I'll admit I probably did abuse respec-ing in Pathfinder WotR, but on the other hand it was my first playthrough and I don't really know the system so the alternative would have been living with some mistakes I'd made constantly being annoyed I'd not made a different choice, or reloading from way, way earlier in the game. I definitely see respecing as the lesser of those evils. Though I wish WotR had given me an additional option to just relevel rather than completely redesign my character, as after the first retry I was happy with them at level 1 and it was tedious having to do the whole character creation again every time.
While I also would prefer WotR's respec to be a level 1 reset button rather than a full character redesign, I do feel it is appropriately punishing for wanting to retcon. To a degree it encourages you to stick with your choices while still allowing people not to. I just wanted to change my portrait and regretted one early feat selection, so doing an entire redesign almost wasn't worth it. I imagine min-maxing meta players doesn't enjoy the process any more than I did.
If BG3 also gets this full rewriting of characters at any time without any cost it's silly though. Come across a situation where being drow will let you bypass it? Quickload, warp to camp, change to drow, pop back out. A battle seems like it will really benefit from some more cloudkills? Warp to camp change to wizard, pop back out.
