Rich McGee

Shades of the old TSR days where people would remove class level caps on demihumans and then complain about how unbalanced they were.  "Humans are boring because we removed all their uniqueness with house rules" is an old, old refrain. 

It's not the hypothetical owl stealth that matters (which doesn't apply anyway since the hybrid can't fly - owls are not especially quite on the ground), it's the neck rotation and incredible night vision that also picks out movement well thing.  Hypothetically it's harder to sneak on an owlbear than a regular bear, which makes it a superior guard animal.  If anything the bear's own stealth is probably helping the owl parts hunt better, since it's at least somewhat akin to an owl's game plan - just with less swooping and more charging and mauling involved. 
 
I've seen a few rulesets that gave them limited gliding abilities that restores swooping as an option, which would go a fair ways toward making these things less absurd.  Bears climb trees quite well, making reaching a position to swoop from easy enough.
 
It's also quite likely that the intent was get a fully flight-capable hybrid out of the experiment and this is the best they could do.  Wizards are usually not aeronautical (bio)engineers. 
 
Or the original creator really, really wanted something special for a rug in their love nest and had a fur-and-feathers fetish.  If you think the owlbear's weird you should see his chinchillafinches and hamsterobins.
 
Mind you, the whole concept only makes sense to people who've been huffing too much yellow lotus dust.  More sane wizards just build animated statues and the like when they want a guard.  The really sarcastic ones sculpt them to look like owlbears.  

I understand that with 5e introduction of the Good berry which allows humans to see in the dark, there is a complaint that it takes away from Demi humans.

While not really a pet, I always preferred Hellcow for my bovine supers fun.
 

The farm boy in me objects to calling a horse (even a demonic, probably sapient flying one) a pet, but I'll concede you can make an argument for it.  At least it isn't intended for the dinner table from word one the way my sister's lamb was.  One might reasonably wonder if Huntsman is the one headed for a dinner table, though. 
 
One of my players' character a couple of years back had a spirit hound living inside his soul that they could manifest at need.  At least sort of a pet, and capable of the stuff you might expect of a spirit hound - biting other spirits and people's embodied souls, ghosting through walls, running on air, being eerie and disturbing.  It may not have always been a dog, the thing was some kind of family inheritance from a multiple-great grandmother who'd been gifted the service of one of the Wild Hunt's dogs in perpetuity, and the Hunt usually make those out of people unlucky enough to run across them.
 
I've got another player currently who's player a magical ghost owl psychopomp.  The other PCs sometimes claim she's a pet or familiar to simplify explanations and keep people thinking she's just an animal.  There's also a pretty good Marvel Super Heroes podcast where one of the PCs is a telepathic cat named Mister Cuddlebear that also has a suit of feline Iron Man armor, which I presume is the result of Tony getting drunk in the engineering lab again.  Don't think either of those really count, though.
 
There was a PC in one of my M&M games an edition back who defined one of their condition-affliction powers as being paralytic venom from a flying snake pet they had a mental bond with.  It was just an effect mechanically but roleplayed as a pet.  I'm still kind of amazed I was the only other person at the table who even got the reference, given that she named it Pop just in case it wasn't obvious enough.  Guess no one reads Alan Dean Foster any more.  Their loss, his Humanx Commonwealth stuff was pretty fun overall, and deserved the GURPS book it got.
 
That's all I can dredge out of memory.
 
 
 

It's not the hypothetical owl stealth that matters (which doesn't apply anyway since the hybrid can't fly - owls are not especially quite on the ground), it's the neck rotation and incredible night vision that also picks out movement well thing.  Hypothetically it's harder to sneak on an owlbear than a regular bear, which makes it a superior guard animal.  If anything the bear's own stealth is probably helping the owl parts hunt better, since it's at least somewhat akin to an owl's game plan - just with less swooping and more charging and mauling involved. 
 
I've seen a few rulesets that gave them limited gliding abilities that restores swooping as an option, which would go a fair ways toward making these things less absurd.  Bears climb trees quite well, making reaching a position to swoop from easy enough.
 
It's also quite likely that the intent was get a fully flight-capable hybrid out of the experiment and this is the best they could do.  Wizards are usually not aeronautical (bio)engineers. 
 
Or the original creator really, really wanted something special for a rug in their love nest and had a fur-and-feathers fetish.  If you think the owlbear's weird you should see his chinchillafinches and hamsterobins.
 
Mind you, the whole concept only makes sense to people who've been huffing too much yellow lotus dust.  More sane wizards just build animated statues and the like when they want a guard.  The really sarcastic ones sculpt them to look like owlbears.  

Shades of the old TSR days where people would remove class level caps on demihumans and then complain about how unbalanced they were.  "Humans are boring because we removed all their uniqueness with house rules" is an old, old refrain. 

It's not the hypothetical owl stealth that matters (which doesn't apply anyway since the hybrid can't fly - owls are not especially quite on the ground), it's the neck rotation and incredible night vision that also picks out movement well thing.  Hypothetically it's harder to sneak on an owlbear than a regular bear, which makes it a superior guard animal.  If anything the bear's own stealth is probably helping the owl parts hunt better, since it's at least somewhat akin to an owl's game plan - just with less swooping and more charging and mauling involved. 
 
I've seen a few rulesets that gave them limited gliding abilities that restores swooping as an option, which would go a fair ways toward making these things less absurd.  Bears climb trees quite well, making reaching a position to swoop from easy enough.
 
It's also quite likely that the intent was get a fully flight-capable hybrid out of the experiment and this is the best they could do.  Wizards are usually not aeronautical (bio)engineers. 
 
Or the original creator really, really wanted something special for a rug in their love nest and had a fur-and-feathers fetish.  If you think the owlbear's weird you should see his chinchillafinches and hamsterobins.
 
Mind you, the whole concept only makes sense to people who've been huffing too much yellow lotus dust.  More sane wizards just build animated statues and the like when they want a guard.  The really sarcastic ones sculpt them to look like owlbears.  

The edition differences mostly matter during character generation IME.  Once you're at the table I dare say you could probably mix editions all the way back to 1st edition, although pre-4th might feel pretty wonky at times.
 
It's a big chunk of why I petered out on updating core books in 4th.  Looked at 5th, saw how backwards compatible it was, decided what i had was good enough for me.  "Eternal" game engines where knowing one edition means you can at least stumble through all the other ones are rare and precious things.  Battletech, Star Fleet Battles and the Palladium house engine are the main other examples I can think of offhand. 

Didn't they recover that version of Bat-Cow from an illegal slaughterhouse or something?  Pretty sure the dietary conversion came from firsthand experience with an abattoir and the pet was a side effect.
 
Nowhere near as dangerous as the Tick's Man-Eating Cow, of course.  And the Chick Fil A super-cows from the promotional comics are nobody's pets.

Then I'm sure you aren't a fan of DC Comics' Legion of Super-Pets, which greatly predates the recent animated movie, and was made up of actual super-powered animals (and one alien).
 
Hanna-Barbera animated studio was very fond of animal sidekicks in their cartoon series, starting with the dog Bandit in the classic Jonny Quest. Their raft of superhero cartoons from the mid-1960s-on often featured such pets. While later series played the animals primarily for laughs, such as Blue Falcon's cybernetic "Dog Wonder," others were relatively straight and sometimes or often helpful to the hero. That class includes Space Ghost's blue ET gadget-wearing monkey, Blip; Birdman's eagle companion, Avenger; Tog, the fire-breathing winged dino partner of the prehistoric superhero Mightor; and Samson's pet dog Goliath, which transformed into a huge lion which shot "power rays" from its eyes. H-B's Moby Dick cartoon actually swapped character roles, with two human boys being the sidekicks to the eponymous, virtually super-powered white whale.

I must admit, as a 3.5e to 2e convert, I am not firmly opposed to opening up classes and easing level limits for demihumans if the DM has a clear idea of how things fit together, but I completely understand why folks choose to abide by those restrictions. When it comes to D&D, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings and the like are not human (in their thinking, their communities, their physical essence, et cetera); the more you force these fantasy races into the role of "humans with funny suits", the less magical they become.

Shades of the old TSR days where people would remove class level caps on demihumans and then complain about how unbalanced they were.  "Humans are boring because we removed all their uniqueness with house rules" is an old, old refrain. 

Days later Mocker was with Frank and Max at a very old Crusher hide out.  Frank and Max looked at the old equipment.  Max whistled “Man you could make money selling this as collectables!”  Frank cringed, “Hey, they were state of the art when I first made them, but yeah, we need some tools.”
 
“What we need is to get a few more members.  And I don’t mean Vulture or Hornet.” Mocker stated.
 
“Well we can forget both of them anyway.  Vulture got cured and Hornet had his debt paid off by some rich dude, and he retired.  Same with Shocker, he finally turned himself in, did his time, got out and hooked up with Evergreen.  Now they work for some environmentalist think tank.” Frank stated.
 
“Shrew?” Mocker asked.  “Disappeared.” Frank said. “Last seen in Hong Kong.”
 
“And Merc?”
 
“Lost his powers and retired!” Frank stated.
 
“So that leaves Marionette, Bull and Storm Lord!” Mocker said.  
 
“Scratch Lordy also.  That think tank of Evergreen pays him a retainer for weather related problems.  He was mainly in it for the money, and now they pay him well to do almost nothing.  BUT!  I think the rangy dude got a lady pregnant, because I heard of a weather controller mixing it up down south.  She may be interested!” Frank commented.
 
Max piped in “If you're looking for a speedster, I made a gun for a fast dude a few weeks ago.  I can look him up!”
 
“Gun?” asked Frank.
 
“Yeah!  He said, quote “...running by doing clothesline is too old school!” unquote!” Max mentioned!
 
“OK, Frank, you look into this Storm King (for a lady?).  Max track down this speedster!  Meanwhile I’ll check info about Bull and Marion!” Mocker ordered!
 

The edition differences mostly matter during character generation IME.  Once you're at the table I dare say you could probably mix editions all the way back to 1st edition, although pre-4th might feel pretty wonky at times.
 
It's a big chunk of why I petered out on updating core books in 4th.  Looked at 5th, saw how backwards compatible it was, decided what i had was good enough for me.  "Eternal" game engines where knowing one edition means you can at least stumble through all the other ones are rare and precious things.  Battletech, Star Fleet Battles and the Palladium house engine are the main other examples I can think of offhand. 

The edition differences mostly matter during character generation IME.  Once you're at the table I dare say you could probably mix editions all the way back to 1st edition, although pre-4th might feel pretty wonky at times.
 
It's a big chunk of why I petered out on updating core books in 4th.  Looked at 5th, saw how backwards compatible it was, decided what i had was good enough for me.  "Eternal" game engines where knowing one edition means you can at least stumble through all the other ones are rare and precious things.  Battletech, Star Fleet Battles and the Palladium house engine are the main other examples I can think of offhand. 

At GameStorm a few years ago, @lemming ran a Champions game that used 5th and 6th edition character sheets (and possibly 4th as well).  No translation necessary.  Just sit down and play.  We didn't worry about which edition it was!

I always appreciated the high degree of compatibility between HERO Fourth and Fifth Editions. It's very easy to use material written for one with the other, which given everything published under them, gives me a vast amount of stuff to draw from for characters, creatures, artifacts, templates, settings, rule variations... the works.

Ah, sorry to be the bearer of that particular news.  Wholly agree with your assessment, especially in regard to someone who was such an important figure when it came to encouraging female scifi authors.  At least we still have Cherryh and Le Guin and Jo Clayton.  
 
I believe profits from remaining sales of her books are being donated (with her child's approval) to a non-profit that helps victims of similar abuse.  Several other authors in her circle have done the same with sales on projects related to her - Darkover spinoff stories, some of the anthology stuff - as a show of support and, I think, an apology for not realizing what had been going on.

A moment of silence for poor Mace.  I like to think he'd approve of Morningstar carrying on his legacy of hitting people with blunt objects, though. 

Realistically that kind of interbreeding would be practically impossible, at least not without major deliberate intervention by genetic engineers. But obviously, it's become a common trope of popular science-fiction. In the Star Trek universe we have had examples of humans producing offspring with Vulcans, Betazoids, Romulans and Klingons, with at least one example of that last asserting that "the DNA is compatible, with a fair amount of help."
 
Hero Games' "Terran Empire" setting postulates that "life identifies with other life," i.e. that alien species can interbreed if they have significant physical similarities. Hence humanoids can breed with other humanoids, reptilians with other reptilians, insectoids with insectoids, etc. (See Terran Empire p. 23.)

In this discussion it's extremely pertinent to mention Frank "Dune" Herbert's novel, The God Makers (actually stitched together from several loosely-connected short stories). It presents an order of religious monks on the planet Amel who set out to deliberately create new gods. Exactly why they do this is shrouded in philosophical musings by Herbert, but how they do it appears to involve genetic manipulation of a subject's ancestors to bring out "psionic" powers in progeny somewhere down the line, then a series of tests and trials to bring those powers to fruition. This despite most of their creations having been derived from animals and even inanimate objects.
 
The monks don't know in advance what sort of form and power the new god will assume, nor what its personality and motivations will be. This strikes me as an incredibly dangerous and potentially self-destructive activity, but hey, religion, I guess.

If you really wanted to lean into the future feudalism thing, different packages of geneering would be associated with different parts of society.  If the tech has slid over to the point where post-utero mods are possible (or consciousness transfer, or any other trick to allow body-hopping) you could even see the rare individual who changes class/caste getting a new set of upgrades to replace their old ones.  A "ruler" package with enhanced memory, problem-solving and charisma might be served by "soldier" mods with physical and sensory enhancements and some kind of enhanced "publicists" who partly fulfill the role of priest/educator by playing up the benefits of the whole system - which might be where "spare" rulers wind up, much akin to the actual historical system.
 
Of course, since people being awful to each other seems to be a universal trait, the "work/serf" class probably gets mandatory mods to suit their projected field of work as well.  Probably past the point where lowering their intelligence makes any sense, but tweaking brain chemistry for higher degrees of passivity, loyalty and obedience and reducing need for sleep or recreational stimulation would probably be on the list.  Some poor folks destined for heavy labor might still get a "big dumb guy" mod - perhaps a downgrade forced on criminals?  To go full horror show, take a page from the ghastly 40K universe and combine the mods with task-specialized cyberware and removal of free will like their "servitor" drones.
Worth noting that all of Darkover's psionics ultimately stem from a few cases of interbreeding with the planet's original nonhuman population, which (if you can get past that in the first place) just contributes to the dangerously small genetic pool of the powerhouse practitioners.  Also reminded that TSR quite shamelessly cribbed the "colony world ruled by feuding psionic noble houses while a distant Terran empire tries to maintain control" for the setting of their Revolt On Antares game.
 
Oh, and a pox on MZB.  Another somewhat interesting setting irrevocably tainted by posthumous revelation about the author.

I got a new copy of 4th ed of the BBB because an old friend wants to get back into with his kids and these are rules he’s most familiar with. My original copy is showing its age and its been in a binder for 20years. So when I got my new copy, I thought it was a mistake! I don’t remember the book being so thin compared to later editions!