With my dislike of Feats/Advantages/Talents, I was searching for a mechanic to allow heroes to be cinematic. Bennies/hero points/fate points are one mechanic; the player tosses one in and is able to do something cool. But another type of mechanic must exist out there in the RPG ether.

Then I read T&T 7th Ed and read the section on monster's triggering their special abilities. Basically, if a monster rolls a number of 6's equal to the defined trigger total, then the ability is used immediately. For example, a dragon may need 5 sixes to trigger a breath attack or 3 sixes to trigger a chomp.

So, I thought to apply this idea to the d6 system (Star Wars 1st Ed WEG). Here are my ideas:
1. If at least 2 sixes are rolled, then the hero is "Triggering the Awesome!"
2. He is allowed an extra action, extra dice or extra damage to do something cool immediately.
3. This trigger may apply to combat, spell-casting or ability checks.

For example, let's say Brack the Barbarian is beseiged by a couple of bandits. He attacks one and hits and rolls 2 sixes in the process (Triggering the Awesome). The player decides that Brack roars a barbarian war cry and follows through with his attack to smash the adjacent bandit. He makes an immediate free attack against the other bandit. Or the player may have said that Brack roars mightily and shoves the weakling backwards to fall to the ground stunned for a round.

Any cinematic description is allowed as long as the GM and player agree it would be cool.

Thoughts? Comments?

Sounds easy and fun but how would you do the "extra dice and extra damage," thing?

If Brack wanted to really smite the bandit, I'd let him roll double damage and ignore armor (a critical essentially). " Brack roars mightily and swings down with the force of a giant on top  of the bandit's head!" (Double damage, no armor).

For extra dice, it might allow him to carry it to an extra action. For example, in the d6 system, every action after the first reduces your die pool by a cumulative -1 die. If Brack had 4 dice in melee weapons, decided to move and then attack, he'd be attacking with 3 dice. If he triggered the awesome on his 3 dice, he might than say, I shove aside bandit and grab the golden statue off the pedestal. This would be another move (-1 die) and a grab (-1 die). He'd be down to 1 die to try and make a DEX roll to grab the statue.  I'd probably give him a couple of extra dice so he would roll 3 dice for the grab.  "Brack let's out a vicious snarl as he lunges past the struck bandit and greedily grabs the golden statue of Ergon."

I would like to really try and capture high octane adventure. Letting the players have fun with their imagination and not stifling it.

More random thoughts on this mechanic.

Minions would not be able to Trigger the Awesome; only heroes and villains (named NPCs) would be allowed.

For a d20 based system, I would trigger it on a natural 18-20. Gives the heroes a 15% chance to do something memorable with each die roll.