you can use anything badly or in excess, that's a non point.
then you can lean into modern kobold tropes. the point i took from scribe was less that "We should stick to the past when playing races/species/whatevers" and more "Other races/species/whatevers had tropes to lean into for a reason".
have you considered the half orc and half elf are the problem? like, seriously, what are we doing here? are we actually gonna pretend like orcs and humans are the same species despite all evidence pointing otherwise including literally being labeled different species by the game itself, or are...
this is true - dnd has a problem with making humans mechanically very boring, and 5e specifically has a problem with making them kind of weak.
i do think 4e did a good job of making humans mechanically solid (as well as a5e and pf2e, but those are derivatives, not base dnd). does anyone have...
i already separated humans from human-like creatures earlier by giving them an exception. i guess i could have clarified that, but this really isn't that deep.
EDIT: and before you ask, i didn't clarify because i thought that separation was obvious, especially based on responses i got shortly after.
no.
by this logic any beast, humanoid, giant, or monstrosity is actually a dragon because dragons can interbreed with them (see the half dragon template). is this what we're doing? seriously?
but a human-like creature...literally isn't human. it is, by its very nature, dehumanized in some way or form. that's the point (in fiction) - to create something human-like but with inhuman (as in literally not human, not necessarily inhumane) qualities and explore that. in that sense i don't...
well, no, that is absolutely and definitionally a form of political correctness. it's just not modern political correctness. it's outdated, but for the time it'd be correct.
...that said, i'm not sure wizards of the coast even does that (in the sense that i think they've been shying away from...
I'M THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT! RRRRAAAAAAAGH
but seriously that's metal as hell. "The sun contains an eldritch horror that, if released, can singlehandedly end reality" IS a very funny coincidence though.
i mean. if the players playing the odd choices want to be odd and the players that don't find the odd choices off-putting then you've really just disappointed everyone. so not necessarily.