1) created new offline tx on online machine (0.96.3.99-beta)
2) signed it successfully using offline machine (0.96 beta)
These 2 versions are basically incompatible if you are signing for anything but P2PKH.
i updated the online machine to 0.96 and it worked. i have no idea how the hell the first one went through, but it did. anyway, thanks to everyone for their responses.