I remember that Halflings had a penalty to Strength in 3e. (-1 in AD&D). And that kinda helped to set the tone and highlight the differences between different races (ancestries).

Most choices were indicators that certain classes were better fits for specific races, and vice-versa. It was clear that building a Fighter Halfling would come with certain limitations or challenges that came with their size and Strength score.

They changed this in 4e and 5e and removed the penalties completely. And for 5e 2024, they changed it and ancestries have no bonuses anymore, it is the Background that grants you a +2 and +1 to two abilities, or a +1 to three of them. This basically helps min-maxers because now they can choose any ancestry and pick the Background that fits best to boost the stats they want.

This results in Halflings that can be just as strong as Goliaths. (This is super cool for the Halfling but it kinda minimizes the Goliath, they should be stronger, shouldn't they?). Or Half-Orcs that can be as charismatic and persuasive than a clever Half-Elf.

Don't get me wrong, I still like 5e 2024. I just miss that races/acestries felt different before. Statswise, they are basically all the same now.

100% this.

5e initially had it. They removed it only couple of years back in preparations for 2024 edition to make it compatible.

This page still has those original bonuses (it fits for the core races, not sure about the weird stuff like minotaurs etc.)

I can see benefits of both approaches. I think I will enforce specific racial bonuses at my table. It makes more sense to me for worldbuilding and consistency of the world. But I am not completely against the player freedom, so maybe i will change my mind one time for some specific campaign.

I agree. The bonuses to stats at first level are now meaningless - by which I mean they don't tell you anything about the world - and are just there to help people optimize. Most groups already use point buy, so those bonuses serve no purpose. I would prefer they be removed rather than just sit there as a tool for min maxxers.

I miss that as well. The penalties meant you had to get creative to run a halfling fighter or other suboptimal class.

I prefer PF2E's ancestry feat approach

Any race can be any class, but if you're a goblin you can get a feat that improves goblin weapons or fire damage.

We have some neat origin feats now which are similar, but don't quite hit the same.

Eh I dont miss it much. You could basically already have halfling berserkers stronger than goliaths and orc bards who were beloved everywhere they went, the bonuses are nice but they were never particularly impactful in any of the characters Ive seen built. Ultimately I think a consequence of trying to fit a universal "Strength" and other stats measurement to a huge variety of playable races is that unless you either cap it or find some other way to work around this, you are going to have some weird edge cases.

Interesting, thanks for sharing the page.

This is exactly how I think. They are there just to help optimization. Zero flavor.

It's not just min-maxxers. Lots of people would refuse to play certain species/class combination because the game actively penalized you for it.

Like, if you're just trying to start the game with a 16 in your prime requisite, and playing point-buy, then that would automatically eliminate like, 2/3rds of all species choices.

Removing stat changes from the species/race opens up a lot more interesting choices for players that don't want to start the game at a disadvantage.

Species feats are fun.

You could always make a Goliath with 10 strength and a Halfling with 16, anyway. -1 to your Strength attribute hardly makes a difference. It is and always has been up to the player to make a character that makes sense. Moving attributes to backgrounds just gives them more of the flexibility to do so, I think.

Exactly! There was an extra planning step and it really felt that you had to rethink your strategy, weapon choice, Feats, etc. Now all Fighters are 'the same'