The game has Power Cards ffs. I'm not sure what you're looking for.
Cards that contain information on specific abilities? Well then, 2e was retroactively designed using the 4e design philosophy:
Best - and worst. They were interesting certainly.
And the idea was great. Being able to tune to your specific desires? Fantastic.
That might just be because the 4e character design is more flexible and more reflective of actual mythological character concepts than either 3e or 2e despite the glut both games had.
Using the idea that splitting your character's levels into artificial steps does not make you Campbell. Even so, such artificial cliffs did exist in earlier editions through the edition of various follower groups, the Druid's special type of advancement, etc.
If the rules need to make the story for you that could be an issue, as that is now making a system of resolution affect the narrative directly.
All links 404'd. Which might be just as well as the quality of netbook design made me want to poke my eyes out in most cases.
And that was the point. There were plenty that were fantastic, and some that were horrendous. Those b&w Kinkos prints handed out among groups for campaigns and rules... A lost art.
Yeah, sure if by "Ferrari" you mean a wooden cutout saying the word "Ferrari".
Given that despite Appendix N The Grey Mouser was almost impossible to create as a PC before 4e, the casters were so larded with flavour that they resembled almost nothing in any fiction anyone wanted to write, and the non-casters were boring and crippled you might theoretically be able to create the parts for a Ferrari - but you had about the same chance of that as you had of creating a working fusion reactor.
I see what your problem is now... The difficulty in separating mechanics from flavor. Now your choices of games to highlight also make sense. Also you're kind of an obsessive optimizer per your other discussions in threads.
That's definitely an interesting place to approach gaming from. While there will always be a certain amount of gamism, narrative and simulation can be achieved through the system. The problem is that you suffer from a need to optimize so much in 3e that you find the enforced limits of 4e to be comfortable. Which was kind of the point behind the Ikea vs. Carpentry argument.
And some of us are, from the players side, capable of hogtying that beast with one hand behind our backs, and consider it still not worth the effort as the beast is bug ugly, doesn't resemble any fiction, and is neither a particular challenge nor shows us anything about the world the way GURPS books sometimes can.
Here's a hint:
.
An implied level of system mastery above those who play 3e and enjoy it is just worrisome. We understand the breaks in the system, we deal with them. Like a homeowner we patch the walls, lay on some paint, maybe replace the ductwork here and there... But we also can make a nice little comfortable sweet spot cottage, or an extravagant mansion with lakes filled with dire psuedonatural koi swimming in their Lovecraftian beauty.
And the argument against the game not playing like fiction... Well, we're creating something of our own. That's the fun of our group. If we want a shaved orangutan who grapples using holy tattoos as a fiendhunter? We can put it together. Wanna play a fat merchant who uses wind magic through his ornate fan? We can do it. There's all sorts of ways to tweak the levels of power, base this on that, go from there.
And it's still
.
Slainte,
-Loonook.