The pf maintainer in FreeBSD has been doing a ton of work to bring more recent improvements over from OpenBSD, trying to bring them in sync as much as possible without breaking compatibility:
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/log/sys/netpfil/pf
The state of affairs you described is much less the case now than in the past.
The state of affairs you described is much less the case now than in the past.