Well, you said everything that needed saying and it all makes perfect sense to me. I think we only disagree around some nitpicky details that basically come down to taste. Like you, I can see what they were TRYING to do, and it's a crying shame it did it better in the early 90s.

For me, the worst thing about it is that I can absolutely see what they were trying to do – and they missed the mark in such predictable ways that it is painful to see. Part of it, I'm sure, is that editorially they knew they had a lot more pages and column inches and felt that they needed to fill it up to be "a respectable book" instead of writing only what's necessary to communicate the process involved. Very much what I believe happened to Ars Magica 2nd Edition versus 3rd Edition. The budget went up, expected sales went up, but instead of focusing more aggressively on the things that were important and paring away, things ballooned to fill all available space to the detriment of the text.

It is a set of problems that the design never had to have, and that is what hurts the most.

One thing though, the 'takes on people with assault rifles using a tin cup' is great IF you've put that much effort into being a badass and if it's impressive and pays off through your focus on being a badass. If an assault rifle and an empty stapler constitute the same level of risk IN NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES it's a shitter.

Well, if we take the system as written in this text, a guy with a tin cup versus guys with assault rifles is facing what is at least a Level 5 threat, taking into account the difference in available weaponry, being outnumbered, etc. A normal person being two Levels beneath the level of threat is effectively going to be rolling 2d6 and rerolling both of them individually to take the worse. Let's give the character the benefit of the doubt and saying that he is aggressively choosing to attack a group of guys with assault rifles while he has only a tin cup. The chances of actually succeeding, that is rolling us some greater than 7 on two dice when both of them roll twice and take the worst result is not very good. You've got to roll at least a 3 and a 4 twice in a row, so you're looking at a bad time. Not an impossible time, but an extremely unlikely time. That's not really any different from the chances of pulling it off in 2nd Edition, so that's a wash.

If you have Specializations on your Trait, and it is "being a badass" (potentially literally), a Level 3 badass character will be performing as if they were Level 4, so only one of their dice will get rolled down. Still less likely than a more reasonable matchup.

Part of the problem here is the goofy Level system applying to both a description of the character and an assessment of the difficulty of expressed intent. Their examples are terrible and it's no surprise that a casual read through doesn't make this stuff jump out at you.

Another example of a good idea with a bad execution is the character advancement by adding Specializations. That is actually brilliant. As you play your character, you demonstrate competence at something special for you show that you've learned from a previous experience or in some way the actual process of play and things that happened to you make a difference and get carried forward. That's wonderful. Right up until the point that you increase the base Trait – and all of those Specializations go away, wiping out the accumulated history of your character and how they have interacted with that Trait.

Again, I see what they were trying to do. They didn't want a whole bunch of descriptors piling up on the character sheet making it ever more complicated to try and figure out what your Level was for the purposes of rolling the dice. I get it. But the purge of history represented by the Specializations going away is terrible. They would have been better served by making Specializations which are attached to a Trait which gets bumped up worth only half a Level, but able to be increased back to a full Level if the player invests in advancement into it. That way they Specializations hang around for at least one advancement and provide some continuity with the character that they used to be.

They didn't do that. It's a painful missed opportunity.

Way too much of the game feels like a missed opportunity.