Is a halfling wizard actually penalized though?
By definition, it is, because your to hit and save DC are both going to start out lower. Lucky isn't going to help the DC the enemy needs to save against.
As I noted there are other important things for wizards that don't rely on intelligence score. If majority of your spell casts are not DC based halfling wizard is better than high-elf or human.
Additionally the handicap of -1 DC to spells is overstated. It has 5% chance of being relevant per spell target and while it sure does add up to something it shouldn't happen enough to discourage you from playing a race you want.
Why is a Halfling Wizard who starts out with 15 Int somehow inherently "more creative" than one who starts out with 16 or 17 Int? How in the WORLD is being able to pick any class for a race LESS creative than being mechanically encouraged to stick with a very limited set of race-class combinations, the same combinations used by the majority of the players? That argument just does not make sense.
Overcoming constraints (in this case slightly lower main score) for sake of doing what you want (playing a halfling wizard) requires finding creative solutions (such as spell choice adjustment, gear consideration, party composition) to make a constraint less impactful or in some cases beneficial.
And, once again, that still does not change that even if a floating ASI is enabled, if you still want to keep that Halfling Wizard putting their floating ASI's into +2 DEX/+1 CON to play "more creatively", nothing is stopping you. You can still do that!
That leads me back to my question, why do you want ASI if rolling for stats will be possible? And if they would add free edit (which I'm not against) you could make your stats, as if ASI was in place.
