I think this strip tells the story well.

I've occasionally used cards in D&D for a long time now. When playing a low level spellcaster, I would just write down the crunch of the spell on an index card, and then put it in a discard pile as they were used. For higher level PCs I used a spreadsheet with the appropriate page numbers listed, mostly because it was too cumbersome to sort through a deck of so many cards during combat.

Then when Tome of Battle came out with per encounter powers, they became almost mandatory if you wanted to play a Warblade, Swordsage, or Crusader. I thought ToB was a vast improvement. I wanted every PC to have something interesting to do in every combat, disliked the wild imbalance between casters vs. non-casters, and I hated having to constantly save spells "just in case" the next fight was the BBEG. And hoped that it would be the template for 4E.

Then 4E came out, and I was pissed. It seemed as if they had completely stripped 90% of the fluff out of the powers/spells/manuevers/whatever, specifically because they wanted them to individually fit on cards. And there were so many levels, and every class had to gain new powers every level, that each individual power seemed horribly mediocre. "Deal X[W] damage + minor effect." I've played 4E, and 4E is fun. But it didn't feel like D&D, even though the roleplaying/puzzles/riddles/etc aspect (roughly 50% of the game for my groups) hadn't changed.

I would be fine if all of my powers and feats and whatnot were on index cards - it would make gameplay a lot easier. But I also want the powers to be meaningful, somewhat unique, and flavorful.

So, what's your opinion? Do you use cards in D&D? Why? Do you think they make the game better or worse? Do game designers dumb down powers specifically so that they are easy to understand and fit on a index card, or am I just too old (30) to understand 4E?