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Dice pool conundrum?
I'll take that as another vote for the fun factor of big dice rolls. Most of my gaming is in systems where those big handfuls come into play only for damage rolls. Fun to dish out, not fun to receive. : ) I can understand the appeal of systems using big, loud rolls in more situations.
Your next comment matches my understanding: in dice pools, the number of dice generally represents skill/resources, and the target number the task difficulty. You're correct, too, that dice + adds mechanics incorporate those same two factors, though along a single axis, not two axes.
That's where I see a potential problem with dice pools. With pools, opposing factors can cancel each other out, IF they're on the same axis; that is, a factor that adds two dice gets cancelled out by a factor that subtracts two dice. No problem. But now imagine this: Some major difficulty factor adds (say) 6 to the target number, raising it from the game's default of 5 to a new target number of 11. No problem, you think, because your PC is a Special Forces type whose awesome skills add way more than 6 added dice to his pool... but, wait, that's still no good. You could have superhuman abilities adding dozens of dice to your pool, yet using d10 dice you can't get a single success against TN 11. Oops...
This causes zero problem in a dice + adds game, where a -6 difficulty penalty is fully offset, or better, by bonuses totaling 6 or more. But how about with dice pools? The above problem must have cropped up during the first session of the first dice pool game ever, so I assume it's long-fixed; can anyone fill me in on the solution?