I don't remember that being deemed okay in older editions.
Where does it say that?
What you are describing isn't a rules/edition issue. It's a social contract violation. It may be completely accidental and he just forgot, in which case he lets you change your spell choice and no harm, no...
My point is that it took them 11 years to get us one more book on the Forgotten Realms. Relying on future Realms books to do stuff isn't the most solid choice. :)
Nothing is a conversion, because none of the settings that I know of have setting specific mechanics that need to be converted. You don't convert settings. Most settings just are, and you adventure in them with whatever system you feel like using.
And it's flat out contradicted as the very first thing in the character creation section. It's the thing the designers felt was most important to be seen.
You keep asserting that without any written back up whatsoever. I on the other hand provided 5.5e PHB rules that contradict your currently baseless assertions. Do you have anything to back up your assertion other than feels?
Um. It says character creation because setting is up to the DM. You need to check, because the default expectation is that not everything will always be available in the setting.
So yes, it IS about character creation, because you create characters IN a setting.
This is a vibe of yours, not 5.5e's. In the character creation section of the 5.5e PHB the very first thing it says to do BEFORE you dive into character creation, is talk to the DM to see what kind of game they plan on running. Right off the bat they set the expectation that just because it's...
So nothing says it. You're just assuming it because the books have a lot of different races in them. That means diddly as far as whether settings are supposed to be Mos Eisley Cantina or not. Streaming mean even less. How other groups do things, even ones that stream, has absolutely no...