Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos

To address some of your concerns:

New Character Commands - You do have a point. The counter-argument is that sometimes it feels plain if the characters are all using original commands. Also, new commands often tend to be more powerful than the originals, at least for this stage in the game before Kefka @ Narshe, which could shorten the race in some cases (which is probably what we want). Finally, a lot of the vanilla commands are boring/useless at this point in the game. Morph/Runic/Lore/Sketch/Berserker/Steal are all practically non-events this early (although Runic is extremely useful against TunnelArmor if you're lucky enough to have it there, and against Kefka himself). This could make a lot of characters uninteresting and make it more difficult to win, especially aganist TunnelArmor, who has not been nerfed like in Dessy's; a ridiculous TunnelArmor fight is my biggest fear for this type of run.

In some ways I'd liken it to leaving Items on or off in Smash Bros. If you want to play competitively or semi-competitively and you want skill to play a larger role, you might turn Items off, but if you want things to be zanier and more likely to change at a moment's notice, while still necessitating some skill, you might turn them on. It's something of a preference thing and I can see it working either way, so I think more input would be necessary. I can guess the response others will give though; most people here don't do heavy speedrunning as far as I'm aware.

Sprint Shoes - Sprint Shoes do not increase walking speed if you have auto-run, but IIRC they are guaranteed to teach some sort of spell. However, there is still a possibility of finding an early Charm Bangle in some places (particularly Elixir clocks). Also, I'd like to point out that bosses are somewhat buffed in Beyond Chaos compared to Dessy's and vanilla, so more preparation might be necessitated anyways just so that you don't die. That's not to say that you'll probably need to spend any time specifically for grinding, but utterly ignoring preparation by running from every encounter and not opening chests can be a huge mistake if you don't have something great backing you up that you're relying on to carry you.

Oh, and a friendly note: save before entering towns. There can be Monster-In-A-Boxes.

Enemies/players - Something tells me that everybody is on board for doing both already. I really like random enemies, since you have to figure out how to kill things on the fly, what isn't worth fighting because they are too dangerous and what isn't worth fighting because they don't give you anything resembling a decent return for your time. I'm hoping that after trying it you'll see it the same way. My only gripe with random enemies is that there are no good ways to figure out the new Rages quickly, with the vast array of information to sort through.

-Procs, statuses, breakable equipment, elements, and Relic abilities are all affected. But they are affected reasonably; modifications of this sort are pretty rare. Your knowledge of the game will still serve you well, but occasionally you'll find out that your equipment does something cool and interesting that can often give flavour to a random piece of equipment that is otherwise unnoteworthy. For example, on one run Stratos randomly procced Flare. Finding a couple weirdly early, my brother and I were prompted to use a front row, dual wielding setup with an otherwise sucky character for most of the WoR, which we both agreed made him far more interesting. You also certainly won't be seeing 255 power Dirks. Well, first off, Dirks are removed from the game to make way for a single secret rare piece of equipment that we won't be seeing anyways. But also, equipment stats are modified using their original stats as a base. Your Stout Spear will always be more powerful than a Mythril Spear, even if the stats are a little different from on run to the next, so there is a logical progression.

Umaro Risk - I don't care one way or the other. But I'll note that problems with Vargas are essentially non-existent in BC, except possibly in the Berserker case. The Berserker is usually loaded with a fairly powerful weapon, so IDK if it would be an issue there either. My brother will comment more, he's played it more.

Window Colour - Yeah, probably. I don't really want window colours changed, but I keep forgetting to turn it off myself, and it cascaded here too. Unless it's bundled with something else like changing palettes (I can't remember), then it's more debatable.