I've been wondering if this might work better if they can shrink down to gain access to their winged flight and only enlarge to human or so size when dealing with mortals outside of their realm or wanting to keep their nature a secret?

Perhaps they can only maintain that smaller size within their native Feywild where the larger size is unnecessary, but in the mortal world can appear humanoid in size depending on what form they're posing as?

Not alter self, just thinking of what uses that Reduce/Enlarge can be put towards, but not game breaking in nature.

It's just a thought.

I don't get the fuss over small and large PCs. Small and medium is fine. I would like to see the fey passage ability back in it, I didn't think it was that strong to be honest and it added a lot of fun flavor. 

I think part of the problem could be addressed by being a bit harsher in handing out racial drawbacks, something DnD seems strangely reluctant to do. For example, when I've homebrewed a fairy race for stuff I've done in the past, it had some pretty powerful abilities, but also weaknesses- usually something like -2 strength and/or reduced HP. While this can pump the brakes on some choices/builds players want to make, we already have plenty of races that can be good at whatever you want to do, so having something that's a more specialized race seems fine to me. Just a thought though.

Not surprising after the harengon, but the ASI situation still makes no sense. Yes, more options is good, so why do people argue that removing the OPTION to have standard ASIs is a good thing?

And here's the kicker: It's easy to convince players to drop/adjust a written rule, it's a positive experience and can make you (the DM) a hero, everyone wins. Meanwhile, it's entirely MUCH more difficult to convince players to use a rule that isn't written, even if it makes sense and most the table agrees, someone can end up bitter, which wouldn't happen if it was simply in the rules as an option in the first place.

Kicker number two! If ASIs work in a universal way like this, why not just modify ability score creation for simplicities sake? (Ex. You get, say, 30 points for point buy instead of 27, give the standard array slightly higher numbers, and for the roll method you could get 7 stats and drop the lowest, etc.) Expanding the stat creation mechanic to accomplish the same overall power level, instead of adding this extra fiddly layer to the race selection. Though then you might wonder why bother adding a few extra points to the stats at all? Which leads me to...

Final kicker! Dragonborn can breath fire, elves cannot, it's a unique physical trait. Likewise, A goliath is stronger than a kobold, and a harengon is more dexterous than a tortle, so I don't see why we still can't have these, while keeping the option to work with our DMs to move them around on a case by case basis.

So if Small creatures get disadvantage when attacking with Heavy weapons, does that mean Tiny creatures get disadvantage when attacking with weapons that aren't Light?

Quote from SigtyrDK >>

So if Small creatures get disadvantage when attacking with Heavy weapons, does that mean Tiny creatures get disadvantage when attacking with weapons that aren't Light?

There are no rules for it; a halfling or other small creature can already be reduced in size by the Enlarge/Reduce spell but it has no effect on what weapons they can use. It's a DM call basically.

Quote from Wyldeshot >>

Flight at 1st level is problematic.  And considering some classes get access into double digits, it seems somewhat oddly powerful in comparison.

 I guess they won't be AL legal, like the aarakocra, because of the flight. And I totally agree with that decision.

Quote from MagusRogue >>

Flight at 1st lvl is not an issue, considering the armor issues. Sure the orc with a greataxe can't hit you. Until he picks something up and throws it at you, considering your ac AT BEST at level 1 with standard equipment and abilities is gonna be like 14 or 15. Not hard to hit at all. Flying over traps? Cool. Until you realize that the brittle fairy just left their entire party behind. Classes get flight later on, sometimes in double digits? Yep. And have no weight or armor restrictions at all. I had an aarakokra cleric and trust me, the flight wasn't nearly as game breaking as it seems.

 Two words: Faerie monks.

Another two to turn the nightmare into terror: mobile feat.

I kind of want to know why WotC don’t seem to want to make a tiny or large PC races a thing.

Is it because they don’t want to create the rules for them, or because being large or tiny is too powerful and don’t want to give negative features to balance them?

Quote from kvnluck >>

I kind of want to know why WotC don’t seem to want to make a tiny or large PC races a thing.

Is it because they don’t want to create the rules for them, or because being large or tiny is too powerful and don’t want to give negative features to balance them?

Being Large on its own isn't especially powerful; you can carry twice as much, and Small creatures cannot grapple or shove you but those are the only pure bonuses (and they're pretty minor really). You also occupy a 10x10 foot square but that's a mixed feature as it increases your attack area a little, can maybe block a corridor on your own, but also means more creatures can attack you, and you're more easily hit by area effects etc.

I think a big part of the problem is that they just didn't design the game and equipment for such a range of sizes; there are no larger weapons for larger creatures as such (except the monster weapon dice rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide) so all of that needs to be added for the first large playable race, and any future ones.

I went through that for my Brute (Large) Player Races homebrew (currently Minotaurs and Trolls) and ended up settling on making them better suited to martial roles with large weapon rules, better physical ability scores but some DM guided drawbacks to try and balance them. I feel like that strikes the right balance between making them feel large without being too OP, and even then I'm still tweaking it (Minotaur has been updated more recently than Troll, because updating a race with sub-races is a huge pain in the ass on D&D Beyond).

Tiny creatures it's hard to say; them being able to squeeze through gaps and hide more easily seems like it's fairly well covered in the rules already, I think it mostly just comes down to equipment and a lack of rules to cover that. Currently a halfling shrunk to Tiny can still pickup and wield a full-sized warhammer without penalty.

They probably just decided that it's better to keep the races as simple as possible, rather than try to come up with rules that they might have to change on the next Tiny/Large race and create more and more inconsistency?

Quote from lexgamer >>

Kicker number two! If ASIs work in a universal way like this, why not just modify ability score creation for simplicities sake? (Ex. You get, say, 30 points for point buy instead of 27, give the standard array slightly higher numbers, and for the roll method you could get 7 stats and drop the lowest, etc.) Expanding the stat creation mechanic to accomplish the same overall power level, instead of adding this extra fiddly layer to the race selection. Though then you might wonder why bother adding a few extra points to the stats at all? Which leads me to...

 Increasing point but limit is not the same as adding +2/+1 to the final result, for two reasons:

1. The highest score with the point buy limit is 15; the only way to get a 16 or 17 is to add the extra points on top. Yes, this could be circumvented by extending the table, but the main point of that table is to get relatively balanced characters instead of someone with four very low stats and one or two very high.

2. Based on where you apply the +1/+2 they can worth anything from 1 to 6+ points - evening that 9 to 10 to get rid of the -1 on a low stat costs less than bumping your (probably main) stat from 15 to 16.

And then again there are people who still prefer to roll  their stats, and the racial bonuses are added on top of that.

Why I am sour about this flexible stats is that it slightly devalues the human and half elven races by taking their unique feature. This (with the class devaluing feats from Tasha) starts to look like the slippery slope 3.5e ended up, where each new book had to present stronger and stronger options than the previous ones, to the point where creating a character using the first 1-2 books only were overpowered by about 2-3 levels by characters using options from the last 2-3 books.

wouldn't the flying speed make it a non playable race in adventurer's league?

What time will the book unlock for us on DnD Beyond? Will it be midnight tonight in the UK or some other time tomorrow? 

It's normal state? It's normal state is 'small' not 'tiny'. 

You could just utilise different monsters and tactics to counter flying PCs.. You have so many tools at your disposal as a DM. Don't hamstring your players choices just because you don't wanna deal with flying PCs.. 

what's up with the ability score of the Rabbit and the Fairy buff being the same?  Seems like yall got kind of lazy when creating this stuff.  

no, it's the new norm, was clearly established in tasha's

This honestly feels a bit underwhelming when compared with the details from the harengon article. I hope there are some other decent traits that aren't mentioned here.

Yeah, no mention of hobgoblin is a bummer... that looked like a fun addition.

Quote from Edem >>

Quote from lexgamer >>

Kicker number two! If ASIs work in a universal way like this, why not just modify ability score creation for simplicities sake? (Ex. You get, say, 30 points for point buy instead of 27, give the standard array slightly higher numbers, and for the roll method you could get 7 stats and drop the lowest, etc.) Expanding the stat creation mechanic to accomplish the same overall power level, instead of adding this extra fiddly layer to the race selection. Though then you might wonder why bother adding a few extra points to the stats at all? Which leads me to...

 Increasing point but limit is not the same as adding +2/+1 to the final result, for two reasons:

1. The highest score with the point buy limit is 15; the only way to get a 16 or 17 is to add the extra points on top. Yes, this could be circumvented by extending the table, but the main point of that table is to get relatively balanced characters instead of someone with four very low stats and one or two very high.

2. Based on where you apply the +1/+2 they can worth anything from 1 to 6+ points - evening that 9 to 10 to get rid of the -1 on a low stat costs less than bumping your (probably main) stat from 15 to 16.

And then again there are people who still prefer to roll  their stats, and the racial bonuses are added on top of that.

Why I am sour about this flexible stats is that it slightly devalues the human and half elven races by taking their unique feature. This (with the class devaluing feats from Tasha) starts to look like the slippery slope 3.5e ended up, where each new book had to present stronger and stronger options than the previous ones, to the point where creating a character using the first 1-2 books only were overpowered by about 2-3 levels by characters using options from the last 2-3 books.

 Not quite. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. My, "30 points instead of 27," comment was a generalization of modifying and tweaking the groundwork. For example, as is I could point buy: 10, 10, 10, 13, 14, 15. then add in +1/+2 for: 10, 10, 10, 13, 15, 17. So the concept I was presenting was: why not just tweak point buy, via a combination of things like giving more points, or changing the table, associated point costs, and max stats, such that I could buy: 10, 10, 10, 13, 15, 17 and be done with it, without having this clunky "oh and also" mechanic slapped on top? Likewise for any other stat system, even rolled. Rolling is just mathematical odds, and averages, just modify the system to account for that small boost. But my point in all this, was not that this is what they should do, but to illustrate how pointless it is, and how much it kills the unique traits of a given race.

Thus, I agree with you entirely on that point, no different than taking away the dragonborn breath weapon, such were my following points.