Yeah, so I was just reading my way through What Lies in Dust in preparation for some bushwhacking, and I came across an encounter that was:
1 Shadow (CR 3)
hp 19
3 Shadows with the Young template (CR 2 ea.)
hp 13
[[It seems like the hp decrease is a mis-rule since they don't get hp off CON]]
So I grab my bestiary, look up Young (-1CR)... it's -4 STR, -4 CON, -2 NAC, +4 DEX, and a size decrease. That's all good, but shadows don't have STR, CON, NAC, and I don't think you can trip them or anything, so the size decrease doesn't penalize them.
In short, a shadow gets get +3 to hit (+1 size, +2 DEX), +3 AC (same), and +2 init. And their CR decreases by 1.
Well. The good fix is to use the quick rules as it was intended (-2 attack, -2 hp/HD, +2 init & dex skills). The bad fix (which I'm going to do) is to up the CR by 1 and make it a nasty DEVIL-shadow. I'm pretty much not worried about my players taking on the devil shadow because there's a harder encounter in sixfold trial which involved many more shadows in their case.
I'm sort of posting this as a "myfix" and I'm sort of posting this because I often (very often) misread rules. Is there something I'm missing about this? As far as I remember, shadows get CHA to hp, and DEX to hit, so all Young does is make them more effective and give less xp.
EDIT: should this go on the rules board instead?