As I said above though, the desire by itself is not a problem. Stat bonuses were never particularly interesting as a means to differentiate characters, and I've been pretty consistent about claiming that. I've always believed it was better for the game to make the actions of characters different, because actions speak, stats don't. Dragonborn have dragon breath. Tieflings tap into hellish powers. Orcs are blood-frenzy ferocious. Etc. Making races different by what special thing they do is far and away better than "Orcs have +2 Str and Con, and -4 Cha."
Agreed
That's why they tried to make Warlock pacts into spells
Which they didn't do
that's why they initially made Hunter's Mark a spell
Hunter's mark in 5e was based off a 3.5 Ranger spell. So how far back do we have to go on this?
why Divine Smite has been turned into a spell as well.
Divine Smite was made a spell to make it in-line with the other SEVEN smite spells that already existed, that no one had a single problem with the fact that they were spells. This wasn't because they want to make everything into spells, this was because they could either make an entirely new subsystem that was going to require intense balancing and reworks... or they could make the one outlier a spell.
The spell-ification process is not restricted to any one area. Yes, they do make other kinds of things, but there has been a consistent trend of using spells even when spells are NOT warranted, and essentially never going the other way, turning stuff that is a spell into a non-spell instead.
But "you can cast spell X 1/day" (or whatever) does not feel the same way as a special racial feature that only fnords get. It just doesn't, and it never will. Instead, it feels like...getting to be a weaker spellcaster occasionally. The fact that dragon breath isn't just a spell really does matter. It feels different--even if you could theoretically restructure it as a spell, you really shouldn't, because that feels different.
But there are good reasons. Yes, you could have Forest Gnomes speak with small animals without having them cast Speak with Animals, but that ability was written to have different limitations and left a lot of vague rules situations.
But let's take a more classic example. Telepathy. There were something like 8 different forms of telepathy, some racial, some from classes, some from items, and yes some from spells. And they all worked differently. Sure, they "felt different" than having a standardized version, but it also led to a lot of confusion for players and GMs alike who had to guess the range, actions, and whether or not it was two-way based on the specific version used. It got to the point that one of things they are selling the DMG on is that it will include clarifications to telepathy, alongside stealth and teleportation.
So, I get it, I understand it feels nice to have Fnords get their own special ability, but if that ability is 95% a spell that already exists... I'm actually glad they just have them mechanically reference that spell, because it makes things far less confusing over time.
For an edition that has allegedly prioritized "feel" above all else, because (allegedly) "math is easy," the fact that they keep chucking so many things--no,
not absolutely positively everything @Chaosmancer, but FAR too much and consistently more over time--into the flavorless-crappy-feels zone of "you get a couple weird spells!" just flat is not helping.
It sounds like the goliath is a (IMO, rare) example of NOT doing this, and for that I'm glad...even if the "what do you do" sounds incredibly thin and frankly pretty dull.
I also disagree that these things are flavorless. Tieflings Hellish Rebuke for instance has been a spell, it could have been an ability, and it has not lacked in flavor for the past 10 years.
