And if you’ve done an awesome job of Awe-ing (say) your audience, by gum that should look like more dice going in.

I think with a tiny bit of fuss you could also build “Tolerance” into that system, and give up on this whole “# of failed rolls before it’s over” business (given how unlikely it is that you can force a fail at all, and as you spend XPs your audience’s Tolerance is just going to go up and up and up).