OGL monsters with notable changes from 3.5?

[deuxhero]

Most changes to OGL monsters in Pathfinder are system wide things like racial hit die changes, how primary/secondary natural attacks work and dropping uneeded LA on humanoids that advance by class level. What are the exceptions?

I know of two: Cockatrice and Ogre Mage. Ogre Mage got a complete rebuild since even WotC knew the 3.5 version was really bad for its CR. Cockatrice's petrification is now less save or die.

[Tacticslion]

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[LordKailas]

Kobolds have been slowly undergoing a transition from being Half-human half Chihuahuas to being half-human half runt dragons. But I think they were already becoming more dragon like in 3.5.

The only other one that comes to mind is revenants going from being a template back to being a normal creature. IMO revenants make more sense as templates then as standard creatures. Though to be fair, 90% if not all undead creatures should probably be templates.

[Alzrius]

I remember that when Paizo introduced the belier devil in one of the later Curse of the Crimson Throne adventures (when Pathfinder was still 3.5), it had the ability to go ethereal and take a grappled creature with it. It's tactics section even talked about how it would grab someone and go ethereal in order to kill that person in isolation.

When its Pathfinder RPG incarnation came about, in the Bestiary 2, that power (and the associated mention of its tactic) was gone.

[deuxhero]

Just remembered there were changes to how horses worked. In 3.5 Donkey, Mule, Pony, Warpony, Light Horse, Light Warhorse, Heavy Horse and Heavy Warhorse were all separate stats blocks. In PF there's only pony (used for pony, mule and donkey), and horse (with "heavy horse" being the advanced template on horse) with the "war" variants simply because trained for war.

I understand the space reasons why they did it, but they could have given a line like "A courser is a horse bred for speed over strength. They have X lower strength and a speed 10 feet higher than a standard heavy horse" would have been nice.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

LordKailas wrote:

Kobolds have been slowly undergoing a transition from being Half-human half Chihuahuas to being half-human half runt dragons. But I think they were already becoming more dragon like in 3.5.

This started when 3.0 came out.

[Aaron Bitman]

I tend to play low-level campaigns, so I'm thinking of low-level monsters. Orc ferocity got a LOT tougher, perhaps making them too dangerous for CR 1/3 cannon fodder.

And... okay, technically this is a system-wide thing, but the philosophy of "a powerful monster should have many Hit Dice to justify the high CR" REALLY messed up the pixie, in my opinion. Now those little critters - instead of having 3 hit points - have a whopping 18 hit points!

[Gorbacz]

Aaron Bitman wrote:

I tend to play low-level campaigns, so I'm thinking of low-level monsters. Orc ferocity got a LOT tougher, perhaps making them too dangerous for CR 1/3 cannon fodder.

And... okay, technically this is a system-wide thing, but the philosophy of "a powerful monster should have many Hit Dice to justify the high CR" REALLY messed up the pixie, in my opinion. Now those little critters - instead of having 3 hit points - have a whopping 18 hit points!

3.5e pixies had 3 hp with CR 4 which was laughably inadequate. Sure, they did have DR/cold iron ... but a moderately competent level 4 martial can easily do 13 hp with a single attack, thus one-shotting the pixie.

18hp ensures that they won't go down to the first greatsword swing or burning hands. 3.5 Monster Manual was full of monsters with stats out of whack with their intended CR (either ending up underpowered, such as most undead and Ogre Magi, over overpowered, such as dragons).

PF fixed quite a deal of those issues and kept the stats-to-CR consistency for monsters very well (except the dreaded seugathi).

[avr]

Dragons are another group of monsters which got scaled up in power. Also PF's combat maneuver rules gave many high end monsters - including dragons but also many outsiders - a stealth buff due to being harder to affect.

[Aaron Bitman]

Gorbacz wrote:

PF fixed quite a deal of those issues and kept the stats-to-CR consistency for monsters very well (except the dreaded seugathi).

One major reason I switched from 3.0 to PFRPG is that I hoped for more accurate CRs. I felt that the CRs were still inaccurate, though, as did several other people in threads like these:

Deadliest Bestiary Creatures (Monsters you hate seeing across the table)

Monsters too powerful for their CR

The most over-CR'ed and under-CR'ed creatures in the bestiaries.

(But I guess you're already aware of that; I see you argued against a few of those people in those threads.)

After years of playing PFRPG, I decided to go back to 3.0; if I'm going to deal with inaccurate CRs, I might as well take the advantages (or what I perceive as advantages) of 3.0.

[Gorbacz]

Aaron Bitman wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

PF fixed quite a deal of those issues and kept the stats-to-CR consistency for monsters very well (except the dreaded seugathi).

One major reason I switched from 3.0 to PFRPG is that I hoped for more accurate CRs. I felt that the CRs were still inaccurate, though, as did several other people in threads like these:

Deadliest Bestiary Creatures (Monsters you hate seeing across the table)

Monsters too powerful for their CR

The most over-CR'ed and under-CR'ed creatures in the bestiaries.

(But I guess you're already aware of that; I see you argued against a few of those people in those threads.)

After years of playing PFRPG, I decided to go back to 3.0; if I'm going to deal with inaccurate CRs, I might as well take the advantages (or what I perceive as advantages) of 3.0.

Everybody who has every got his or her PC killed by a monster will consider the CR to be wildly inaccurate. Humans are funny like that.

And I strongly believe that PF1 CRs are way ahead of 3e/3.5e. They'll never be perfect, since CR'ing monsters is part science and part art, but Paizo has kept thing remarkably well and in 10 years of running/playing PF I've only ever once considered a straight-out-of-the-book monster to be inaccurately CR'd. Which is something I can't say about 3/3.5.

Tell 3.0 un-errated Nimblewrights I said "hi".