About the ability scores. What's being overlooked is that we are talking about player characters here. PC's being an exception to the norm is fine by me.
That's not being overlooked, because there is no longer any mention what bonuses the average member of a race gets. Are Dwarves generally more wise? Are Elves more dextrous? Are Tieflings more charismatic? Do the multiple dwarf sub-races--that have for ages lived in different environments and had to adapt differently--have different stats? In One D&D: no. Especially, as @Niara said, for the new races. For the old races you can fall back on 5e lore; but all the new races are designed with the "+2/+1 to any stats" in mind and thus there is very little flavor-text on what physical/mental traits these races have inherent bonuses to.
Originally Posted by 1varangian
What I do have an issue with however, is making all elves baby spellcasters. A martial class spellcaster who only knows 1-3 spells becomes a gimmick. I would like to keep spellcasting separated, or these abilities changed so that elves are magically enhanced rather than just flat out teleporting or throwing Fire Bolts i.e. casting actual spells. Detect Magic is a good example of something that can be explained as a spell-like ability or a sense, rather than literally casting a spell with verbal and somatic components and all.
I'll generalize this issue to all races: I dislike that many of the "racial abilities" are now essentially spells. It's boring, makes everyone more homogenous, is more restricting than just having racial abilities. Why are Dwarves are arbitrarily limited to casting Tremorsense PB times per day? If they were truly in-tune with Stone, they should be able to do it whenever. Forest gnomes can no longer just communicate with animals, they have to cast a spell (1x/day) to do so.
I'm worried that Ardlings (as the newest race in the One D&D options) will be the template for all new races, where one of the major racial traits--and the thing that distinguishes subraces--is just that you get different spells at 1st, 3rd, and 5th level. I don't want all races to be wizards.
