And I would've gone the other way. I would have set the cap at 20+racial modifier.
Feel free to houserule that, then. Pick a stat for every race and say "that stat can reach 22 without the need for magic items,
wishes, or epic boons.
And even as it is. it does affect first level. I've no problem with high level PCs getting higher stats, because every high level PC is going to get access to amazing abilities. But they have to earn it. They shouldn't be able to just claim to be stronger than a goliath at 1st level, any more than they should be able to choose to be the best fighter or best wizard in the world at 1st level. ALL these things should be earned by levelling up.
Imagine that you're starting a new game and you have a player who wants to be a halfling Strength-based fighter and nobody wants to be a goliath (or other +2 Strength/Powerful Build race) of any class. Say that the other players are going to be playing a cleric, rogue, and wizard. You know, a typical party. The halfling is going to be their only full martial. Why
shouldn't that halfling be able to put that +2 in Strength? Because of the idea that it might not be "realistic" in comparison to a race that isn't in the party and, therefore, might never show up in-game?
Or heck, another way. One player decides that they want to play a halfling wizard or sorcerer. Are you going to say they can't put a +2 in Int or Cha because they
might be smarter than a gnome or have more personality than a tiefling?
According to the PHB p175: "Strength measures bodily power, athletic training, and the extent to which you can exert raw physical force." So, a.) it is NOT just the extra damage they do with weapons, and b.) having high Dex (which halflings have) affects damage just as much as Str.
Yes, and? Why can't a halfling have a lot of athletic training?
Let's have a look:-
Elephant (p322): Str 22
Rat (p335): Str 2
Conclusion: in D&D, strength is absolute, NOT proportionate.
Hmm, now let's compare halflings and goliaths. Oh, wait, they don't have their own statblocks. I guess they have whatever stats we want them to have.
Edit: As a note, all of the races, none of which are bigger than Medium, can be almost as strong as a Huge elephant. Does
that make any sense?
As mentioned above, in D&D the Strength ability score is a combination of several things, and lifting power is but one of them. Yes, there are ways to increase that aspect individually (like the Powerful Build trait), just like there are ways to increase athletic training individually (the Athletics skill, the Athlete feat). But they ALL are modifiers to their actual Strength score.
And yet, you can divorce skills from stats. It's in the rules.
I do not see the Race modifications to only apply to the six PCs in the world! I think that is disingenuous. Those game mechanics apply to all members of that race, unless further rules say otherwise.
5e treats NPCs as different than PCs. That's why PCs get Hit Dice based on their class and NPCs get Hit Dice based on their size. A halfling barbarian gets a d12 for hit points and a halfling cleric gets d8 for hit points, but if they were NPCs they would get a d6 for being Small.
It's why NPCs can have abilities that aren't in any class and lack many of the abilities that are in a class. It's why NPCs generally don't have archetypes, except for a handful of casters. It's why the Champion NPC has
22 hit dice and is still only CR 9 with a +4 proficiency bonus, where a PC who somehow made it to 22nd level would have a proficiency bonus of +6.
It has been said in multiple places that when you create an NPC, you can just put a racial trait or two on a premade statblock; you don't have to put them all on.
When we want to know what a race is like compared to humans, we look at what the racial modifiers are in addition to their traits.
Sure, fine. Halflings, as a race, are typically the same Strength as humans. Goliaths, as a race, are typically a little stronger. Everyone agrees to this already.
Why does every single individual in that race have to be the same?
Which is why you can assign a big score to Strength if you want. But at least the strongest 1st level goliath will be stronger than the strongest 1st level halfling, and the world still makes sense!
A goliath can put an 8 (10) in Strength and a halfling can put a 16 for Strength, and somehow that's OK for you. But heavens forbid that can
choose where they put the +2, because
maybe that exact same thing would happen?
That doesn't make sense.
It also doesn't make sense that one or even a handful of halflings being really strong would make the world not make sense.
Out of the other five players, one chose a variant human, one chose a non-variant human, one chose a half-elf (so the new rule had no effect on them), one chose a variant tiefling from Mordenkainen's (Glasya) but since they are also a sorcerer they chose to keep their racial +2 to Charisma, and the last is playing a dragonborn fighter and chose to keep their racial +2 Strength.
In the end, no-one took advantage of this houserule.
So what you're saying is that your fears of a super-strong halfling and a weak goliath didn't happen, and people chose to play whatever they wanted to play regardless of where the +2 was?
Like everyone here has been saying for the past 90 pages? Wow! Thanks for proving our points!
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