Its still relevant because, ideally, you are still playing a member of that race and thus are affected by the attributes of said race no matter how relevant or irrelevant they are to your class.
No. That isnt how magic works.
A magically fluid race is magically fluid.
There are many different ways of being an elf, with D&D traditional examples to improve every ability score.
A 5e player can be whatever kind of elf they want to be. And because elves are magic. Whatever the player wants "makes sense".
No one is stopping you from creating a high Dexterity elf.
Other players want other kinds of elf concepts.
And yet D&D basically invented the dexterous elf.
In Original D&D and in Basic D&D, the elf is Strength-Intelligence.
The D&D 1e high elf went with Dexterity to correlate the bow and hiding. However the high elf also needs Strength for longsword. Properly, according to the flavor, the high elf uses magic to hide, not stealth skill checks. 1e intentionally avoided granting mental ability score boosts because they so dramatically empowered spellcasters with extra spells. But flavorwise, the high elf is a mental race with wizardry and high Intelligence. The NPC grey elf has this Intelligence bonus.
D&D has many different kinds of elf concepts with every one of the ability score improvements.
And no its not a win for D&D but a huge loss.
Floating ability scores are a huge loss for racism.
And a huge win for D&D players.
You lose history, you lose the flavor of different races and you lose the role in role playing because this change signals that WotC is now considering roll playing the default, playing optimized combat stats.
All of these different kinds of elf are the same D&D elf race!
The D&D elf race especially has floating ability scores.
Because there is no other reason (except for a minority who think fantasy elves being different from humans is racism) to have floating ability scores except to minmax your combat power and many people on this board have in the end advocated for floating ASI because "it will allow them play different race/class combinations" as for them playing something not optimized is unthinkable (because they would suck and not be competent. Their words...)
I care about flavor first. I require crunch to actualize the flavor during typical gameplay.
I require floating ability scores for narrative reasons. And to adequately represent the history of D&D concepts, as well as unique character concepts.
Free floating ability score improvements benefit me and others.
Sadly WotC seems to (probably rightly) think there is more money in tactical boardgames instead of RPGs and thats the direction where they are going. Not playing the "elven blacksmith who picked up a blade himself" as a role, but the "+5 attack AC 16 damage dealer" role.
Wait. A cookie-cutter race with mechanically racist predeterminism is more like a tactical boardgame, with color coding, and less like a storytelling game where an individual individuates to become ones own person.
