Which Race can be Reskinned as a Moogle?

[mehs]

Alright here's the deal, I made a cavalier, gave him an axebeak, and when looking for a picture went with a chocobo knight. It was made in a rush as the party needed another player. But, but, the setting of the region is far east asian. So now I am wanting to more fully commit to "a high classical knight totally belongs here, because he is a chocobo knight, and chocobo knights are totally far east asian". Currently the character is a human, but FF chocobo knights are mostly moogles, So which 1st party pathfinder race can be reskinned to be a moogle, with as little homebrew as possible (no mechanical changes, just literal reskins).

[Beni-Kujaku]

What abilities do you want to emulate? If the point is to emulate flying, then you have not much choice before level 9: the strix is the only PF race with wings.

[JeenLeen]

Halflings seem kinda fitting. Lucky, small, nimble creatures with low-light vision.
On flight: not sure which game the Chocobo Knights are from, and I'm mostly thinking of Mog from FF6... but in plenty of games the flight is really just hovering slightly if the wings are even functional... so I could see not worrying about flight.

If you want a little mechanical change, change the boost to throwing weapons to something else (halberds?).

[Telonius]

Natural Flight (or flight-like equivalence) is kind of hard to come by. Possibly something like a Hadozee (race from 3.5, Stormwrack)?

[Kurald Galain]

What abilities do you want to emulate? If the point is to emulate flying, then you have not much choice before level 9: the strix is the only PF race with wings.

And the Gathlain; and there are a few races that have wings but cannot fly (e.g. Tiefling, Tengu).

[mehs]

What abilities do you want to emulate? If the point is to emulate flying, then you have not much choice before level 9: the strix is the only PF race with wings.

I'm mainly familiar with a very specific ff game with chocobo knights, tactics a2: grimoire of the rift, which is why I thought the job was moogle specific, learning that there are mainly human chocobo knights in other games. Point still stands, version of the moogles is the one from that game

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/5/5b/FFTA2_MoogleIntro.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/185?cb=20130315105415

mainly want the aesthetic of the moogle of that variety, so short, fluffy, and big ears.

[Telonius]

If all you want is short and fluffy, I'd just take the Halfling statblock and stick the Moogle picture on it. There's even a Halfling prestige class (Halfling Outrider, from Complete Warrior) that helps with mounted combat. It also gets a mount "appropriate to the resources of her halfling community." (So, for your Moogle, a Chocobo would be appropriate to the resources of the Moogle community).

[mehs]

1st party pathfinder race can be reskinned to be a moogle, with as little homebrew as possible (no mechanical changes, just literal reskins).

first party pathfinder dude.

[KillianHawkeye]

Pathfinder's goblins might be another good fit. They've already got the big ears!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Um... (https://www.finalfantasyd20.com/)

Not exactly 1st party, but it's as close as you'll get, I think.

[Gavinfoxx]

Phanaton from 3.5 perhaps?

[mehs]

The cow ain't spherical and it ain't in a vacuum. The constraints are that it has to be first party pathfinder.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The cow ain't sphericalThen why are hamburger patties round?

[Wildstag]

Then why are hamburger patties round?

Because they come from ground beef, but the meat prep process drops the "g" for some reason.

[Shpadoinkle]

I'd say it would probably be easiest to just reskin halflings, or possibly gnomes. I played FFTA for a while several years ago so I don't recall a huge amount about it, but moogles in FF5 and 6 lived in small communities far from humans (in a forest in 5, and in a cave system in 6,) so I figure that halflings and/or gnomes fit that pretty decently. Personally I'd probably go with making them a gnome reskin, if you're REALLY adamant about making them a pure reskin with no unique attributes or traits.

If you ARE open to replacing a trait or two, I'd say drop weapon familiarity and innate magic from gnomes and replace it with the ability to cast Glide (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/g/glide/) once or twice per day, with the reasoning for that limitation being that moogles' wings aren't very strong and gliding like that is exhausting, so they need time to rest in between doing it.

[Maat Mons]

Grippli are allowed to trade their Swamp Stride racial trait for the ability to glide, and their Camouflage racial trait for better jumping ability. Both of those seem like logical benefits of wings that aren’t strong enough to fly with.

[KillianHawkeye]

I haven't played EVERY game, but I don't think that flying or gliding is an important aspect of Moogles' abilities in most of their appearances. The wings are generally decorative.

[Thealtruistorc]

One of the City of 7 Seraphs supplements (The Quiet Lands) included reskins of most of the Final Fantasy races, Moogles and Chocobos included (alongside Tonberrys, Cactaurs, and others). The Moogle analogues are called Morphbears IIRC.

[Arkain]

Aasimar or tiefling would be my pick.
Despite the surprisingly uniform devil girls I tend to see most of the time, both of these races allow a lot of variation in their appearance, so you may be able to literally go wild there. Now, since it's explicitly allowed to be for instance a small (e.g. halfling) aasimar you could go that route, pick a particularly animalistic variety, such as agathion (or rakshasa for tieflings) and go to town on the features or just base the features on an existing race with already animalistic features, like ratkin. Aasimar would get you functional wings via feats, tiefling would allow for vestigial wings with little actual purpose, which may be just what you want.

Or go with the FFd20 custom race. What's the harm?