Well, these are certainly completely different directions than I was prepared to have this conversation from. So, I guess I'll quickly respond to what little I can understand at a glance.

On specificity

Let's say MtG keyworded "deals 1 damage to you during your upkeep" as "wanderlust".

A creature with "protection from permanents with wanderlust" would be more valuable than a creature with "protection from cards named Juzam Djinn". And I doubt a card that read, "counter target spell with wanderlust" would see play in standard.

However, a 3/3 shadow with wanderlust, or an aura that gave wanderlust and "5,T: target player gains control of this creature" might see play.

I think that the issue is the specific nature of the ability, combined with it being reactive. Reach does nothing if your opponent doesn't have flying; "protection from wanderlust" does nothing if your opponent doesn't have wanderlust.

Consider a creature, "thief of crowns". Give it flash and "when this enters the battlefield, until end of turn, whenever a player would become the monarch, you become the monarch instead". Now imagine instead if it stole an equipment. Or an artifact of up to some converted mana cost. Or allowed you to transfer a Loyalty counter from one Planeswalker to another. Now imagine instead of our gave you your choice of doing any one of those. A more broadly-applicable card is much more likely to see play in more decks (at least until you reach high-op tournament play).

D&D can get away with highly-specific reactive spells in a way that MtG can't. Most D&D reactive spells have one or more of several attributes: they belong to classes who get access to all spells; they can be reversed to be offensive spells; they are multipurpose (and often long-lasting) buff spells; they aren't needed "today".

Of course, good buffs and an infinite sideboard of specific reactions feeds into a strange long-game sameyness.

Imagine if, instead of "Stone to Flesh", there were a dozen or more different answers to petrification, and none of them were specific to petrification. You could transfer their (still-living) mind to a premade clone. You could reverse time on their body (a specific amount of time). You could animate their petrified form (and all that entails). Their mind could remote-pilot other forms (at limited range, requiring you to lug the statue around). etc etc etc. Each of these spells would have more applications than simply undoing petrification, and having all of them in the game would lead to more variety than 3e's "a cure for each ailment" system

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On WoD Mage

I had forgotten about Dark Ages pillars system, and the sheer variety that lends itself to (as you aren't limited to just your starting 4 pillars). I wasn't even aware nWoD *had* a 2nd edition.

Also, my experiences with the "mother may I" system, where I couldn't even pull off rotes straight out of the book, may limit my ability to fairly evaluate the system.