Curt Adams
The most fundamental reason for no 4-card limit in Jyhad is that it's not a Jyhad rule. 4-card is a Magic rule, and not even a fundamental one at that. It was cobbled on after release to patch some balance problems. Garfield is on record as opposed to card limits and Ice Ages was supposed to do away with them. (They didn't succeed, which may say something about the Magic system. Or may not.) Importing a Magic rule to Jyhad is only slightly more sensible than importing rules from any other card game - say, bridge:
"Two Toreador"
"Pass"
"Pass"
"Three Ventrue"
all pass
East leads Felicia Mostrum.
Now if you want to dig into why 4-card is particularly bad for Jyhad, as opposed to merely humorously irrelevant, you will find four reasons: it destroys the balance between different types of card, it destroys the balance between different disciplines, it destroys the balance between different clans, and it negates the richness from fundamentally unique cards.
First, card limits have drastically different effects on different types of card. You can classify cards by how many you need in your deck to use them well. Permanent cards (guns, Blood Dolls, Pulses) hang around; you rarely want more than one per minion. Transient cards (Govern the Unaligned, stealth, and intercept) get used at most once per action; you certainly need more that 4 but a huge pile of any of them is a serious detriment. Ephemeral cards (maneuvers, strikes, presses) are cards that may get used more than once per action; they flow through your hand like water; you can easily need 4 maneuvers is one combat. One can often reasonably require 10 or more of some of these cards, like Flash, Read Intentions, Sideslip, Theft of Vitae, Undead Strength, etc.
Any kind of arbitrary card limit wrecks the balance between these different cards. 4-card, for example, is basically no limit at all on permanents. On transients it is moderately restrictive. On ephemerals it is murderous - nobody has access to reasonable numbers of first round strikes or maneuvers and getting reasonable numbers of any basic combat card requires serious contortions.
Second, card limits strongly favor certain disciplines. In Jyhad every card is supposed to be basically unique, but in some cases a variety of cards have similar effects. With stealth and intercept, you're only allowed to play one card of any given type per action, so there are several different cards of each so you're able to stealth to more than 1. In some other cases (Celeritous Dodges, Dominate + bleeds) although the cards are different at superior, there are simply not enough different things to do at normal, so there is overlap. In order to use a discipline reliably, you must find one with lots of duplicate cards, prefereably transients or permanents. Effects on the various disciplines work out like this:
Under 4-card, Malkavians rule. Their prime strategy (bleed) is least affected, and none of their three disciplines (Auspex, Obfuscate, Dominate) are seriously hurt by card limits. Of the three anti-S&B (Sneak and Bleed) strategies (intercept, bleed bounce, and rush), rush becomes dysfunctional for everybody and bleed bounce dysfunctional for Toreador and Ventrue.
Tremere still work pretty well too. They get shoehorned into intercept 2nd round combat, but both Dominate and Auspex still work. Also, importantly, with the bleed bounce cards (Deflection from Dominate; Telepathic Misdirection from Auspex) limited to 4 each, only Malkavians and Tremere can get decent bounce, and under 4-card, bleed strategies preDominate.
Gangrel are playable, but have a hard time. If they are prey to a Malk, they are doomed, but if their first predator is benign, they may get enough intercept via Ravens and Bikes to slow a Malk rolling around the table. Once that happens, the Claws may save them, depending on how many guns and minions the Malk has accumulated.
Toreador are also playable but difficult. If they can get the guns out, they can fight very well. However, with all the intercept about, getting guns at a maximum of +1 stealth is a very iffy proposition.
Ventrue, Brujah, and Nosferatu are pretty much out. Ventrue and Brujah have no way to stop the ubiquitous Malk S&B decks. Nosferatu can get intercept the same way the Gangrels do but their combat is less powerful and thus rarely adequate.
Finally, we lose the richness from fundamentally different cards. Jyhad is a far more complex system than Magic. In Magic, most cards function OK on their own - they may work better in combination, but you don't need a combo to play and use them. In Jyhad most cards can be used only in combination. A maneuver won't do you much good if you can't a) get into combat and b) strike at range. A laptop will just cost you pool if you can't make your prey unable or unwilling to block your bleed. As a result, not only does Jyhad have a lot more basic categories than Magic, but you must mix different categories to use them in a way very different from that of Magic.
In addition, there are many more disciplines in Jyhad than colors in Magic. As a result, there are only 11 cards in each discipline, yet each needs to cover at least a fairly wide range of the many different yet necessary abilities in Jyhad - bleed, stealth, intercept, equip, strike, dodge, press, maneuver, etc.
The designers attacked this problem with a fairly obvious solution - they minimized card duplication. Even cards that appear to be duplicates often differ significantly on close examination. An excellent example is Thaumaturgy. Of its 11 cards, including the one that was misprinted as Fortitude (Blood Rage), 6 are unlike any other card: Burst of Sunlight, Cryptic Mission, Magic of the Smith, Movement of the Mind, Theft of Vitae, and Weather Control. Blood Fury and Blood Rage are similar, but with the major difference that one is free and the other has a blood cost.
Now the three 2nd round cards make a lot of people think that the Tremere must be a "press to 2nd round combat" clan. After all, Burst of Sunlight, Blood Fury, and Blood Rage are "specialty strikes" - not generally useful, so the Tremere have only 1 good 1st round strike - Theft of Vitae. But does it really mean that Tremere have 3 times as many general purpose 2nd-round cards as 1st round and accordingly are supposed to spend most of their 1st rounds twiddling their thumbs? Of course not.
When you look at the three, you see that each does a completely different kind of damage! Cauldron does lots of normal, Drain Essence steals blood, and Walk of Flame does aggro. The point of the three cards is not that Tremere can't manage a reasonable number of good 1st round strikes, but that they can only do one thing well 1st round - steal blood. On the followup rounds, their abilities expand and they can do any type of damage, at their choice.
Astute readers will say "Wait! Don't card limits create similar problems in Magic? They're not as severe, perhaps, but there are a lot of basic cards (Lanowar Elves, Disenchant) with no good substitute." And you'd be absolutely right. That's why limits aren't a good idea there either. Although card limits don't destroy basic strategies and balances in Magic, they take a lot of the charm, freedom, and variety from the game. For the time being, we live with them as the antidote to Bolt decks (and worse). With Jyhad, we have alternatives to this Faustian dilemma.
So, in summary, card limits:
1) Create a heavy imbalance in favor of cards with permanent effects
2) Drastically alter the functionality of the various disciplines
3) Make some clans nearly unbeatable while making others wallpaper.
4) Wipe out most of the rich variety built into the card set.