I'm personally a fan of stat maximums, the upper range an ability can reach naturally for a certain race. To me putting the ability modifications into your pre-adventuring 'vocation' starts making everyone seem like just another flavor of Human.
I almost made mention of this in another topic where this game up, but for me the statistics you were born with weren't things you could improve with hard work, if you were born with 18 intelligence going to university wouldn't make you 19 Intelligent it would give you skill proficiencies, but that's not the case anymore. Dwarves were the hardy race because on average they all had the 'Miner' background which gives them +2 Constitution, a community of seafaring Dwarves will be statistically the same as what we thought of as Halflings, because they all have +2 Dexterity from their 'Sailor' background. It does kind of rub me the wrong way, I'm trying to rationalize it with how I've viewed ability scores for so many years.
