Fran, as a user of both (although Bryce being more in the form of history rather than current), I can say Blender rigging and animation tools are excellent. Pretty much on a par with the base rigging of something like 3ds Max (although the 3ds Max biped is something fantastic to play with - basically a pre-made human rig).

Blender does take a bit of getting used to - the latest release 2.7 series changes the UI slightly again but it is probably more newb friendly than it used used to be. Take a look at Blender Nation and or Blender NEwb to Pro for good tuts. 

I haven't tried rigify because I find the out of the box rigging system to be pretty strong.

And yes, all the sims (physics / smoke / particles / fluids) are great. As well as cycles I also use Luxrender which is awesome for photo real work (think maxwell render). If you don't mind paying Indigo render is also a good equivalent to Maxwell (better than Lux but costs a fair bit). For animation I tend to drop back to blender internal it's still pretty powerful and faster to render an animation sequence than Cycles (unless you have a god like nVidia graphics card.)

The biggest thing to conquer with Blender is getting used to all the keyboard shortcuts.

Loving the Peas by the way - I can see some good stories being created with them! 

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.