Would it be over powered to make the racial feats (5e) into origin feats (5.5e)?

You would make a background named something like cultured. It grants you 1 racial feat for which you qualify. If we strip the ASIs and turn down some of the magic based ones, that should be good.

The 2024 backgrounds are kind of set up so that, say the Farmer background only lets you increase str, con, or wis. Its also the only background to get the Tough origin feat. This sort of suggests that if you want Tough, you probably want to be a martial build.

The moment you change backgrounds so that you just pick any scores to increase and pick any origin feat, you already make it a lot more powerful.

Pushing that even further to say, you can pick any background narrative, increase any ability scores, AND pick any origin feat OR racial feature, you just make things that much more powerful.

My campaign uses the standard backgrounds.  I dont allow custom backgrounds.   Players have come to me with an idea thats not standard and i have allowed it. But the approach is "standard bg only, unless dm approves", not "everything is allowed unless dm disapproves".

It gives the players more stuff to be creative when you remove Attribute Bonis from the Backround. +2 +1 to Any Attribute or +1 to any and people can choose what they want for their Character. A Warrior with Criminal Backround, sure go for it, play your Bandit Warrior. A Wizard with a Sailor Backround, nice so you were discovered by a traveling Wizard. And so on.

With the actual System a lot of players choose their Backround depending on their main Stats. Yeah as intendet but bad if you want to tell our own story.

Not sure about the Racial Feats actually, maybe they are too strong as a Origin Feat.