What's your best 'exploding dice' story? What's the highest Action Result you've seen in a Feng Shui game, from how many exploding sixes?
In our game on Wednesday, the Spy was badly wounded and wanted to heal himself. Wary of taking the 5-shot action and exposing himself to danger, he asked if he could find somewhere to hide first. I wasn't sure what the official ruling would be, but I told him he could spend his 3-shot action to make an Intrusion check to hide, and THEN he'd have the option to heal himself without anyone knowing where he'd gone.
On his Intrusion check, the Spy's red die exploded FOUR times. He got an Action Result of 35. I've never seen 4 exploding sixes before!
Everyone at the table was amazed, and we joked about him hiding himself outside the confines of space and time, or being so hidden that even he didn't know where he was I gave him the Medicine check as a 3-shot action instead of a 5-shot one because of his great result. Thinking about it now, I probably could've just let him do the Medicine check as a free interrupt because his Intrusion check was so good.
The bittersweet thing was, there were only a couple of shots left in the encounter. I hinted to the player that he might just want to shoot the Boss, because the Boss was almost dead. But this player is a little more circumspect, so he really wanted to heal himself before doing that.
It was fun to have such a high roll, and nobody seemed to mind that the fight ended only a few shots after it.
Has anything amazing happened in your games from exploding sixes?
Back when I was running/playing in my first FS1 series (our group was very small), my Killer found himself the last man standing in a fight with some baddies in the Netherworld, I've since forgotten what faction. There was one named character still up, who had yet to take many WPs, and my guy was somewhere around 30 when he unloaded on the named villain to the tune of 7 positive sixes. I remember doing the math after the fact and realizing that the roll would have taken Gao Zhang (Sorcery and hence Defense 19 according to Thorns of the Lotus, 21 with the 69AD Sorcery bonus) from 0 to death checks. I have seen some other runs of sixes, but I don't know that I've seen so many or such a timely bit of luck.
The thing I remember was during one of our last games. I'm talking FS1, so that must have been around 2004, something like that. We were up against featured lieutenants from one of the Pagoda Monarchs and we were working for Pui Ti. Since I remember we were above a pit of fire, the Monarch we were up against isn't hard to guess. (maybe they were actually bosses, now that I think about it, I remember that we had a hard time even if we were pretty beefed-up with shticks at that point).
Anyway we all had fallen down the flaming pit (including our foes) and we were all fighting furiously while climbing back up along enormous chains.
I remember that the Kill Bill soundtrack was playing from a CD, and it was battle without honor or humanity. It was my turn to attack and, on a whim, I put the track back to the beginning. I started to shake them bones while the intro was playing. Then I threw the dice as the last powerful notes of the intro sounded (you know the ones, du du-DU !)
Boxcars. re-rolled : positive 6. re-rolled, another big number. Yeah ok, doesn't sound as awesome as your 4 explosions.
What if I told you that in the remainder of the fight, I did the same thing every time ? Put back the song, rolled the dice at the exact same moment, and getting exploding positives EVERY TIME ? First time I put the song back, the players found me annoying. the second time they started paying attention. By the third time, nobody could believe it worked. I think it worked four times, then the enemies died. So we'll never know, maybe it would have continued.
Last Sunday, my timeslot was up so I was hustling to get through the final, climactic encounter. Eliminated all the mooks, and just put the PCs up against a featured foe and the boss. I was really looking to wrap things up quickly if at all possible.
And we have a well-timed die explosion. The Masked Avenger (who had never played an RPG before) managed to roll a +35 swerve against the Featured Foe.
The bad guy "Dayglo Cho", who was dressed as Capone-era gangster with glowstick piping for Halloween, was blazing away with his Tommy Gun. The MA stalked up to him as he fought to control the recoil, grabbed the barrel of the gun, and pushed it up under Cho's chin. All that we left was a blood-spattered, bullet-riddled fedora.
I loved it, it was great timing, and it gave a brand new player a really memorable final moment for the game.
I gave him the Medicine check as a 3-shot action instead of a 5-shot one because of his great result. Thinking about it now, I probably could've just let him do the Medicine check as a free interrupt because his Intrusion check was so good.