Perhaps this has been proposed before…. there are a lot of very long home rule threads… and if so I apologize.
I like the stress die “exploding” mechanic fine, but compared to any system I can think of with a similar mechanic, the numbers can get silly. Rolling more than a couple of 1’s in a row would/should be exceedingly rare, so it’s probably a non-issue or close to it in practice, but heading for lunch today I was mulling it over, and thought of a solution (if you think it’s an issue) that I think I like. The point of this would be to avoid people who are objectively pretty bad at something getting so dice lucky that they succeed in ways experts could only dream. It’s to avoid a peasant waving around their farm implement rolling seven 1’s and one shotting a dragon. That sort of thing.
The rule would be: you can only benefit from a number of consecutive 1’s up to the ability being used in the action/attack.
So that peasant, with a generous 1 in farm implement (hoe), could not benefit from more than two 1’s in an attack with a hoe, and only one 1 with any other farm implement. This would also apply to abilities, so a swimmer with a 3 could quadruple their result at best. A roll of 1 beyond the limit would be re-rolled (counting the 1 as a 1 would be an unwarranted penalty to the roller)
For consistency’s sake, this would also apply to arts: a magus would be limited to a number of 1’s equal to (or less) than the lower of the arts involved in a given spell. Creo 15, Mentem 8 would mean up to eight 1’s for a CrMe spell that magus cast. Obviously arts get a lot higher than abilities in general, so like I said, unlikely to factor in. But still. It could.
What am I missing? Are there scenarios that aren’t occurring to me where this wouldn’t work or would produce undesired or incompatible results?