BobROE's page

As someone who isn't happy about the change I will say that tracking means nothing to me, what I care about is the lowest possible cost.

I think in the 15 years or so of subscribing only one AP issue has gotten lost in the mail, so I never felt the need to see where my package was.

Is DHL not considered a "courier" (as opposed to a postal carrier)? CUSMA set a de minimis threshold for couriers of CAN $150 for duties and $40 for taxes on shipments originating in the US or Mexico. Postal shipments were left with the existing CAN $20 de minimis for both.

Possibly the Canadian rules got changed in the tariff tit-for-tat engulfing the world since "Liberation Day" in the US. Chaos is making things difficult for every importer and exporter.

As a Canadian I wasn't charged a tariff, I was charged the canadian tax on the book. Which in my case was 2 something, DHL then charged me a $18 fee to collect that tax, and then an additional tax of 2 something on that fee.

I don't know if this is a feature request or a bug or me being dumb, but I cannot find digital versions of flip mats, like anywhere, can they be made easier to find?

To help you out.

But the maps section doesn't have a big 'digital editions' button like other parts of the store does. It's located in the sidebar on the left if you're viewing the physical maps.

What was the intended outcome/goal here? That's the part that hasn't been clear to me.

And now I had to pay DHL a fee, so the cost has gone up even more.

As a Canadian that just paid this fee, I second this complaint.

What was the purpose with the change? What wasn't working with the old system?

I've been subscribing since Jade Regent and I've never had any problems with the old shipping method.

Downloaded my copy of the latest AP (single file version) and windows wouldn't let me read the pdf from inside the zip file without first renaming the zip. It was complaining that the zip file name was too long.

They ahd lots of complains that there was no tracking for international shipping, and thus they switched to shipping methods that have tracking, but the tracking service increase the costs by a lot. They had warned about it, but the "we want tracking at any cost" voices were louder.
(And the current system don't support changing the shipping method for subscriptions, so yeah. :X )

I did not see those warnings anywhere.

And there was no way it see it was coming until the shipping had already taken place.

As a Canadian, I second this question.

Also it felt pretty sketchy changing the shipping without any warning.

My AP issue hasn't come through issue either.

I got to say, that it's remarkable how, for me, the new store has ended up being in every way worse than the old store.

The inability to set a type of shipping for subscribers means my shipping costs almost doubled, a heads up about before it actually shipped would have been nice.

The lack of discount carry over also means the product is more expensive. This whole webstore change has just made your stuff far for expensive for me.

I'm in the same boat as you. Based on the email sent, it seems to indicate Legacy Adventure Path subs will have a larger discount but they couldn't get them in the system in time for the December subs (authorizing in November).

I would love a verification that I read that email correctly though.

My reading of the e-mail is that some people who had the Legacy AP discount will see it, why some and not others is unclear. I'm ok if it's not hooked up this month, but if that's true it would have been better if customer service hadn't told me it was being discontinued. It feels like even within Paizo its unclear what's going on.

Just got a confirmation from support saying ONLY charter subscribers are having their discount status carried over.

I am not a charter subscriber, but I am a pathfinder 1e adventure path subscriber and we had a discount that carried over with us from 1e.

Support is saying that isn't carrying over? I swear during one of the last blogs about this we were assured it would.

Edit:
Found it had to finagle it to get it to show up. Had to go to my post history to find it but Jim Butler said:

Blog Post: Subscriptions on the New Paizo Store Monday Oct 27, 2025

Posted:Tuesday Oct 28th 2025

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

-Jim"

Yeah, I was told the same thing, which is rather disappointing. And will result in me cancelling my subscription after this next AP issue.

If I already have a subscription, am I going to have to restart it?

Having just been looking through my digital content page for something. Will the changes to the store do anything to fix the truly baffling organization and sorting of that page?

I have, I just noticed my previous post makes it seem like I haven't. Paizo and Amazon were just the ones that I found had the better prices by a fair bit. Found individual companies tend to have wonky prices. One wanted over $100 for one of the Pathfinder setting books (I forget which one). It's part of why I gravitated to Paizo and Amazon, before encountering issues.

Using Guns & Gears as an example 401 Games in Toronto has it listed new for less than the US cover price (slightly), but if you're getting random wonky additional 'shipping' charges, I don't know if there's much you can do.

Have you tried ordering from out of province stores? Not sure what the shipping costs would be, but you wouldn't get hit with import taxs/duties.

I will say I have found that for a lot of books the local games stores where I am (Toronto) they don't seem to order many follow up copies after the initial release, which is a little frustrating.

Is anyone else's chapter 2 missing a few letters in some of the headers? They exist in the PDF, so it's not a stylistic choice...

This continues Paizo's recent history of poor map editing.

The real question. How long did they work on the name/acronym for?

Exactly. Again, I talk about this organization and thematic style IN Iron Gods... in the forewords. Those sections at the start of each volume were a great place for the developer to pull aside the curtain and speak directy to the reader, to reveal some behind the scenes content, additional game content that we didn't have room for in the adventure, or talk about the practice of adventure creation. I miss them, but the perception was that no one read them, and the other adventure developers at the time hated writing them, so they went away.

I always found the forwards a fascinating read, but I am a game designer, so that may play into that.

It would be nice if that sort of info showed up on the website, but the time gap between when the product left development's hands and the release date would probably make those insights harder to remember.

It's something that has cropped up in other adventures as well. There often seems to be an assumption about slowed that it decreases over time.

keftiu wrote:

It’s easier to write an AP and say “if you wanna be lore-compliant, use the rules in this upcoming lore book” than it is to say that over half the classes in the game are barred from three months worth of releases.

It’s not how I would’ve done it, but I see how they got there.

Thankfully, nobody has proposed banning certain classes from being played in Outlaws of Alkenstar. But if I bought the Archery Contest adventure for Pathfinder, one would at least think whoever wrote it might spare a thought for what to do with all the characters that don't have martial proficiency.

As for the "Pay us 55/75$ now, and we'll give you the rules on how to run this AP properly nine months later" approach -- I'm not a fan of that either.

The problem with including Magic is Screwy in Alkenstar Rules in an AP somewhat multifaceted.

You're not being treated like a second class customer just because you're not being given a new version of a product for free just because you bought the previous version. Did you also expect the Curse of the Crimson Throne collection for free when it came out?

No, but the difference between (both in content and time) was a lot greater with CotCT than AV, which made it a more attractive purchase to subscribers.

Since I own the original 3 PDFs the value of the compiled PDF is pretty low, since they (at least from my understanding) have made minimal changes to the contents of the adventures. So the foundry implementation is costing $60 (which it may be worth) plus comes with something I don't need/want.

All this means that I'm far less likely to buy the foundry version at all, so they're not getting anything from me.

That said, what's MOST helpful to me and the rest of the Adventure Path developers in gauging what upcoming stories to focus on is to hear what people WANT, rather than what they don't want. It's not only more positive (and thus more pleasant and thus more inspiring to read—hope no one is surprised that if a developer reads too much complaints, chances are good they'll stop reading and just abandon the feedback process), but knowing what worked well is more important than what didn't. Especially since the internet is never short to let us know about the latter when it comes to product feedback!

I'm never really sure what I want, which is a useless answer I know.

So I guess my response is... surprise me?

If you look at the early 1e APs in my opinion they're all over the place, so I'm not it's any different now.

(my opinions follow, run some, read all, though not recently.)

CoT - Not Great but has some good stuff
KM - Good, but has some connection issues
SS - OOof, great first book though
CC - All over the place, doesn't really stick the landing.
JD - Interesting with wonky subsystem.

So I suspect it comes down to what people want out of a given campaign, and what sorts of campaign they want (see above where one wants light theming and another wants tight theming).

Yup, thank you all.

E-mail has been sent.

I have recently received my copy of AP #170 from this order and in reading it the pages have started to separate from the spine.

Would it be possible to get a replacement? (I have a photo I can send if needed).

I suspect the best improvement in reducing GM workload would in fact involve completely splitting the nuts and bolts of statblocks and DCs from the story that the GM needs to read and digest. I have no idea if that's even feasible.

WotC did something like that with the Delve format (I think it was called) and it was awful, as the actually stat blocks and encounters ended up being no where near the narrative associated with them.

Hi,

Just got the shipment generation email.

The shipping method is "Mail Innovations International".
It used to be "Standard Postal Delivery", which was cheaper. Is that no longer an option?

Weirdly, the shipping and handling costs on some previous orders shows as being much higher than I was charged, so there does seem to be something odd going on in the backend.

The authorization e-mail I received for this order listed the shipping cost as $5.65.

However when it actually shipped you charged me $12.20.

Since the price change wasn't indicated to me until the product shipped there's no way I could approve or disapprove of the price, which seems rather dishonest of you. And since the e-mail indicating the product has shipped doesn't include the price there was no way I could have known you had over charged me except I saw people complaining about it in this forum.

I'd like this corrected please.

I don;t have any inside information, but I think it's safe to say Coronavirus is whats up with shipping. There's a severe squeeze on ships, actual cargo containers, and port space for loading and unloading. That means anything that goes on a boat is more expensive and probably delayed. It's not just paizo, it's everyone.

Oh, the delays I understand, and totally accept. It's the random price changes that I don't.

Yeah, same here, between the authorization and the shipping my shipping and handling increased from 5.65 to 12.20.

Since I was not given any sort of heads up about this and opportunity to decide if I was ok spending that sort of money that's not ok. As you don't include the final price of a shipment in the shipping e-mail I wouldn't have known you had increased the price without telling me if I hadn't taken the time to check the thread here.

What is going on with shipping with you guys? This is two months in a row things have been screwy. I'm starting to question the value of the subscription if this is going to continue.

Email received, thank you very much.

Hi,

Can my Pathfinder Battles subscription be canceled please?

Thanks Aaron and Justin. I can't do the subscription my group doesn't go through content fast enough to receive product monthly. Thanks for the thought though.

-SFG

You can just subscribe to get the AP and then cancel.

I use the one file per chapter versions of the APs.

Would it be possible for you guys to standardize your organization for download zips? I just grabbed the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix downloads and they are all over the place.

166
1 file for Frontmatter has the cover and front matter pages
1 file per chapter of the adventure
1 file for each article
1 file for the toolbox
1 file for the backmatter that has the back cover and back matter pages
Interactive Map

167
1 file for the front cover
1 file for the back cover (called Cover copy)
1 file for Frontmatter
1 file for all the adventure
1 file for each article
1 file for the toolbox
1 file for the backmatter
Interactive Map

168
1 file for cover that has both the front and back cover
1 file for Frontmatter
1 file for all the adventure
1 file for each article
1 file for the toolbox
1 file for the backmatter
Interactive Map

It seems to show a lack of care about this stuff.

I have it set to cheapest which usually means Standard Postal Delivery, this times its USPS First-Class Mail, but that may be because the shipment is larger.

In Canada if that is relevant.

Order 36456131

The S&H on this is more than 4 times the normal shipping costs, which suggest that the addition of Little Trouble in Big Absalom increased by shipping costs by more than the cost to normally ship an AP issue. So it seems like it would be cheaper to just ship it in 4 separate envelopes.

I have it set to cheapest which usually means Standard Postal Delivery, this times its USPS First-Class Mail, but that may be because the shipment is larger.

In Canada if that is relevant.

Going through the list I'm missing one uncommon, and have 4 broken Leng Spiders, as well as 1 broken drider and 2 skavelings. A number of badly bent ones as well, especially among the rares, which is unfortunate.

Also, the distribution of the uncommons is heavily weighted towards the large sized minis, making those uncommons more like rares (which makes having ones that have variants sort of a waste if you're only going to get 1 on it).

I think this may be the point where I stop picking these up.

Every one of the Leng Spiders in my case was broken, all in the same way. I feel like there is either a design flaw with the mini or with the way its packed.

BobROE wrote:

Then what's wrong with just give the summoner 'evolution' feats that they can select as class feats that give the eidolon stuff? They don't need to be a special pool of feats that only the eidolon can select just ones with the right traits.

Cause not all players are going to want to focus on their eidolon the same way you do.

Again. Lack. Of. Customization.

Lack of Customization for who? The Summoner or the Eidolon? Cause I don't think that you're ever going to get 'class' feats for both the summoner and the eidolon.

Is it just an issue of there not enough class feats over the 20 level to make the eidolon as custom as you want?

Or that the feats as presented in the playtest aren't good enough?

That other 10% is skill and social interactions.

Ok.

Then what's wrong with just give the summoner 'evolution' feats that they can select as class feats that give the eidolon stuff? They don't need to be a special pool of feats that only the eidolon can select just ones with the right traits.

Cause not all players are going to want to focus on their eidolon the same way you do.

I am suggesting that a lot of those ancestry feats and general feats are going to be useless because they benefit the summoner when it is the Eidolon that's going to be in combat most of the time. For example. Dwarves get an ability to throw their body weight around. How useful is that going to be for the summoner? Are there going to be any ancestry feats that are going to assist the Eidolon? Probably not. The only fix I can think of for this is that the Eidolon BENEFITS from any of the feats that the summoner has, but that still doesn't solve the issue of me feeling like I am controlling a monster. 90% of our class SHOULD be about that Eidolon and customizing it. It should all be about customization. I am not saying we should make it OP like in 1e. I am saying that I want a unique monster I can be able to create. A monster of my very own that is not found anywhere else. A unique being.

If you're view is that 90% of the class should be about the eidolon why even have that last 10%?

An Eidolon can, at level 1,

---Select 1 Ancestry feat, can select 1 class feat, they get a skill feat (from their background)---(I'm not sure how to cross it out) Select 3 evolution feats instead.

So would the summoner player get 6 feats at first level? Or am I misunderstanding here?

Or are you proposing just dumping the summoner as part of the equation? So the player would just be the eidolon.

Is there are reason that the interactive maps seem to be included in the download twice? (At least for the file per chapter version)

Past years they show up for sale on the Paizo site a month after the Free RPG day, so I suspect that will be true again.