2E - Exploding Damage is a clean, efficient Fantasy Grounds Unity extension for the official AD&D 2nd Edition (2E) ruleset. It implements the classic exploding dice house rule across all damage rolls—weapons and spells alike—adding that signature swingy, high-variance feel beloved by old-school players.

Core Mechanic

Whenever a damage die rolls its maximum face value (6 on a d6, 8 on a d8, 4 on a d4, etc.), it rerolls and adds the new result to the total. Explosions chain: if the reroll is also a maximum, it explodes again, and so on. This creates thrilling damage spikes and memorable combat moments without slowing down play.

• Applies to every damage roll in the game.
• Normal rolls are completely unaffected until a die actually hits its max.
• No extra dice are pre-rolled—only real explosions trigger rerolls.

What This Means in Practice

• Weapon damage (melee, ranged, PC, and NPC/monsters) explodes.
• Spell and power damage (fireballs, lightning bolts, magic missiles, etc.) explodes.
• Critical hits still work as normal in 2E, with the original dice exploding (extra crit dice have the known core limitation noted below).

Technical Implementation (Minimal & Native)

This extension reuses FGU’s built-in compound-explode die engine (bExplodeCompound flag / "e!" mode)—the same reliable mechanism behind Vorpal weapons and similar features. No custom reroll code, no performance drag, no reinventing the wheel.

How it works:

• 2E weapon damage flows through ActionDamage.performRoll.
• Spell/power damage bypasses performRoll and calls ActionDamage.getRoll directly (via PowerManager).
• The extension monkey-patches both functions.
• Before delegating to the originals, it walks rAction.clauses and flags every damage component with bExplodeCompound = true.
• CoreRPG’s dice builder (ActionDamageD20.getRoll + DiceRollManager) handles all the actual exploding logic natively.

This single, targeted approach keeps the extension lightweight, stable, and easy to maintain.

Known Limitation (Fully Documented)

On critical hits, the base dice explode normally. However, the extra dice created by 2E’s standard critical doubling rule (in ActionDamageD20.applyModCriticalDoubleDice) do not inherit the explode flag. This is a gap in the core ruleset implementation, not something this extension can resolve without modifying shared CoreRPG files (which it deliberately avoids). In most games it has negligible impact.

Compatibility

• Official AD&D 2nd Edition ruleset only.
• Works cleanly with other quality-of-life extensions.
• No modifications to stock ruleset files.
• Load order set conservatively at 10.