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

[Voadam]

Wouldn't Ookla the Mook essentially be a Bugbear?

Physically as far as stats? I don't remember a lot of stealth and surprise from Ookla, but yes, most hulking brute reskins could work for most of the stats.

Couldn't you use that to modify their lore?

If you rewrote bugbears to narratively be a version of a Thundar Mook or a Star Wars Wookie (which Ookla is based off of) that would be different social interaction dynamics than the cowardly, greedy, bullying ambush brutes who are used as a terrorist special forces part of hobgoblin armies and it could work. You'd probably lose most of the D&D/Pathfinder narrative bugbear theming about being fear feeding and ambushes and the intertwining goblin interactions, but it could work.

Chewie can walk into a Tatooine cantina, hang out, and make a deal with Obi Wan Kenobee. You don't expect Chewie to hide under a child's bed to do jump scares the way an encounter with a bugbear goes in one of my Pathfinder adventure path modules.

 

[James Gasik]

So there was a discussion on the Tales of the Valiant Discord server today about Reincarnation that I felt was pretty relevant. For the most part, with the distinct separation of Lineage (what you are) and Heritage (how you grew up), and the disassociation of ability scores from either, ToV's version of Reincarnate is the easiest to implement of any version I've seen.

But there's still an elephant in the room- Humans.

Because it was decided back in 3e that Humans have "more skills" and "bonus Feat" as their only real traits, Reincarnating from Human to something else or from something else to Human, despite only creating a new body, can have some pretty wild results.

Like a Human being turned into an Elf might suddenly have a Ritual book that's unintelligible gibberish, or a Orc turned into a Human can suddenly become an accomplished chef, lol.