Meh. I've written rules for nuclear weapons with explicit damage. They work when you apply a context for the GM and group to carry over. They're in Ascension, the mast book for the old Mage.
Thing is, a lot of you are basically judging rules as if the role of RPG players is to sit around like an imbecile, interpreting what the rules output as simply as possible. This is not desirable behaviour in the players, and it isn't possible to design well for these theoretical imbeciles.
If there is a choice between an absurd and non-absurd interpretation of what a game system does, you should obviously choose the non-absurd unless you're in it for comedy. If you have three jump cards per day, then this obviously refers to the number of times you can successfully jump challenging distances in situations that matter to the story. If you roll 4 on 4d100 for a nuke, it means the nuke acted strangely.
If you cannot take this basic imaginative step, then you suck at playing RPGs, and you will never be happy with them.
That said, there is some responsibility on the part of the game to help you get there, by explaining how to interpret this sort of thing. This is where 4e has faltered. Many fighter exploits obviously represent not just a technique, but a combination of technique, focus and opportunity that only comes up every once and a while, where the players get to decide when that "stroke of luck" might occur, and die rolls determine if it actually does. This is elegant in play and fits cinematic conventions, but it's a bit convoluted to actually describe.
Then again, so are 1 minute rounds, and I use those in my current game.
