I noticed that a Erines [devil CR8] has a 50% chance to summon 2 Bearded Devils, but a Barbed Devil [CR11] only has a 35% chance to summon 1 Bearded Devil, however in 3.5 that was 1d6 Bearded Devils for the Barbed Devil and 1d4 Bearded Devils or 2d10 Lemures for the Erinyes!
Why change all the summoning of these monsters, were they too powerful in 3.5?
What happened to Snakes [Vipers/Serpents], there gone! And the Howler!
I noticed that a Erines [devil CR8] has a 50% chance to summon 2 Bearded Devils, but a Barbed Devil [CR11] only has a 35% chance to summon 1 Bearded Devil, however in 3.5 that was 1d6 Bearded Devils for the Barbed Devil and 1d4 Bearded Devils or 2d10 Lemures for the Erinyes!
Why change all the summoning of these monsters, were they too powerful in 3.5?
My guess is simplicity.
Erinyes: you could get 2d10 lemures. The problem with lemures is that they're really just a nuisance. Devils are too no-nonsense to just annoy people. In many cases, this choice wasn't too useful.
As for the bearded devils, it's 2 (the average of 1d4) now, so you won't have to roll the dice.
So the new system is simpler. Complexity is fine, but only if it adds to the system. I guess it was thought that most people would use the bearded devils, anyway, so they streamlined it.
As for 2 instead of 1d4: It's less swingy, which is probably good. There's already the fifty-fifty chance of getting anything at all. Now add the randomness of getting between 1 to 4 CR5 critters.
What happened to Snakes [Vipers/Serpents], there gone! And the Howler!
But there are snakes. Look for snake. They have constrictor and poisonous. There's only one of each, but you can use the giant, young and advanced simple templates to get different critters. For animal companions or familiars, look for them in the animal companion entry in the druid class.
The howler didn't make the cut.
...
The howler didn't make the cut.
The Howler made it into
Creative Director
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We tried to rebuild a lot of summoning powers so that they're simpler to manage, or more in line with the summoner's CR. And in other cases, we decided that some summoners needed better summoning powers than others simply because it's a stronger tactic for some than it is for others.
We tried to rebuild a lot of summoning powers so that they're simpler to manage, or more in line with the summoner's CR. And in other cases, we decided that some summoners needed better summoning powers than others simply because it's a stronger tactic for some than it is for others.
Fair enough!
I appreciate new monsters are being released with each Adventure Path but why not include all the current [at time of printing] ones in the Bestiary? Surely not another deliberate choice to tempt yet more AP sales?
As for 2 instead of 1d4: It's less swingy, which is probably good. There's already the fifty-fifty chance of getting anything at all. Now add the randomness of getting between 1 to 4 CR5 critters.
numbers are a little mixed up...
Erinyes was 1d4, now it's 2 [as you say, its kinda average]
Bearded was 1d6, now it's 1 , that's quite a nerf
One other thing, probably already noted...
None of the PDF links before Bugbear in the Table of Contents are working in my download. Is this normal?
I appreciate new monsters are being released with each Adventure Path but why not include all the current [at time of printing] ones in the Bestiary? Surely not another deliberate choice to tempt yet more AP sales?
Space.
The book already dropped more than a few critters due to lack of space. If you included all the critters from the APs (I haven't counted them, but they should be close to a hundred critters in there, maybe even more), you'd need a book that had quite a lot of extra pages, which would have increased the price, and so on and so forth.
I appreciate new monsters are being released with each Adventure Path but why not include all the current [at time of printing] ones in the Bestiary? Surely not another deliberate choice to tempt yet more AP sales?
I think it was announced they could be compiled in the Bestiary II.
Space.
Sorry, but "space" if that is the reason, is a poor one frankly.
What we all want is a Bestiary containing all the critters. So it'll cost us an extra $10-20, that's fair enough. We're all going to pay for it eventually; I'd happily pay for it. I don't want Bestiary volume 1, 2, 3 etc. etc. [sounding familiar yet?]
So any new buyers of Pathfinder Adventure Path #13, for example, are still going to be directed to earlier editions of AP's instead of the Bestiary for creatures in that adventure [see page 22 & 79], which is crazy.
Will the existing pdf's be changed with Bestiary listing replacing the MM ones? Probably not, because not all the monsters that the current AP's have used have made it into the Bestiary!
The Core rulebook has 575 pages. Why can't the Bestiary be as large as that? I haven't seen a whole lot of complaints regarding the size of that book or it's price for that matter.
Sorry, but "space" if that is the reason, is a poor one frankly.
What we all want is a Bestiary containing all the critters. So it'll cost us an extra $10-20, that's fair enough. We're all going to pay for it eventually; I'd happily pay for it. I don't want Bestiary volume 1, 2, 3 etc. etc. [sounding familiar yet?]
It's nice to know that someone finally knows what we all want. Thank goodness, I can stop thinking for myself now.
Snarkiness aside, the sense of entitlement in some of these threads lately just astounds me...
Sorry, but "space" if that is the reason, is a poor one frankly.What we all want is a Bestiary containing all the critters. So it'll cost us an extra $10-20, that's fair enough. We're all going to pay for it eventually; I'd happily pay for it. I don't want Bestiary volume 1, 2, 3 etc. etc. [sounding familiar yet?]
So any new buyers of Pathfinder Adventure Path #13, for example, are still going to be directed to earlier editions of AP's instead of the Bestiary for creatures in that adventure [see page 22 & 79], which is crazy.
Will the existing pdf's be changed with Bestiary listing replacing the MM ones? Probably not, because not all the monsters that the current AP's have used have made it into the Bestiary!
The Core rulebook has 575 pages. Why can't the Bestiary be as large as that? I haven't seen a whole lot of complaints regarding the size of that book or it's price for that matter.
The first Bestiary is a collection of the basic monsters for the game.
The monsters from the Pathfinder adventures are not basic monsters, so Paizo prefers to put them in the next Bestiary.As a reminder, there are about 100 monsters in scenarii, and as the format is one page per monster, that would be 100 extra pages.
I understand you don't want to fall in the same chain of products than for D&D3, but there will be a Bestiary II, and probably III, IV...
The same way an Advanced Player's Handbook is coming, as well as a Advanced Dungeon Master's Guide (i'm not sure if these are the actual names but nevermind).
Don't see it as a vile commercial assault, but as extensions of the game, which must sell books to stay alive.
A game could just have one, two or three corebooks and that's all. But it wouldn't last very long, once all the players would have bought them.
This being said, nobody is forcing you to buy all the books.
You can run Pathfinder RPG for years with just the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary.
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Will the existing pdf's be changed with Bestiary listing replacing the MM ones? Probably not, because not all the monsters that the current AP's have used have made it into the Bestiary!
The Core rulebook has 575 pages. Why can't the Bestiary be as large as that? I haven't seen a whole lot of complaints regarding the size of that book or it's price for that matter.
1. Most of the monsters in AP's are Golarion-specific. So, their fluff has to be re-written to make them setting neutral. PF is supposed to be books for everyone, not just Golarion fans.
2. Bestiary I is supposed to be an equivalent of MM, as in "here's your book of staple monsters for D&D and a replacement of the old MM". I'm pretty much sure that there would be a fair crowd of "geee, I wanted dragons, orcs and demons and I have to pay for a bunch of weirdo Golarion monsters ?" people.
3. Over 120 extra monsters to re-work, re-write and re-stat would likely kill any surviving writers/editors/art directors at Paizo. Just the Core Book and Bestiary I pushed the whole release schedule a few months back, an even bigger Bestiary would push it even further. Remember, Paizo is nowhere close to Wotc in terms of publishing resources (resources as in manpower hours and cash at hand)
As a reminder, there are about 100 monsters in scenarii, and as the format is one page per monster, that would be 100 extra pages.
I'd be very happy with that.
I understand you don't want to fall in the same chain of products than for D&D3, but there will be a Bestiary II, and probably III, IV...
The same way an Advanced Player's Handbook is coming, as well as a Advanced Dungeon Master's Guide (i'm not sure if these are the actual names but nevermind).Don't see it as a vile commercial assault, but as extensions of the game, which must sell books to stay alive.
Look, I know I'm being played.
I know it.
I allow it to happen, which is my choice.
But I'm not going to shy away from saying it just because some may not want to hear it, because it's true.
I'm saying that I would have liked to have seen all the critters that Paizo have released to date in the first book. I would have happily paid whatever price Paizo wanted for such a book. The Bestiary could have been that book, distancing itself further from anything WotC did, which would have been a great, great thing, imo, which I'm allowed to have and voice even if no one else agrees with it, which they probably don't :)
Aaaand:
4. All the AP monsters are Open Content (Okay, except the Coeurl and the Deep Crow), so basically it's out there, you can grab them and use them. Accusing Paizo of moneygrab while they're publishing all the monsters as open content is funny :)
Accusing paizo of moneygrab at all is funny. You can make a whole lot more money doing a whole lot of other things. I'd wager most if not all of them chose this occupation because they don't love money enough to choose some other occupation.
Of course, if they manage to supplant WotC and become a real contender for the ttrpg crown, then, as they say, power corrupts. Let's revisit this concept when they have the one ring. I'm actually curious to see what the occasional paizoid posts look like on these boards as their alignments shift in the LE direction.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Look, I know I'm being played.
I know it.
I allow it to happen, which is my choice.
But I'm not going to shy away from saying it just because some may not want to hear it, because it's true.
I'm saying that I would have liked to have seen all the critters that Paizo have released to date in the first book. I would have happily paid whatever price Paizo wanted for such a book. The Bestiary could have been that book, distancing itself further from anything WotC did, which would have been a great, great thing, imo, which I'm allowed to have and voice even if no one else agrees with it, which they probably don't :)
One thing we can both agree on is that the world would be a much awesomer place with 40,000 more Stuart Haffendens.
As a reminder, there are about 100 monsters in scenarii, and as the format is one page per monster, that would be 100 extra pages.
I'd be very happy with that.
I understand you don't want to fall in the same chain of products than for D&D3, but there will be a Bestiary II, and probably III, IV...
The same way an Advanced Player's Handbook is coming, as well as a Advanced Dungeon Master's Guide (i'm not sure if these are the actual names but nevermind).Don't see it as a vile commercial assault, but as extensions of the game, which must sell books to stay alive.
Look, I know I'm being played.
I know it.
I allow it to happen, which is my choice.
But I'm not going to shy away from saying it just because some may not want to hear it, because it's true.
I'm saying that I would have liked to have seen all the critters that Paizo have released to date in the first book. I would have happily paid whatever price Paizo wanted for such a book. The Bestiary could have been that book, distancing itself further from anything WotC did, which would have been a great, great thing, imo, which I'm allowed to have and voice even if no one else agrees with it, which they probably don't :)
I, too, would have liked to see more monsters in the Bestiary I. I already noticed the similarity between Riding Dog and Wolf (and from reading the boards I hear the Hyena is another entry that is quite similar). That is three animals that could have been consolidated to give us back some other good monsters (perhaps including a list of slight modifications for the various canines would have been sufficient--e.g., Wolf is fast and gets trip). Art is more expensive for the bestiary than the core rulebook; so the cost with same page count would have been higher than for the core rulebook (or the profits lower). They are far enough behind schedule that the additional pages would have thrown them off a bit more because there is no time reserved for "just in case we fall behind," with a corresponding loss of revenue. While we're b$!!*ing about stuff, I'd also say they should have introduced a new feat called "Skill Emphasis" or something that gives +2 to two related skills, given some examples, and killed off Stealthy and other feats of that ilk. That would have given us another whole page for spells and made the list of feats more readable.
Still, I'm pretty sure I'm not being played. That's the wonderful thing about a company that tries to get you to pay money by making good product, as compared to one that tries to get you to pay money because they are the only game in town. When you buy the product, you can determine whether it was worth it by reading it. If it was worth it, you were not played. If it was not worth it, you might have been played. You probably will never *know* that you have been played, absent a great deal more inside knowledge than I'll wager you have access to.
Accusing paizo of moneygrab at all is funny.
But true...
Actually a certain Paizo chief stated that they deliberately put non-AP specific material into the AP's because they sell more copies that way.
To be totally mercenary... we WANT folks to buy our Adventure Paths. they're the backbone product that keeps Paizo afloat.I see it as a necessity—we have a lot of eggs in the AP basket, and that's on purpose. We don't want folks to not buy six volumes because, say, they don't like a particular AP's plot. We want to fill EVERY AP volume with a nice mix of material so that even when we're doing an AP you don't want to use or won't ever run, those volumes will still have material you can use. It's a critical part of what makes the AP line successful, I suspect.
So not so much as an Adventure Path, more of a monthly Mag that happens to contain one part of an adventure path. I'm not saying it is "wrong" although I'd prefer just AP specific content, but please open your eyes.
I'd like to see all the creatures from previous APs gathered together in a free PDF. Happy Birthday everybody!
I'd like to see all the creatures from previous APs gathered together in a free PDF. Happy Birthday everybody!
Free would be nice but i am not sure it will happen.
But a Bestiary of Golarion could be an option, gathering the monsters specific to the setting in a specific book.
That could be a Pathfinder Chronicles book, to make susbscribers happy.
To be totally mercenary... we WANT folks to buy our Adventure Paths. they're the backbone product that keeps Paizo afloat.
I see it as a necessity—we have a lot of eggs in the AP basket, and that's on purpose. We don't want folks to not buy six volumes because, say, they don't like a particular AP's plot. We want to fill EVERY AP volume with a nice mix of material so that even when we're doing an AP you don't want to use or won't ever run, those volumes will still have material you can use. It's a critical part of what makes the AP line successful, I suspect.
That's a very valid point.
However, some of us don't buy adventure paths.
I don't, as i don't ever buy adventures or modules. The same way i was not buying Dungeon Magazine. It is not about the quality or anything, that's just that i prefer to make my own adventures.
And i am not going to buy a AP just because there are a few pages about some critters. I am sure i am not the only one.
Hmmm... To be honest, i actually bought some, because they had some stuff i was interested in, like the recent article about tieflings.
This perfectly illustrates James's point, and the efficiency of the product... (damn)
Anyway... Having these monsters from Adventure Paths compiled in one book would be something i would enjoy.
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Personally, if the Bestiary were just a bunch of AP creatures, I wouldn't be interested. I wouldn't mind a mix, but I'm much more interested in MM classic monsters being updated. I haven't gotten my book yet, but I'm happy to hear that it has things like Aasimar, Gnoll, Mummy, and things.
I'm also kind of happy that it is not a big book odd new PC races. While playing an Illithid is fun for a little, it is only fun when that is not the norm. Each new playable race cheapens the "normal" experience a little.
One thing we can both agree on is that the world would be a much awesomer place with 40,000 more Stuart Haffendens.
Actually, you only need one. All he needs to to is invest the required start up capital to fund the complete development and production of the products he wants. Clearly he knows how to bring the product to market in a profitable manner. And everyone will win because the great minds at Paizo can fully focus on their RPG development, knowing that the funding for their salaries and product developments as well as a long term business plan are all secure.
Accusing paizo of moneygrab at all is funny.
But true...
Actually a certain Paizo chief stated that they deliberately put non-AP specific material into the AP's because they sell more copies that way.
So not so much as an Adventure Path, more of a monthly Mag that happens to contain one part of an adventure path. I'm not saying it is "wrong" although I'd prefer just AP specific content, but please open your eyes.
To be totally mercenary... we WANT folks to buy our Adventure Paths. they're the backbone product that keeps Paizo afloat.I see it as a necessity—we have a lot of eggs in the AP basket, and that's on purpose. We don't want folks to not buy six volumes because, say, they don't like a particular AP's plot. We want to fill EVERY AP volume with a nice mix of material so that even when we're doing an AP you don't want to use or won't ever run, those volumes will still have material you can use. It's a critical part of what makes the AP line successful, I suspect.
I can't believe you aren't backing down on this.
Look, I make a living by charging money for what I do. I want people pay for my services, but I also want my services to be worth what is paid, and if I could get more money by providing those services more frequently or creatively, I would. If somebody accused me of a money grab because of that, I would be offended. I, like paizo, attempt to make up for the cost of my services with quality. If the customer gets what they paid for, then I am not grabbing their money. I am offering a trade: money for services.
Your accusing paizo of this is almost certainly offensive to the paizoids. You are suggesting that they are offering a product, but want to take more of your money than is merited for that product. They are, by all accounts, doing their best to make quality products so that you will decide to buy them. And if we decide to buy them then they will not go out of business (the real point of the "mercenary" comment). So back down and save some face.
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Your accusing paizo of this is almost certainly offensive to the paizoids. You are suggesting that they are offering a product, but want to take more of your money than is merited for that product. They are, by all accounts, doing their best to make quality products so that you will decide to buy them. And if we decide to buy them then they will not go out of...
+1 (but without the snark)
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Creative Director
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I'm saying that I would have liked to have seen all the critters that Paizo have released to date in the first book. I would have happily paid whatever price Paizo wanted for such a book. The Bestiary could have been that book, distancing itself further from anything WotC did, which would have been a great, great thing, imo, which I'm allowed to have and voice even if no one else agrees with it, which they probably don't :)
Just because you would have paid an extra $10 or $30 or $100 or more bucks for a Bestiary that had "all the monsters" doesn't mean that Paizo could have afforded to CREATE a book that huge. Afforded in print costs. Afforded in man hours. Afforded in resources.
I'm sorry you're disappointed there's not more monsters in there. I am too, frankly. I'm not sure that level of disappointment warrants name-calling, though (moneygrubbing INDEED! Harumph!). That just makes you look kind of childish.
I always find it humorous when people expect companies to give them something for nothing. Of course, Paizo is going to release a Bestiary 2,3, whatever. I hope we are talking about the Bestiary 14's release in the Fall of 2022.
Its a company. Its supposed to try to make money. Or else, there won't be a company
I can't believe you aren't backing down on this.Look, I make a living by charging money for what I do. I want people pay for my services, but I also want my services to be worth what is paid, and if I could get more money by providing those services more frequently or creatively, I would.
Then you agree with me.
I'm sorry you're disappointed there's not more monsters in there. I am too, frankly. I'm not sure that level of disappointment warrants name-calling, though (moneygrubbing INDEED! Harumph!). That just makes you look kind of childish.
Excuse me, I didn't use the term moneygrubbing at all.
I simply pointed out that what you had pointed out to me in a different thread! To summerize, you're going to put whatever you want in the AP's so you sell as many copies as humanly possible, and that will at times include some non-AP material. Isn't that what you said?
I'm sorry you're disappointed there's not more monsters in there. I am too, frankly. I'm not sure that level of disappointment warrants name-calling, though (moneygrubbing INDEED! Harumph!). That just makes you look kind of childish.
Excuse me, I didn't use the term moneygrubbing at all.
I simply pointed out that what you had pointed out to me in a different thread! To summerize, you're going to put whatever you want in the AP's so you sell as many copies as humanly possible, and that will at times include some non-AP material. Isn't that what you said?
so what?
What we all want is
Until you get me a petition signed by everyone, I cannot believe you.
a Bestiary containing all the critters.
Define all.
Since we talk about everyone, we should be inclusive, not exclusive, in our definition of all.
That means everything from the 3.5e SRD. Note that this includes all the epic stuff and the psionic stuff.
Then add everything Paizo has done in their APs, Modules, Companions, Chronicles.
The Monster Manuals (1-5) are sadly not available, because wizards doesn't want to share, same for Libris Mortis and the others in that line.
But there are the Tomes of Horror. And the Advanced Bestiary. And Creatures of Rokugan. And dozens of other OGL books they could use.
Do you know how many monsters that would be? I don't, but I figure we'd be beyond 1000, easily.
I don't think that many would want to pay for that book. Many wouldn't even have the cash. I would have, easily, but I don't want to break my back on a book that weighs enough to an ogre into the "heavy load" category.
And even if you limit yourself to a smaller number of books, it still would be really, really much. Say we just get the SRD stuff from the Monster Manual (leaving nothing out), and all Paizo critters, and stuff from the Tomes of Horror (those books have a lot of classics in them).
I think that could easily double the page count. And that would more than double the price.
So it'll cost us an extra $10-20, that's fair enough. We're all going to pay for it eventually
You would. I would. Not everyone else would.
Did you know that there are actually people out there who have to monitor their spendings? The financial part of the real world is full of budgets and unemployment and things like that.
And beyond "can't" is "won't". You're forgetting the casual hobbyists. They might be able to afford more expensive stuff, but they're not prepared to spend the money.
It's like with consoles. You want Paizo to become the Sony of RPGs, with big, expensive books. The end result would be lots of customers running to whoever plays Nintendo's part.
And then there's the word "eventually". When is that? Give me a number in "months after Paizo had to declare bankruptcy because they funded a huge book and people took their time buying it, while creditors didn't weren't patient with demands for their money."
So any new buyers of Pathfinder Adventure Path #13, for example, are still going to be directed to earlier editions of AP's instead of the Bestiary for creatures in that adventure [see page 22 & 79], which is crazy.
In your version, the people who already have all of the monsters that would go into the Bestiary 2 have to pay twice for those critters. Many won't be willing to do that.
The Core rulebook has 575 pages. Why can't the Bestiary be as large as that? I haven't seen a whole lot of complaints regarding the size of that book or it's price for that matter.
Because it is PHB and DMG in one volume, and has a decent price for that.
Right now, Core Rulebook plus Bestiary cost 90 bucks together (official price), the same as the 3.5 core rulebooks. Make a monster book with all the critters, and it will easily cost more than the core book, and this version of the game has become more expensive than the previous one, and maybe even more expensive than the new game wizards did.
I'd like to see all the creatures from previous APs gathered together in a free PDF. Happy Birthday everybody!
Then go and do it.
Get all the stats, get all the IP out (which is mostly the setting-specific stuff), and compile them. It's perfectly legal, you won't have to pay anything for it, you just have to abide by the OGL.
Some of those critters are already on the web, you know.
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I'm sorry you're disappointed there's not more monsters in there. I am too, frankly. I'm not sure that level of disappointment warrants name-calling, though (moneygrubbing INDEED! Harumph!). That just makes you look kind of childish.
Excuse me, I didn't use the term moneygrubbing at all.
No, you said you were getting "played." Here's the urban dictionary definition:
1. Played
Made a fool of, chumped, taken advantage of.
2. Played
When a girl uses you, makes you give her money, then tosses you to the curb and laughs.
Yep, still childish...
I'd like to see all the creatures from previous APs gathered together in a free PDF. Happy Birthday everybody!
d20pfsrd.com is attempting this very task - though it is not currently planned to compile them into a PDF. If you look here I think you will be pleasantly surprised how long the collaborators on the site have already come. Note though that you can always help us get further along by volunteering to help convert said creatures. If you would like to do so you just need to email me.
Did anyone explicitly state that bigger books will be exponentially more expensive?
It's not just a simple "X cent per page formula". The bigger the book is, the more stout (read: expensive) the binding must be. If you only have a couple of pages, you can make them hold together with spit, but try that with books that are beyond 600 pages.
And then there's the thing where a bigger book takes longer to make. That means it will take more time for them to get paid for their work, as no one will pay them before they get the whole book. That means getting money somewhere else to tide you over. Buying money costs money. It's a fact. And do you know who ultimately has to pay for every expanse a company has? The customer! They're where the money comes from. Do you want the owner of the company to pay for something himself? How does that guy get paid to be able to do that? Right! By the customer.
And then there's the instalment thing. If you pay 100 bucks for something now, it is more expensive than paying 50 bucks for part of that something now, and another 50 for the rest in a year. Because you can make those 50 bucks work for a whole year before you have to give them away. Basic finance.
And then there's the demand thing. The more expensive something is, the less demand there exists for it. So they can sell less copies. The variable costs will sink along with the lower amount of books you can sell, but the fixed costs will remain constant in total. But since they have to be carried by less books, the individual cost will rise.
So, we have extra costs for the mere physical manifestation of one big book as opposed to several smaller books that have the same page count. On top of that, we have the cost for lending money, which will have to be rolled onto the book's price. And on top of that, we have the fact that we can't pay in installments, so the one big price will effectively be even higher than the several smaller prices (and would be even if the smaller prices wouldn't amount to a sum that is smaller than the one big price). And we have to pay a bigger share of the fixed costs because we are fewer now to buy the book.
That's several factors that drive up the total price of the book just for the fact that it's one big book now. Usually, companies have a more or less fixed profit span. I don't know how much that is exactly, but let's assume it's 30% off the official price.
So if they do X amount of monsters in 3 books that cost 40 bucks each, they'll get 36 bucks from you when you buy the books. But if you have that same X amount of monsters in just 1 book, which will probably cost 150 bucks or more (my guess is that I'm being cautious here), they will make 45+ bucks off you.
Could you please stop demanding that Paizo becomes a bigger moneygrabber than they are already? :D
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Creative Director
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Yeah. The pages of a Paizo book don't just magically appear out of thin air. They have to be created.
The Bestiary is the size it for a LOT of reasons. Here are two.
1) 320 pages is probably going to be the standard for our rulebook line. The Core Rules are an exception. Just because it was first doesn't make it an exception.
2) We didn't have the resources to create a second book the size of the Core Rulebook. We barely had the resources to do what we did, and even THAT put us critically behind schedule on all of our other products. In some cases, 3 or 4 months behind. That's bad news if you do subscription-based sales.
No, you said you were getting "played." Here's the urban dictionary definition:
1. Played
Made a fool of, chumped, taken advantage of.2. Played
When a girl uses you, makes you give her money, then tosses you to the curb and laughs.Yep, still childish...
...and yet still true.
Why? because when you buy something entitled "Adventure Path" one might make the assumption that that'll be exactly what they're going to get. However this is not quite the case. A more accurate title would be something like "Pathfinder Monthly" which would include a part of an adventure path along with other features in the way that Dragon/Dungeon did. I have questioned why non-AP material goes into a product entitled Adventure Path and James replied frankly and I thanked him for that frankness. I would prefer AP only stuff but that's not what is going to happen so I'll live with that. I still subscribe to Companion and Chronicles, Modules, AP's and PFRPG but that doesn't mean I have to agree with the exact format of all those products.Question: Why does my "tag" only include Chronicles and Roleplaying Game?
Yeah. The pages of a Paizo book don't just magically appear out of thin air. They have to be created.
The Bestiary is the size it for a LOT of reasons. Here are two.
1) 320 pages is probably going to be the standard for our rulebook line. The Core Rules are an exception. Just because it was first doesn't make it an exception.
2) We didn't have the resources to create a second book the size of the Core Rulebook. We barely had the resources to do what we did, and even THAT put us critically behind schedule on all of our other products. In some cases, 3 or 4 months behind. That's bad news if you do subscription-based sales.
All good points and taken on board. Ultimately I want more because I love what Paizo have done with 3.5 and I hate what WotC did.
I appreciate that many cannot afford to get everything you guys produce, which is a shame for all. I guess my gripe is that the definition between product lines seems blurry at times and the source of info on a particular part of the PF brand could come from a number of sources, which I find frustrating.