Suppress footnote auto numbering?

Question

Is there any relatively simple or straightforward way to suppress footnote numbering — in simplest terms, make it use one character (*) for every footnote? For print, the "restart numbering every page" setting comes close, but for EPUB/Kindle, in which those "page" things don't exist, allowing footnotes to have continuous numbering either results in vast character strings (*********, etc.) or numbers that quickly ascend to two if not three digits. All normal layout and style issues aside, I'd like to be able to export a document with a simple, un-numbered ("always 1") link for each footnote.
 
I'm not even sure post-processing with a script would work here; I've tinkered with editing the EPUB export and it quickly gets very messy. Forcing ID to be stupid about this would be nice...
 
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James Gifford—NitroPress · Answer

Just to throw it into the bitstream in case anyone finds it useful, I use numbered footnotes when there are only a few, which keeps the formatting simple although I think it's confusing to run into "footnote 5" when it's the only one in the chapter; it triggers a "wait, what did I miss?" sort of response.

My "real" ~~fix~~ workaround is to use asterisk-only footnotes (the first numbering option), then on export to EPUB — at least, on hard proofs and final versions — extract the XHTML content file and use a text editor to strip all multiple-asterisk strings to a single asterisk. Replace file in EPUB, convert to Kindle (if you're going that way). This works best with the "footnote following paragraph" export mode and a distinctive, unobtrusive style for each footnote.

An ID feature would make this so much easier, though...

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