There have actually been a few quill stems with faceplates.

I have 1.5cm of height adjustment on one of my MTBs, just 1cm on the other. Coulda gone with more if I'd wanted to (actually I still could. It has a cable hanger in the stack, if I got a fork mounted cable hanger I could add more spacers in stack and have about 1.7cm of height adjustment range). I've had a Salsa stem that only had about 2cm height adjustment available. So not a big difference there.

Of course someone with a long-headtubed frame and a Technomic stem could have MEGA RANGE QUILL setup, but ...