D&D General Reincarnate is and has always been, weird.

[Voadam]

It's right there in the middle of the Neutrality column.
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What kind of animal do you reincarnate into? ¯\(ツ)/¯

I had missed that.

What kind of animal and how exactly and to what extent you bias the roll towards an animal result are left to be determined.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Reincarnate (or the base concept behind it) always felt to me (5e is my first edition) like it ought to be the generic first accessible level of revival magic across the classes, like, yes you get to come back but the process is patched together with sticky tape and sealing wax, you come back changed, but you DO come back, your elf should count their blessings that they’re even alive before complaining that they ended up as a goblin.

 

[Kurotowa]

Reincarnate is very quintessentially part of the old "Hardcore Mode Roguelike" style of D&D. You roll up your character and see how far you can get this time, and there's perma-death but with expensive respawns, only here's a budget option with a chance to backfire. Maybe your PC becomes unplayable, maybe they come out of it stronger, you don't know! Do you want to roll the dice?

It's still around because it's a tradition now, but it's kind of out of place.

 

[James Gasik]

There was a time in 3.0 where you could come back as a Dryad. I saw this happen once to a Barbarian. The DM had "her" (no male Dryads, you understand) show up carrying a potted baby tree that she was now bound to.

Given the massive rulings a DM has to make to figure out what the player even retains from their previous existence, what they gain from their new one, adjustments to ability scores, figuring out if you can even use your class abilities or gear, and the normal penalties of daring to come back from the grave, it's no wonder that what could and should be an interesting roleplaying moment usually ends up as a colossal waste of time as the player either quickly finds a "fix" or retires their character one way or another.

I love the possibilities of Reincarnation, but the reality of the spell is just wretched.