goshublue wrote: 1. Monks tend to accumulate a lot of H&F as exploding dice tend to generate more H&F on rerolls and they also use less HF in combat because they don't have cavalry leaders. I think Dan may have had over 15 at one point in our game for just that reason. H&F reduction on death helps offset that.
I think the accumulation of a large amount of H&F in that scenario is dictated more by the lack of mounted leaders than by the exploding dice. In fact the exploding procedure just increases the expected number of H&F per die from 1/6 to around 1/5. Not a huge increase: when you would expect 10 H&F with regular dice, you expect 12 with "monks" dice.
A larger H&F endowment would allow, in principle, a more intense playing of DC. I say in principle because you have always to draw the right ones before playing them. SInce the lack of mounted leaders is hardly an advantage for the monks, the possibility to play more DC cards appears to me as a rebalancing feature.
In any case I agree with you that in that specific scenario, the modification of the rule would not induce any important effect.
P.S.: I think it would be interesting to try to answer the question 'How much H&F should I expect from the combat rolls of a unit before it dies?" It's difficult to produce a general answer, but if we assume that the number of dice a unit rolls before being eliminated is equal to the number of dice necessary for its elimination, which is much probably an overestimation, then from a fight between units of the same rank, I would expect around 2 H&F generated by each unit before elimination with normal dice, and around 2.2 with "monks" dice. This is just an approximation and maybe someone is able to produce better estimates. Hope this could help in thinking about the issue.
