This I like. As the rules stand, by carefully writing the 100 word descriptions, a player can wring more abilities from the description, for example by removing adjectives and adverbs. Taken to extreme the result can be flat (although it does encourage use of the active voice... err, sorry there, one of my hobbyhorses).
Making the ability rating depend on the length of description of the ability can encourage selection of narrow and cool abilities and ambiguouis references without changing the ability rules.
I think +1/(5 words) is stingy, especially at the low end of the scale. I guess you had in mind someone describing one ability in most of their 100 words to almost get an extra mastery. That would probably not be such a problem in practice, as the very long description crowds out the hero's other potential abilities. A player with a one-trick pony can rapidly been shown the error of their ways.
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