Promotions - Limit Number Of Bonuses

I know there has been discussion in the past and I was curious if promotions have ever been enhanced to enable a condition on the number of bonuses that can be applied.

Example: Say I have usergroup = xyz and products = abc, def, hij

I have a condition setup of

if( user in usergroup xyz)

if( products in abc, def, hij)

Bonus = 100% of original price (I.e. free).

User adds abc and hij to their cart and both would be free (100% discount).

I want it to apply that bonus only to one of the products that might be in the cart, or (for catalog) the product listings not all of them.

I had done a client modification for limiting the number of products from a category but didn't really want to modify the promotions system to add a max_items qualifier to the bonuses. It was kind of invasive.

So my question is, is there any way to do this without creating a separate promotion for each product and then have the 'stop rules' prevent other products once one is hit? Unfortunately, that can end up with a lot of promotions which can become unmanageable.

I don't 'use' promotions enough to consider myself proficient, but I know many of you do.

Any thoughts?