And let's be honest, it's not like they threw those adjustments in just before the printing deadline. It's also an experiment to see how stretching the design guidelines will be received in the community.
It might not harm the finnesse users, but it does have an impact on somebody who wants to use heavy armour, or heavy use of spells that require saves or attacks (like most offensive spells).
If it's an experiment it should have been in an Unearthed Arcana article, not a published product.
I also find playing too far off type becomes silly or a lazy way of making the character be special. It's making a pink ninja: you want all the coolness that comes from being a ninja, but you want to stand out.
You can still play that orc wizard, it's just not optimal. It's not like orc warlocks and sorcerers aren't an option. It's not like your kobold fighter can't focus on finesse weapons.
You can also have silly or lazy characters that do play to type, however. Neither of them specifically are bad, so why should one be discouraged over the other?
And it's not the viability I'm concerned about, (that much. It does admittedly bother me how many points you have to invest for a mere +1 in a point buy system). It's the
perception. Inexperienced players aren't going to look at an orc and say "it won't be optimal, but it can work," they're going to look at it and say "Ew, it makes a terrible wizard. Pass." I'm arguing that players shouldn't need system familiarity to play against type. It should be an option right out of the box.
Point-buy is an optional rule, like multi-classing or feats, that I happily ignore the existence of; I would not consider playing in a point-buy game, nor allow it at my table, and it doesn't seem to really enter into balance considerations on WotC end. So, roll a 16 or better, perfectly acceptable Orc Wizard. I actually think an Abjurer would be fun...
1) it's as optional as feats or multiclassing, and you see people talk about them like they were the default.
2) It's the default for AL, which while wotc doesn't design for, is an important consideration.
3) As soon as you leave ENworld, you start to see a lot more communities that either disparage or outright ban rolling for stats. If anything the more popular belief is that wotc balanced the game for point buy/fixed stats, and rolling was merely kept for tradition.
In the end, no. Point Buy is an important factor into the way the game works, and should be accounted for when designing races/classes.
Cutting features is one way to go, probably best for core races; bit, as you go further afield, that gets bland if followed overly closely. Personally, I'm a bit disappointed ed they didn't take this opportunity to try Large race rules out, which would certainly necessitate some drawback of other.
I never advocated for never making new features. just keep them reasonable. I've never seen this "add level to damage" before as a feature, and I like it. There's no reason new features entirely can't be explored before "add piles and piles of features, but then add all these drawbacks that probably don't matter anyway" should be accounted for.
