Hmmm.
What got me thinking about how 5th handles the furry angle was a bit of wordplay that turned into a seed of a PC idea: “The Bear of Bad News” (character NAME as yet undecided).
Said anthro-ursine PC is a “Jonah” or “Cooler”. A character whose shtick is cursing others, in the various ways D&D historically allows- debuffs, luck manipulation, actual curses, etc., class as yet unknown, for obvious reasons.
Further, the character would prefer using a club as his melee weapon of choice, and thrown spheres for ranged combat…
(And besides all that, some of the prior unplayed designs might also be feasible.)