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So I recently joined Pathfinder Society and before I start I want to show up prepared. I was told in my last thread that I should own all the books that my character takes from so to say.
What constitutes owning a book? Do I need the physical copy, can I own the legal PDF, I have Hero Lab with quite a bit of the attachments can I use that? I know some people don't like playing using computers which is understanding as it holds potential for distractions. The hardcovers are a bit expensive and I don't know what to do.
Venture-Captain, Washington—Spokane
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Glenn, to answer your questions. According to Pathfinder Society rules, you are required to own a physical or PDF copy of each resource you use outside of the Core Assumption (Core Rulebook and Guide to Organized Play). Herolab is, unfortunately, not considered among valid sources. For the cost and portability, I would go with the PDF. If your GM will not allow electronic devices (liability issue if broken so it is best to be avoided), printed pages from the PDF with your watermark are acceptable.
Hope this helps and welcome to the Society!!
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I totally sympathize with your pain though.
Paying 10 bucks for a books content in herolab and then paying 10 bucks again to be able to use it for society is a bummer.
Since what you are buying is Paizo's material, it would be better to think of it as you are paying Paizo $10 for the material, and then you are paying Hero Lab $3.33 (aren't the $10 sets usually three books?) to code it into an electronic format for your use.)
:)
You could, after all, just buy the books from paizo, and then code the parts you want into user data files for hero lab, I believe.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia
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I totally sympathize with your pain though.
Paying 10 bucks for a books content in herolab and then paying 10 bucks again to be able to use it for society is a bummer.
Since what you are buying is Paizo's material, it would be better to think of it as you are paying Paizo $10 for the material, and then you are paying Hero Lab $3.33 (aren't the $10 sets usually three books?) to code it into an electronic format for your use.)
:)
You could, after all, just buy the books from paizo, and then code the parts you want into user data files for hero lab, I believe.
The three book sets, to my understanding, are for things like the campaign settings and the like.
The actual expansions containing new base classes, like the APG, ARG and the Ultimate Books are 9.99 a pop
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The actual expansions containing new base classes, like the APG, ARG and the Ultimate Books are 9.99 a pop
And you can still get those for free by inputting them yourself. The whole question is "what is my time worth to me" if it's worth more than $2.50 an hour per character, then not inputting a base class for 4 hours means 9.99 is breaking even. Bonus you get the rest of the book imported as well! But just like doing it yourself, the herolab stuff is not input directly from paizo, and hasn't gone through editing passes, so you need to check it, and therefore need access to the books.
yes, doing it yourself looks massive when starting off. But I've seen people who can't use powerpoint or excel learn to input things accurately in hero lab in under 2 hours
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I've moved away from physical books to PDFs. I've printed the relevant pages from my watermarked PDFs, which is still a sizeable pair of folders but is transportable now.
Or if I know the place is laptop-friendly, I can bring that.
In addition, I like to bring a physical CRB, I look up more stuff in there than in all the other books combined, and often want to show it to other people.
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I would like to point out that the core assumption doesn't mean you don't need to "own" a core rulebook. It generally means that we don't need to ask you to see it for rule questions. If you are actively advertising you do not have one, you may be asked to leave a table.
There is an exception for brand new players, and that length of when a new player is not new anymore is not a specific time line, it would be up to the local VO or GMs judgement...
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You try figuring out the Herolab scripting language and coding the rules in yourself. These are good prices!
When I first started, I was actually doing this.
I actually got pretty good at coding my own items, abilities, spells and such.
Then I was like, this is is too much. I could just pay $10 and play around with the whole book instead of spending 1-2 hours coding in only the things I want at that time from a book.
Best decision ever.
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I'm surprise at how many of these answers are not "RTFM"
No, really, go read it (LINK HERE). It's free.
I see threads every week with this question. It's answered on pages 5–6.
You can view a frequently updated list of all campaign-legal Additional Resources online at paizo.com/pathfindersociety/resources. In order to utilize content from an Additional Resource, a player must have a physical copy of the Additional Resource in question, a name-watermarked Paizo PDF of it, or a printout of the relevant pages from it, as well as a copy of the current version of the Additional Resources list. You must inform the Game Master that you plan to use Additional Resource material before play begins, so he has a chance to familiarize himself with the new material.
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You try figuring out the Herolab scripting language and coding the rules in yourself. These are good prices!When I first started, I was actually doing this.
I actually got pretty good at coding my own items, abilities, spells and such.
Then I was like, this is is too much. I could just pay $10 and play around with the whole book instead of spending 1-2 hours coding in only the things I want at that time from a book.
Best decision ever.
I still occasionally do it, largely because I typically GM anyway.
As for the price...more people buying add-ons should drive the price down. After all, the marginal cost of additional downloads is zero (or so near zero as to be irrelevant).
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Let's not begrudge them success. They've made a profitable product that caters exclusively to a subset (those willing to pay for a character generator) of a very niche market (tabletop RPGers). If they want to charge a fixed price for the product of their labors, that's fair. If a baker going to charge less because his rolls have become popular? Probably not!
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Let's not begrudge them success. They've made a profitable product that caters exclusively to a subset (those willing to pay for a character generator) of a very niche market (tabletop RPGers). If they want to charge a fixed price for the product of their labors, that's fair. If a baker going to charge less because his rolls have become popular? Probably not!
Please take this as it is meant -- with absolutely no malice -- but that analogy demonstrates a complete lack of comprehension of my point.
That said, I don't begrudge them their success. I've spent at least $100 with them on Pathfinder stuff.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I still occasionally do it, largely because I typically GM anyway.As for the price...more people buying add-ons should drive the price down. After all, the marginal cost of additional downloads is zero (or so near zero as to be irrelevant).
Well, not exactly true.
First of all, the $9.99 price is predicated on amortizing the costs of creating it over all the expected purchases. Depending on their market research, they may not have even reached the break even point.
Then, the more people who download it, the more bugs are likely to be found, the more people who are likely to get corrupted files, the more people are likely to reformat their computers and lose their password, etc, and the more support costs go up.
So there are some fairly non trivial support costs that scale with increased downloads.
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I totally sympathize with your pain though.
Paying 10 bucks for a books content in herolab and then paying 10 bucks again to be able to use it for society is a bummer.
I hope you meant "paying paizo to use their product" and then "paying herolab whatever they charge to use their implementation of paizo's product that I already paid for" is a bummer.
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As for the price...more people buying add-ons should drive the price down. After all, the marginal cost of additional downloads is zero (or so near zero as to be irrelevant).
Under some models of matching prices, that is true.
Under other price-matching models, current sales are paying for current overhead -- which allows hiring additional headcount for things that may not bring in revenue in a direct way.
EDIT: I'll put it another way. The model you are referring to was developed to help make pricing decisions for finite quantities, and ignores the effects of pricing erosion. It is a good guide for short-term decisions of produce/don't produce. It breaks down when you start evaluating permanent, long-term pricing decisions where you have significant product-differentiation from the rest of the market. It does you no good to devalue your own product in that way, unless you believe that it would lead to a large increase in demand that could be sustained over the expected lifetime of the product.
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So, he is essentially paying two companies, for the same book.
He doesn't have to, but there is no for what is, a very weird bad reaction.
Seriously, what the hell is going on here?
Are we bashing Herolab, or are we bashing players who want the convenience of the program, but are sometimes burdened by the cost?
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The whole Herolab issue comes down to this: PFS is a marketing tool for Paizo used to encourage people to buy their books. If you buy it via Herolab and not Paizo, Paizo doesn't get the money (or the same amount, at least). So, regardless of practicality, convenience, etc, PFS (as a tool of Paizo) must require paizo books instead of/in addition to the hero lab stuff you already have.
That is established. It's an optional add on.
What is all the other nonsense?
Is there, something being disputed?
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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So, he is essentially paying two companies, for the same book.
Not really.
He's paying Paizo for the book so he can use it when playing PFS.
He's paying Lone Wolf for access to selected parts of it in HeroLab, including integration with all the various pieces of HeroLab.
That doesn't come for free, and it's not bundled into the cost of buying the product from Paizo.
Nobody is expecting anything for free.
Nobody is expecting anything to be bundled.
Why is this an issue?
Seriously, what the hell?
Somebody just really wants to dispel misconceptions, that don't exist?
I don't think it is an issue. I think people were just talking about Herolab.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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The origional poster was asking if he had overlooked another option that was cheaper / better.
People generally observed that the price of what they wanted was frustratingly high.
Other people made observations regarding the value of what you were getting for that price, or offered options to mitigate the price.
Other people opined about future price/cost changes that might be expected to reduce the price, and other people pointed out that person had overlooked balancing factors, and they conceded that.
Then a bunch of people jumped in and started berating us for debating non issues, when the thread had pretty much digressed into small talk.