More specifically half-elves & half-orcs. I started running a PF game about 6 weeks ago, having become disillusioned with the direction 5th ed. D&D was going. Anyway, one of the first things I noticed about the rules was that I didn't really like half-elves & half-orcs using the same ability score bonuses as humans, I'm of the opinion that they should have their own identity in this respect. So I thought about it and what I came up with was this: use half of each bonus/penalty to each score for each "parent" race. Like so:
The half-elf uses half of the modifiers for elf: +1 dex, +1 int, -1 con.
And half of the modifier for human: a +1 assigned wherever desired.
Half-orc, using stats for orc out of the MM, is: +2 str, -1 int, -1 wis, -1 chr plus the floating +1 for the human half.
I just thought half-elves/orcs should have elf/orc like tendencies as far as their ability scores were concerned, while still retaining a measure of human versatility. Note that the +1 from the human half can be put anywhere the player desires, including scores that already have a bonus/penalty from the non-human half. This has the effect of making it possible for a half-orc to have a +3 to strength, but this is fine with me, I think being just a little stronger than a human fits the half-orc's racial identity just fine.
I don't know, this may not work that well with point buy systems, but I don't use them anyway...what I use is sort of a hybrid, random rolls that use an array for the minimum each score can be before racial adjustment, I can post it if anyone's curious.