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Have they been rolled into the Animal/Magical Beasts category or are they still their own thing?
If so are they (hopefully not) still “mindless”?
Having them like that made them a category of nothing but exceptions, not only on abilities that affected but also on their own entries as wordcount was eaten up having to explain why that specific Vermin had feats and skills despite being “mindless” every time one was statted up.
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I lean away from combining insects, animals, and magical beasts in the same category.
Animals seems pretty clear-cut. Maybe have a sub category for dinosaurs, but it probably isn't needed.
Magical Beasts also seem pretty well defined.
Vermin is really a weird category that should probably be "insectoid" or something like that. I suppose it could be a subcategory of animal, but I think it should be something different.
EDIT:
At least rats are not 'vermin' anymore!
I'd actually like to see a little more distinction between types of animals, smarter ones such as a mammals with an Int of 2 and not so smart ones such as reptiles with an Int of 1.
****ing chordocentricists. Always gotta declare you're so much better because you have an internal skeleton. I'd like to see you sort inputs from a compound eye!
I have always felt vermin should be a subtype of animals.
If you look at an evolutionary tree diagram, the animal kingdom is nicely divided into what a d20 game would call animals (all vertebrates) and vermin (most invertebrates). The only creatures whose types don't match the evolutionary tree are octopi, squids, and the like (which are classified as "animals" despite being on the invertebrate side of the tree, surrounded by most of the "vermin").
We run into a similar issue with reptilian humanoids. Most humanoids are clearly hominids, while most monstrous humanoids clearly are not. Here, the major exception seems to be the various reptilian humanoids, which are clearly not hominids because they are not even mammals.
Those tunicates are no more of a problem than the great apes are, as they are basically motionless invertebrates that happen to be more closely related to vertebrates than to arthropods. I would see no problem with classifying them as "vermin" if they can be classified as creatures at all.
