What I suggest to DMs and Larian is a compromise between the two poles some of you state here, between rigid racial limit (like the Drow Wizard with maximum 15 Int) and the everyone is variant extreme.
a) 1 point Ability flexibility, so some race-class combinations are not too gimped in comparison to others (16 max at level 1 in an important Ability)
b) for the tabletop, sometimes one Tool can be swapped to another. Not relevant to BG3.
