Variant races?

[Pegasos989]

So, when I first got unearthed arcana I was interested to see the variant races. However, I got disappointed and forgot the whole thing. Now that I was looking at SRD, it came to my mind again...

So, am I the only one who dislike variant races? I mean the arctic gnome, etc.

They seem to have no logic. Desert dwarf has higher CHA than normal cause... living in a desert makes you more friendly? The he has -2 dex cause deserts make you less agile? However, desert elfs are just as agile as normal ones... Sure, I understand that they wanted to balance dwarves by adding some minus but still...

It gets even worse with some, such as arctic halflings. "I live on top of the cold mountains, where temperatures under zero is the rule instead of exception. Thus I get bonus to... swim?!".


So:
-Am I the only one who thinks that variant races (or atleast some of them) seem to be done half-assedly
-If not, does someone have alternate system for them? Such as "All desert races get +2 to con and cha but -2 to Dex and Int" or similar?

[Were-Sandwich]

I prefer the desert elf to the normal elf. -2 strength is much better then -2 con. The +4 bonus to saves vs heat exhaustion is just gravy.

[Arakune]

i prefer to remake then, like the elfes on my homebrew sistem: curious and charismatics, but you will never trust then fragile equipment.

and i don't use all the core races. instead i use: constructs (golens, androids and others), quimeras (new tipe of quimeras), undeads (just love then) and others.

i mean, qhy because you live in a desert you are immune to heat or fire? okay, black people are (little) less suceptible to cancer and some minor effects but that's all. why must change on non-human races? the only change reasonable is in the skills set, but just two or three.