Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Yes, these things are part of the same underlying issue. Even completely aside the races issue it sucks that every character of given class ends up with basically the same main score (and often very similar other scores as well.) There should be several valid and effective ways to arrange your ability scores, and not all of them should require maxing your main score. And if that was the case, then the species affecting the ability scores would be a balance problem either.
Yup. Again, for me it’s not an essentialism question, but a character concept/effectiveness one.