Let's start with the most obvious: I really find myself boiling over whenever I look at the hengeyokai of D&D in any edition, because rather than try to pursue the traits that make each kind of hengeyokai unique, they just boil it down into a generic animal-shifter.

Since I have no group of my own to discuss the issues of balancing with, I've come here in hopes of finding feedback and maybe even suggestions for other yokai that could make the cut to PC status. There's lots of different yokai in Japanese mythology, and some of these are certainly iconic enough to convert into PC races, from oni to kitsune to rokurokubi to tanuki. Now, some people might be perfectly fine with those, and if that's the case for you, more power to you. Hengeyokai: Boiled down to a hyper-generic race defined entirely by its ability to shapeshift. Spirit Folk: Basically elves with lousier rules. Korobokuru: Literally called 'Oriental Dwarves', although in flavor and mechanics they're more like coarse, vulgar, primitive Oriental Halflings. I mean, all we get out of OA in AD&D are: We all know that Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Indian mythology are very rich - even if we might not know the specifics - and so it just seems to be poor design (or Gygax's blatant low fantasy/humanocentric worldview) that the OA races are so lackluster. However, personally, these books have always left me very dissatisfied in one key area: races. We're all familiar with the Oriental Adventures sourcebooks for D&D.

D&d 5e pc races