I partially agree. For one, specific attributes being preferred for a given race is like the bread and butter of racial bonuses in RPGs. That being said, of course "everbody does it" does not mean it has to be that way.
I actually think the racial special abilities are already a very good step towards having more generic, always useful abilities, and I think Larian did well to design them.
I can agree with both of those. Different attribute point distribution for different races are pretty standard so it's not unreasonable to do it in the way Larian does it.
On the other had, it's certainly possible to improve the system and make tweaks. In particular, the Dwarf bonuses don't synergize with each other. They get one bonus which is great for warriors and another which is great for rogues.
However, I can also agree that specifically finesse (Elf) and strength (Dwarf) are rather specific and not easily useful with many classes.
Maybe an easy compromise would be to just change them to Constitution (Dwarf) and Memory (Elf), which are more generally useful. The memory stat would also go well with the corps eater ability.
Those sound good indeed. I just don't know what to do with Lizards in that case.
Definitely agreed. As I mentioned in another topic, it would be ideal if there were multiple special bonuses one could choose from that was unique to each race, but able to benefit any build.
As an example, for lizard they get +2 int and a breath attack that doesn't really scale well. If it were me, I'd have made the active ability something more universally useful, like say...a shed skin ability that lowers con for 1 turn, but purgres all positive and negative effects.
Shed Skin does sound like a pretty cool and useful racial skill.