BenL's page

Steelfiredragon wrote:

I refuse to buy this if it has anything ressembling Cthulu or his minions in it.

I dislike lovecraft's work

nothing wrong with horror mind you....

As stated, Bestiary 1 and 2 both had Mythos monsters. Bestiary 1 had the shoggoth and the ghoul (yep, hate to break it to you, the ghoul is pure Lovecraft). Bestiary 2 upped the stakes with denizens of Leng, gug, hounds of Tindalos, Leng spiders, serpentfolk, and shantaks. Did you refuse to purchase those?

There are a few monsters in both bestiaries that I don't really care for. But it would be stupid to ignore the other 300+ monsters that are totally awesome just because I think one or two are dumb.

The ghoul is by no means a Lovecraftian invention. In fact, it's origins as a monster can be found in Arabian folklore.

That seems to muddy the waters even more seeing as to have a slam attack the eidolon MUST have arms. It sounds both Maeloke and I are both a little confused about whether or not eidolons receive one slam attack for each arm. If slam is the default for creatures without arms then it seems to reason both arms are not needed for a slam attack.

Perhaps my thinking is incorrect however...

I am a little thrown off by the slam as well. I could not find anything that in the Pathfinder Bestiary that clearly defined how slam works compared with other natural attacks or manufactured weapons.

I'd love to see some clarification...

If our current pricing model and PDF pricing = shooting ourselves in the foot, I should shoot myself in the foot more often.

Guess that addresses my issue. Thanks James.

Also, insinuating that you'll pirate pdfs as an alternative to buying them because Paizo isn't operating under the business model you would prefer is pretty bad form and a violation of the terms of service for these boards. Scanning is one thing, but "getting them another way" is entirely different.

I in no way insinuated I would "pirate" PDFs. Seeing as you have NO idea what I was referring to I'm a little offended. That is unless Paizo considers me scanning a PDF for my own personal use pirating...

While it would be nice if they offered something to long term subscribers, like maybe if you have subscribed for a year straight then you could get PDF's on old products. I think that would be a lot more fesible.

I like this idea. I'd be interested to hear what Lisa or Vic would say to that...?

Oh well... guess I'm buying the hard copies from Amazon and not worrying about the PDFs then. I'll just scan whatever I need or get the PDFs another way.

Let me elaborate...

I realize Paizo cannot compete with Amazon regarding hard copies. However, I do not see how it would be cost prohibitive to provide free PDFs for past releases when the full price is paid to have a hard copy of the book.

It's not a problem with Paizo, it's a problem with Amazon. Paizo, in order to profit, has to take ... say ... 40-50% of profit from a book.

On the other hand, Amazon can happily set a price with 10-15% profit margin. Why ? Because it's g&#&%%n Amazon, it's freaking huge, and it can afford to sell things at a near-loss prices because the sheer staggering volume of sales allows that.

If Paizo set prices on Amazon level, they would be out of the business by the end of fiscal year.

My post was not so much about the price of the books, but rather the price of PDFs for past products for subscribers.

As far as I'm aware with my limited experience in designing and creating PDFs, there is very little cost in creating a PDF from an already existing electronic file. This is something Paizo would already have so they could provide it to the printing company.

A Quick Note: I'm posting this to gather other people's feedback on the matter and also to draw the attention of "the powers that be".

I love the Pathfinder products and am a new Pathfinder Society member. After looking over your subscriptions however, I think there is a lot to be desired. Even though it is wonderful that a free PDF copy is included, the limits of a subscription do not allow it to compete with prices that other online retailers such as Amazon.com offer on past releases.

In other words, if I wanted both the hard copy and the PDF of "Pathfinder Chronicles: The Great Beyond" it would be significantly less expensive for me to purchase the book online with Amazon.com and then order the PDF through Paizo's website. Further, if I only wanted one or the other, the price of the hard copy is less on Amazon than your PDF is.

While I think the subscriptions are a wonderful way to provide your loyal customers with something extra and reward them with the free PDF, in the long run I believe you're actually hurting your business by not offering the same deal on past releases.

The more Pathfinder Chronicles products that are released the less likely your customers are to buy those released in the past directly from Paizo. Here's an example of what I mean:

• It would cost me $39.25 to order both the book and PDF copy of the "Pathfinder Chronicles: The Great Beyond" book from your company.
  
• It would cost me $31.57 to order the book (from Amazon) and PDF copy (from you).

Those prices include shipping and handling for both Paizo and Amazon.com. If I decide to purchase multiple hard copies from Amazon the price difference is even larger because they offer free shipping on any order over $25.

Like I said, I'm really enjoying Pathfinder and think it's very cool that you're offering PDFs at discounted prices. It's even better that subscribers get free PDFs of current and future releases. However, when the prices for past products are not competitive even for the loyal fans who have subscribed, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot.

It's almost as if you're encouraging them to find better prices elsewhere for the hard copies of books released before they subscribed.

That's just my two cents,

Ben