Before requesting this as a request, I want to be sure that there isn't a way to do it that I'm not aware of.

What I mean by cross-module rule is: like a rule, but the trigger is in one record and the action is another, related record.

Easy example: when a deal is won, increase a counter of won deals in the related account. As far as I know, this can only be done by programming a function: no code solutions like rules can't find a related record and then change something there. Is that true?

(In this example, I know that there are rollup summary fields, but those have limitations and are not good for my goals. For example, you can't use the value of a rollup field in yet another module.)