Yeah, figuring out what does and what doesnt constitute a special quality in PF has proven an excercise in futility.

They moved special abilities around the statblock "intuitively" completely dumping the idea of codified special abilities as 3.x had them.
Spoiler: Me ranting. I feel better now.
Show
Which for running a game is fine. Some things are easier to find. Great. Good for them.

Right up until templates need applied and you find that they copy pasted 3.x special ability inheritance but didnt bother defining which special abilities were which.
They leave that task to the individual GM to sort out which is, IMHO, kind of a **** move as the GM already has enough on their plate.

I have a short list of what special abilities are called out as special qualities and a poorly sourced answer from the RAW Q&A thread which advises me to start a new thread about the issue.
Am on the fence about doing so because the general tone has been that to criticize PF devs is tatamount to sacrilege and how dare I and why don't I just go play 3.x if I like it so much.

My apologies for the rant. Just frustrated. I LIKE PF, and even fir its glaring flaws I feel like it HAS been an improvement over 3.x in a lot if ways.

There are just some spots where PF RAW needed some more of the precision that 3.x RAW already had. Seems nonsensical and arbitrary to me that MY favorite bits of the game got under-copy-pasted.