Dr_B says:
As a player, one thing that it took me a while to grasp is that if you roll a trait with a penalty, for example a -2 Fighting for multi-action, that penalty affects also the wild die segment of that roll.
So it becomes:
Wild die 1d6 (exploding) -2
Fighting 1d8 (exploding) -2
Same for bonuses, for example the +2 for a Wild Attack. Add it to the Wild Die and to the Fighting skill. And everything can explode.
(Or we can think them as, we roll Wild and Trait die, choose the best, THEN apply the modifier.)
The amount of times I got this wrong!
Yeah, I usually think of it as 'choose the best result, THEN apply the modifier'