So I was rather bored yesterday evening and was just flipping through some of the rules and came across the rules for monstrous PC's here: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary/monstersAsPCs.html
At first I simply thought "neat" and moved on, but then I remembered the Monstrous cohorts from the Leadership feat and realized that there was a huge difference in levels between these two rules. I the above link it gives an example of a minotaur character. The minotaur character counts his CR as his character level and he's in a group of level 6 adventurers so he gains 2 class levels and the rules say to give him bonus levels too since his natural minotaur abilities have diminishing returns in higher levels.
Compare that to a griffon from leadership who is the same CR as a minotaur and therefor considered just a strong overall yes has an effective cohort level of 8 and does not gain the extra levels that the monster PC character does.
I understand that someone might say that since cohorts are added on top of existing characters they are very powerful, but why are the effective levels so bloated and there's already the fact that they always have to be at least 2 level below you.
