, they'll benefit most people a decent amount it seems. The one thing that does strike me as a slightly less than ideal is the gold expiring after 12 months as Ectar bought up, 24-36 months tends to be more common for loyalty programs precisely because a year can be too short a time for average customers to collect much to make use of and thus instead of an incentive it actually feels like a punishment to the consumer, the exact opposite of the marketing intent. I'd hope that Paizo might consider extending the time before expiry into that range to help out their smaller spending, but consistent customers.

I was concerned when I saw that this system was being changed back in the April blog post, and now it's being described exactly as I feared. I just want good deals on quality RPG materials. I do not want to go through the same hoops as someone playing a mobile game.

I am certain with my subs I will likely be legendary but I still really don't like this. I will come back later to be more detailed. But for now I really hate points. The fact that they expire is the worst, it is literally designed in a way to hope you don't use it and leave money on the table.

I barely use the free Society scenarios but I would still rather get them than not and have to use points for them, because holding on to the points and not spending them and having them expire because I waited or didn't have the money to mix with gold to buy something at the moment so you just miss out.

Jim Butler wrote:

Tikael wrote:

Also, what does this mean for those of us with legacy advantage?

If you have a Legacy Adventure Path subscription, you will have the same subscription when we switch over to the new system.

-Jim

Does the 30% discount remain?

Yes it does.

-Jim

I'm guessing you can only use one gold-based reward per purchase?
That would be expected, but being able to redeem, for example, multiple $10 rewards in one purchase would improve my disposition towards the system a fair amount.

Hello,

To start with, I Have a question on what we can buy on this store with credits ? Will this include anything on the store, including digital product, including foundryVTT products, Flip-Mat, etc…

When you use your gold to purchase a coupon for $XX off, it is subtracted from the total purchase price rather than tying it to individual products. So yes, you can use the gold for all your paizo.com purchases, regardless of digital, physical, etc.

Before expressing negative thought I need to understand, does customer last 12 month’s purchases before the start of Paizo+ be taken into account for their initial tier calculation ?

Yes, we will use the last 12 months of purchase history to determine your initial tier.

One last question , which may be unrelated, will the store be a able to manage special editions ( like sketch cover or retailer edition) so that we can replace our subscription edition with the special editions ?

To be honnest on this, the customer service is wonderfull, friendly and they are proffessionnal but it’s a bit of an overhead to annoy them each month for this. It’d be more straightforward

You will be able to manage your subscriptions directly through the website. That includes swapping from hardcover to Special Edition or Pocket Editions. I'll cover that in the next blog.

-Jim

Does the 10% discount apply to 1 item bought in a cart, or to one full cart? Am I correct in understanding that if someone gets to Legendary, the 10% would not stack meaning there shouldn't be a use for that reward any longer? It also sounds like the gold discounts affect single items, so if you spend to get a society boon, to pay for a 9 dollar adventure, it would make it free. But would it discount a second adventure by 1 dollar if you chose to put both in the cart, or would that second one be full price.

Glad to hear it sounds like the past purchases in the past year will be used to calculate proficiency at start, because it seemed hardly ideal going from several subscriptions and a discount, to staring over at the bottom and taking a while to get back close to where you were.

I will be curious to see how the AP Subscription (or even other subscriptions) may be changing, but it sounds like the free PDF is certain to stay. It sounds like any changes to Subscriptions will be a future topic as they get closer.

Ohh... here is another question, will discounts earned apply to the miniatures?

Actually, I think I'm back to not being thrilled about this.

The Society things not being automatic and instead having to spend the Gold/Loyalty program points manually is annoying, but I was already thinking about "Oh, but I can use discounts on things like Novels now" too.

However, Advantage is going away entirely? So I will need to earn 500 gold/spend $500.00 to get a 10% discount on a single purchase when I currently have a Global 15% discount which itself applies to my subscriptions?

Ow.

Just like paizo.com today, discounts do not stack. Only the highest discount applies (in your example, that would be 15%).

-Jim

As an international subscriber to four lines (so I get the free PFS scenarios) I am mostly positive about this.

I’m pretty sure I’ll start at the highest tier due to regular subscription prices (though if I were to nit-pick it would be a rare boon to international subscribers/customers if shipping were rewarded- every month the cost of shipping makes me wince but I am fortunate to have a sufficient income so I can support Paizo directly, which is why I have the subs) so I keep the 15% discount I get from Paizo Advantage. I’m assuming the 15% discount will apply to subscriptions?

I won’t automatically get the PFS scenarios and having to redeem gold to get them does feel a little clunky, but I guess the increased flexibility means that I don’t have to spend gold on them (but I will!).

Am I correct in thinking that the cheaper redemption for PFS will also apply to PFS Quests and PFS Bounties?

I agree with many others- I’m not sure you should be rewarding people for engaging with Twitter/X.

So overall I’m feeling positive about this- thanks for the time which has gone into this.

I look forward to hearing more about subscriptions and the new store front soon!

Thanks,

Tom

Does the 10% discount apply to 1 item bought in a cart, or to one full cart?

The discount applies to everything in the cart.

Am I correct in understanding that if someone gets to Legendary, the 10% would not stack meaning there shouldn't be a use for that reward any longer?

Correct.

It also sounds like the gold discounts affect single items, so if you spend to get a society boon, to pay for a 9 dollar adventure, it would make it free. But would it discount a second adventure by 1 dollar if you chose to put both in the cart, or would that second one be full price.

The discount applies to your shopping cart subtotal (before taxes and shipping charges).

Ohh... here is a questions, will discounts earned apply to the miniatures?

They will apply to all purchases you make at the Paizo Store.

-Jim

As an international subscriber to four lines (so I get the free PFS scenarios) I am mostly positive about this.

I’m pretty sure I’ll start at the highest tier due to regular subscription prices (though if I were to nit-pick it would be a rare boon to international subscribers/customers if shipping were rewarded- every month the cost of shipping makes me wince but I am fortunate to have a sufficient income so I can support Paizo directly, which is why I have the subs) so I keep the 15% discount I get from Paizo Advantage. I’m assuming the 15% discount will apply to subscriptions?

Yes.

I won’t automatically get the PFS scenarios and having to redeem gold to get them does feel a little clunky, but I guess the increased flexibility means that I don’t have to spend gold on them (but I will!).

Am I correct in thinking that the cheaper redemption for PFS will also apply to PFS Quests and PFS Bounties?

-Jim

Oh, Deer Lord wrote:

Will Venture Captains have to purchase scenarios with gold now? There's a chance that could cripple my local Society.

No, the Venture Officer scenario grants are unaffected by the new rewards system.

Thanks for the clarification, that's a big worry of mine dealt with!

I'm one of the folks this will work better for- I'm somebody who gets a lot of PDFs, and buys occasional Paizo gifts for my friends. It means I'll probably be getting a few free PFS/SFS scenarios every year, whichever ones catch my interest the most.

I’ll have to do the math, but as a heavy subscriber I think I am worse off money wise and hassle wise in terms of scenarios and discounts. I’ll probably pare back considerably if that’s the case.

Yuk. Loyalty programs and creating exclusivity is gross. Creating tiers of consumers is gross AND weird. Turning the reward “currency” into fun-timey “gold” is tacky. Then again, I’m not much of a “customer” and mostly am part of the “community”…

Given that there will also be a space on the new site to host Pay-to-Play GM’s a la Start Playing, it really seems as if the community and I are soon to part…

The most unsettling part of all of these announcements is that there hasn’t been much discussion on how/whether the forums will exist…I don’t see a tab there in the screenshot for…Community. Not that that means there won’t be such available, but the optics, insofar as this Blog is about the Store/loyalty program as opposed to the new site, are concerning.

As for which social media platform to “use”? Just don’t use them folks. If the world gets to state at which these times are able to be looked back on with any sort of clarity, social media will be remembered as a plague that infested a completely unprepared generation who then completely failed to protect the next from its mind numbing paucity.

Can we have an option to select a reward to just automatically "purchase" each time we have enough Gold? So like I can just say "every time I get 150 gold give me a $10 off coupon" (and also have said coupon automatically applied on the next purchase) and then just... forget about the whole micromanaging aspect of the system? Because doing all that manual work is going to be obnoxious when the former method was fully automatic.

Also, I agree with everyone else saying please ditch twitter, and please don't reward other people for using that hellsite. It needs to die.

I honestly prefer this new rewards system. I've only ever had 3 subscriptions, but bought hella PDFs, Foundry modules, and miscellaneous accessories outside of my subs. So I never received any type of loyalty rewards at all. But with it now working based off of total money spent, I should be gettin' hella rewards now, lol!

I will throw my 2 Aussie cents in

first off, the "Follow us on Social Media" reward and arguments for or against any specific platform, just cap it at 3 platforms. We don't have to catch them all, and nobody spends meaningful time on 6 platforms anyway.
If a new "Must Have" social platform comes along, offer a bonus gold reward then to get the follower numbers up.

I like the idea of offering Legendary Loot exclusives personally, and if I dropped out of Legendary tier it would not be the end of the world. This is assuming it is inconsequential items like hero point coins or pins, and not exclusive story lore that only the legends can know.

Society Scenarios, I can not work out the math right now, but the $10 off a society scenario at a list of $9 each, and discounted to ~$7.65 makes odd numbers which hurts my brain.
Will society subscriptions still be available at the 20% discount ?
It feels like to me it would be better :value" to hold off on purchasing society scenarios into larger groups to get the most out of the gold, which could delay playing society games for some GM's.
(I am sorry to be looking at the $ and c but most people will, sorry) (no I am not Canadian)

overall, I can not wait. THANKS!

How about a Mythic Tier for those of us that have spent over $1500 in the last year *whistles and side-eyes*

Or a lifetime status for those that have spent over a certain amount lifetime like airlines do for their million mile flyers?

How about a Mythic Tier for those of us that have spent over $1500 in the last year *whistles and side-eyes*

Or a lifetime status for those that have spent over a certain amount lifetime like airlines do for their million mile flyers?

Ohh Cori, I love what you are thinking with the Mythic tier, but my wallet does not.

Lifetime status, would be nice, Anniversary gold for each year in your Tier. (anniversary date may change when you level up (or Abadar forbid, if you level down)

Or a lifetime status for those that have spent over a certain amount lifetime like airlines do for their million mile flyers?

Or something for those that are still Charter subscribers? (Asking for a friend.)

I'm a legacy charter AP subscriber; is anything going to change for me?

-Skeld

A question about the review rewards: I am an avid player and GM of the Society Scenarios, but have switched to using the Foundry VTT Premium Modules, which already include everything I need to GM. But that technically means that I do not own the scenarios themselves. So I WON'T get gold for leaving reviews? I would definitely NOT like that!

Kzuld Krer wrote:

How is this going to effect Subscriptions? Will it auto apply gold to PFS/SFS? I'm not liking this.

Subscriptions will be covered in a future blog, but your subscription purchases will also apply to Paizo Plus.

-Jim

I'm sorry, but this is not well timed, then. Unless the other blog comes out very soon, this will just lead to rampant speculation and doomposting for weeks.

A question about the review rewards: I am an avid player and GM of the Society Scenarios, but have switched to using the Foundry VTT Premium Modules, which already include everything I need to GM. But that technically means that I do not own the scenarios themselves. So I WON'T get gold for leaving reviews? I would definitely NOT like that!

While you might not be able to review the scenario itself, you will be able to review the Foundry modules built from the scenarios. That will also grant the 5 gold.

If you purchased a bundle product (that contains the Foundry version and the PDF), you should be able to review both products. A product needs to show up in your purchase history to write a review for it.

-Jim

As an example of why folks are saying "Whyyy twitter??"

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/06/improved-grok-criticizes-democrats-and-ho llywoods-jewish-executives/

Otherwise, yay new site! And as someone not living in the USA, a reward system that doesn't rely on physically-shipped products is very welcome. Now my pdfs will shine slightly brighter :)

That article leaves out the scariest things Grok said recently.

Elon Musk’s Grok Identifies As ‘Mecha___ler’ In X Posts .

I like the new system; it benefits everyone equally, instead of just those who can afford almost everything. I don't GM very often, but I do like to buy scenarios after I've played them to see what we missed, so I never needed them on time. I can't afford to keep up with both Pathfinder and Starfinder. I'd love to add some Pathfinder to my Starfinder games, so I'm thinking of using my gold to get caught up on Pathfinder books.

Something else that might work is buying flip-mats you need for a scenario, which could help get the gold to get the scenario for free. For people who play everything as fast as it comes out, I guess this only works if the matts come out first.

Please do remove the links to Twitter, it's very much not a good thing to have linked.

oh god, loyalty reward microcurrency and FOMO loot for whales

this doesn't really affect me as i won't use the cumbersome system, but this just looks complicated and not quite what i would've hoped for when i saw a new take on subscriptions/store

the new website looks great though!

Hey, I just want to shout out and say thank you to Mr. Butler being so responsive on here with this big announcement. Paizo is always good about having presence in the forums (I hardly find a single board where I don't see Mx. Coleman) but it's really cool that they understand how confusing and concerning this is.

Alright time for another bullet point response from me because I'm lazy:

1. I'm glad we're getting this sneak peek, as well as all the FAQ's and comment responses. Love to see the active engagement.

2. I will probably have 4 subscriptions with Pathfinder and Starfinder going forward. I have no idea what this is going to tangibly yield for me, and I don't really want to math it out.

3. The whole "micromanaging loyalty points before they expire" thing is SO unappealing to me I'd literally rather have my "gold" go into an unusable, but ever-accumulating hoard so I can roleplay an e-dragon. I have never had a good experience with a loyalty program in my life and expect this to also disappoint me.

4. Encouraging people to go to twitter is unambiguously morally wrong, and we're not exaggerating when we say that.

5. Desiring exclusives and "legendary loot" and FOMO junk makes you look like a tool. I don't operate on the boomer mindset of finding joy in having things others don't.

I guess my biggest question is: Will there be a way to automate the expenditure of gold for discounts so I never have to think about it?

Wow this is worse all around. I remember when I said:

Is anyone else getting a bad feeling about the upcoming changes to the loyalty program? The way it’s been described so far - lots of vague “coming soon” language and talk of a “better experience” - just screams corpo-speak for we’re cutting benefits, but trying to make it sound like a good thing.

Let’s be honest: when companies say they’re “enhancing” or “evolving” a program to “better serve us,” it usually translates to more restrictions, fewer rewards, or a new tier system that’s harder to climb. They frame it as a win for the customer, but it almost always serves their bottom line, not ours.

Until they drop actual details, there’s no way to know for sure, but the language so far feels like a red flag. If the changes were genuinely beneficial, they probably wouldn’t be so cagey or need to spin it this hard. They'd be shouting them from the rooftops instead of deferring them for a future blog.

Would love to be wrong on this, but right now it feels like we’re being softened up for a downgrade.

Just goes to show no matter the image or sense of community Paizo projects, it’s all about extracting as much money as possible.

The.Vortex wrote:

A question about the review rewards: I am an avid player and GM of the Society Scenarios, but have switched to using the Foundry VTT Premium Modules, which already include everything I need to GM. But that technically means that I do not own the scenarios themselves. So I WON'T get gold for leaving reviews? I would definitely NOT like that!

While you might not be able to review the scenario itself, you will be able to review the Foundry modules built from the scenarios. That will also grant the 5 gold.

If you purchased a bundle product (that contains the Foundry version and the PDF), you should be able to review both products. A product needs to show up in your purchase history to write a review for it.

-Jim

So the review process is going to change? There is no PDF/FVTT for PFS. I am not worried about the gold but not being able to review the scenarios would be upsetting. Leaving 20 reviews on just the FVTT module page would not great. I do my part and try to leave a review to help fellow GM/players and to let your team know what work and what didn't work. Losing that ability would be a blow to the community.

Please consider FVTT as more of a primary source of players. I know many people including myself who got into PF2E/PFS just because of FVTT.

The.Vortex wrote:

A question about the review rewards: I am an avid player and GM of the Society Scenarios, but have switched to using the Foundry VTT Premium Modules, which already include everything I need to GM. But that technically means that I do not own the scenarios themselves. So I WON'T get gold for leaving reviews? I would definitely NOT like that!

While you might not be able to review the scenario itself, you will be able to review the Foundry modules built from the scenarios. That will also grant the 5 gold.

If you purchased a bundle product (that contains the Foundry version and the PDF), you should be able to review both products. A product needs to show up in your purchase history to write a review for it.

-Jim

That does make it sound as if it will in the future be IMPOSSIBLE to write reviews for products you don't own? So far I thought I just wouldn't get gold for it. If it is as you say, I sincerely ask you to reconsider! That would prevent players from reviewing scenarios they have played, which would be a very bad idea. It should NOT be only the GMs that are able to write reviews.

Also, back to my main point: The Foundry Module is one for a complete season. It does NOT make sense to write reviews for the individual scenarios in the review section of a bundle of 20 or so scenarios!

Jim Butler wrote:

The.Vortex wrote:

A question about the review rewards: I am an avid player and GM of the Society Scenarios, but have switched to using the Foundry VTT Premium Modules, which already include everything I need to GM. But that technically means that I do not own the scenarios themselves. So I WON'T get gold for leaving reviews? I would definitely NOT like that!

While you might not be able to review the scenario itself, you will be able to review the Foundry modules built from the scenarios. That will also grant the 5 gold.

If you purchased a bundle product (that contains the Foundry version and the PDF), you should be able to review both products. A product needs to show up in your purchase history to write a review for it.

-Jim

That does make it sound as if it will in the future be IMPOSSIBLE to write reviews for products you don't own? So far I thought I just wouldn't get gold for it. If it is as you say, I sincerely ask you to reconsider! That would prevent players from reviewing scenarios they have played, which would be a very bad idea. It should NOT be only the GMs that are able to write reviews.

Also, back to my main point: The Foundry Module is one for a complete season. It does NOT make sense to write reviews for the individual scenarios in the review section of a bundle of 20 or so scenarios!

And you are one of the more detailed reviewers! I always look forward to your reviews. Hopefully.. you and I will still be able to review..

For me this system will be better. I've never had more than 3 subscriptions going at once. Also I am not interested in the PFS scenarios, so that was little incentive for me to bump up to 4 subs. Getting gold on the other hand may incentivize me to buy a product or two that I was on the fence about.

I also want to say that I really appreciate Jim Butler jumping in and answering questions in the thread. Good customer service goes a long way.

Finally, is this a way to get us to spend more money with Paizo. Of course. Paizo is a business and if they can't make money selling books they will stop writing them.