c) a simple dispel magic spell grinds the game to a halt, as people calculate which buffs were dispelled, and then recalculate their characters' stats to accomodate.
d) low duration buffs lead to the weird "go, go, go" style of play that Monte Cook once described, while long term buffs might as well be class abilities.
e) It can drastically change the nature of the encounter, depending on whether the characters had time to buff up before starting, and depending on how many encounters the GM throws at the PCs in a given day. In Shilsen's Saturday game, he rarely has more than one or two encounters in a day, so the PCs are a lot more powerful in his game than identical PCs would be in a game that has multiple encounters in a day.
From the main news page: "Also, the "christmas tree" effect, whereby characters are loaded down with magic items, buff spells and other magical effects was one of the designers' goals to remove." I'm incredibly happy that they included buff spells as well as magic items.
In Saga, one of the major changes to Jedi powers was to remove virtually all the buffs. There are a couple powers that improve combat for a single round, but no powers that require tracking durations, and no powers that have cascading effects (like all different changes that improving even a single attribute has).
