The legacy behavior is to make the normal number of tries for the
recursive chooseleaf call. The descend_once tunable changed this to
making a single try and bail if we get a reject (note that it is
impossible to collide in the recursive case).
The new set_chooseleaf_tries lets you select the number of recursive
chooseleaf attempts for indep mode, or default to 1. Use the same
behavior for firstn, except default to total_tries when the legacy
tunables are set (for compatibility). This makes the rule step
override the (new) default of 1 recursive attempt, keeping behavior
consistent with indep mode.