Paolo Greco neat! Yeah, I can totally see that. Burning Wheel does that compressed-roll thing and sorta-kinda tries to get the players to build on that roll fictionally (pulling in forks and help and advantage etc etc), but it’s so system-y that even that exercise often devolves to dice-grubbing unless the GM is super firm about “okay but what does that look like?” over and over again. Your solution is probably more effective, except for the heavy reliance on the arbitrator and folks can be weird about that.