Zardnaar
Legend
As to the OP...
Does variant human break anything?
what I don't like is people griping about your experience. In your game it sounds like variant human is a problem.
In our games it simply is not.
What I like about variant human is that it helps me realize a variety of concepts.
I like Blade pact warlocks but don't always want to take hexblade.
I recently have been playing a cleric 1 warlock 6. It's celestial pact. I took toughness as my level one feat to offset my 12 con. I play him like a Gandalf that fights a lot and is an emissary for an angel from the 7 heavens.
Overpowered? No. With point buy I needed at least a 13 wisdom and charisma plus strength.
In his and so many other concept builds, variant human can take pressure off of a point buy build to do something new and suboptimal.
I use feats to move "suboptimal" variety to at least average effectiveness.
If you have people "running the table" with variant human, that attitude and not the feat is the issue.
Consider that. Most who use variant human want fun and not to break the game. Variety is good. Most restriction is a homogenizer.
Our party has 2'variant humans, a half elf, half orc and a halfling.
I kick ass surely but am not more powerful than any race of Paladin...
You picked a sub par feat with a sub par mc build.
3E worked fine at a casual level to. Then you get a level 6+ Druid rock on up with natural spell.
You're not playing the game wrong if you're having fun.
But some feats are OP and if you read some guides the same ones turn up again and again.
Some people go out if their way to abuse feats, others kind if stumble into it.
You could play 3E as well and not abuse it and it worked well enough for the time. Actually worked better that way.