What you are saying does not make much sense to me. I have tested this out in Hero Designer, and it works. Characteristics bought as powers modify the stat after you purchase them as a characteristic. So a halfing that wanted a 30 str, and say his racial modifer is -5 to Str, he would have to purchase a base 35 str. Then you apply the racial modifier. He would then end up with a 30 str for a cost of 40 pts without counting the racial package. Say if the oger had a +5 to his str, then the oger spent the same 40 pts on his str would end up with a str of 40. That would make the oger 4xs stronger than the halfling. If you do the math you will notice that this costs the exact same as saying the NCM is 10 over starting value, just a different way of looking at it. So if you would not allow a person to buy the racial characteristics as powers, then you should also not allow them to modify the NCM.
With all that said and done, I saw somewhere that Steve made the statement that characteristics are not bought as powers, and that NCM is 20 period. If you use low enough points, the halfing will be making a sacrafice in points to get that 30 str. Each character only gets so many points for disadvantages, and the -5 for str that would be in the halfling package would count against the max disad points. So that halfling character would be starting out with 5 less points than every other character, as he bought off that limitation.
