Not sure about other settings but Humans dominated D&D through 3.5e. Not sure about 4e. 5e is the edition where humans got the shaft.
Early editions, only humans had unlimited levels in any class. In 3e, they got a free feat and bonuses to skill points and no restrictions to multiclass.
5e humans are pretty weak. It’s like the developers wanted people to move away from humans. Very odd.
Not really, in this game humans seem especially weak because we don't have variant yet. Plenty of people are drawn to the stat flexibility that Human offers, and all the most outrageous character builds I've ever seen actually played have all been Human or Variant Human. Elves got the most 5e love, because the boys at WoTC love Drizzt and want to suck on his toes.
We don't even have Gnomes yet, and I consider them to have stronger racial abilities than Elves.
But Drizzt is a drow, and drow are the worst elf race in terms of racials, so that makes no sense.
Wood elf, half elf, shield dwarf, and githyanki just leave all the other races in the dust.
I'l also say that despite all the talk about charisma's non-combat uses, DEX gives you increased sleight of hand, which is huge for pickpocketing and stealing. This removes a lot of the early difficulty of the game because you can get scale armor +1 and studded leather armor +1 and the Greatsword/Shortbow/Crossbow +1's really early by just pickpocketing the vendors trivially instead of saving up in between quests for the disorbitant prices they ask (I'll also say, as a Tiefling I found it really annoying that the druid halfling gave me a better attitude/discount for being a druid, but the damn Tiefling blacksmith offers me no such racial alignment bonus, and even when I save their sorry asses from the druid, his attitude and price ranges stay the same).
You would think Charisma would also factor into prices offered by vendors, etc, not that it matters because you can just pickpocket and keep all your gold.
Basically, any race without built in proficiencies and DEX, and particularly those saddled with charisma end up worse than the elven counterparts, and for the martial classes wood elf/shield dwarf/githyanki stand head and shoulders over the competition.
Buff Human and Tiefling racials, and maybe also look at Halfling racials as well. Drow also seems ruined by the random Charisma, and you'd think a race who mastered the underdark would be as adept as wood elves in traversing terrain and stealth.
