That's the thing, though. We cannot play with traditional attributes. That option seemingly does not exist anymore.
If Larian were to give us a toggle between the different ways of assigning stats to our custom character then all would be well. People could choose classic point buy or revised Tasha point buy, no big deal. But that toggle is not available. We can move the +2/+1 bonuses around for all races, even those that should not have +2/+1. We can do exactly the same stat spread with every single race, and there's no way to toggle that off.
Also, there really aren't any outliers at the level we're talking. There is variance within the human race, in that some of us are Usain Bolt, a select few are roughly in his league, and the other 8 billion of us are nowhere close. He could do a 100 meter dash in 9 seconds and change, and I'd be happy to do it in 30 seconds. There is variance within our species and evolution does happen. But no human has existed that can run at cheetah top speed, which is 2-3 times faster than what Usain Bolt has ever achieved. In other words, even the most exceptionally fast human is no competition at all for even a generic and utterly average cheetah.
And I'm also not saying all fantasy creatures should have the same stats. You have the entire point buy range to customize within a race. What I am asking for is that the difference between species is respected, even in a fictional magical world. Just like an exceptionally strong ogre is significantly stronger than an exceptionally strong human, so too should an exceptionally strong half-orc be stronger than an exceptionally strong halfling. Anything else just is not internally coherent.
You may not be able to toggle it off but you can assign them to the race's traditional attributes. I do think that the game should select each race's traditional stats by default but I don't see a problem with giving us the option to move it as we see fit in our own game. We can all determine on our own if changing it invalidates the lore and decide accordingly
You still keep ignoring the fact that it is a magical fantasy world so we don't have to limit ourselves to real world stats plus we can decide to be the Ursain Bolt. Plus there are other roleplay elements like awakened heritage, cursed family lines, magical or alchemical experimentation, etc. We also not talking about the strengh difference between a human and an ogre which is much more extreme than a human and an orc.
Assigning the bonus to the race's traditional attributes won't really fix anything, though. Because in my game, I'm still walking around in an internally absurd and contradictory world where there's largely no difference between a hafling and a half-orc, and my game will dilligently tell me that every single time I create a character.
Yes, it is a magical fantasy world but even magical fantasy worlds have to stay internally consistent to make sense. Sure, you can point to all kinds of roleplay elements that would make your halfling stronger, but shouldn't half-orcs be able to do the same? Yet at the end of the day, your exceptional half-orc cannot ever be stronger than your exceptional halfling. How does that even begin to make sense?
And yes, I am obviously exaggerating a little bit for effect when comparing D&D races with the differences between humans and bears, as I am trying to make a point regarding variance within a species versus variance between different species. With my point being, even if we decide to be the Usain Bolt, and even if we come up with RP stuff that could boost that even further, we're still nothing at all to a cheetah. Now imagine that you're playing a cheetah instead, and your DM insists that actually you're not really faster than humans. Would that work for you? Because it sure would not work for me.
