How do I run a Leader adversary without steamrolling the party?

The first Leader that went wrong for me was a drone foreman in the Collector’s lair, at the end of Mother’s first job in our Motherboard campaign. I treated it like a second Solo and spent Fear on it whenever I had an opening, while the drones around it stood about like furniture. The fight ground on and never felt like a command structure. A Leader’s job is command. The pack is its hands, and the Fear pool is the leash.

How a Leader differs from a Solo

The rules describe a Solo as a formidable challenge to a whole party, with or without support, and a Leader as an adversary that commands and summons other adversaries. A Solo is the whole problem in one body. A Leader is the problem that makes other bodies worse, and its features tend to push, reposition or summon through the pack. A Leader costs 3 Battle Points against 5 for a Solo, so the budget already expects you to spend the difference on the pack. If you run it like a Solo, you either steamroll the party or bore them.

Spotlight and Fear discipline

I try not to act with the Leader every time. After a character acts, I ask who the Leader would use next. It might be a Standard holding a door or Minions swarming the spellcaster, and the Leader itself only acts when the command matters. I spend Fear on its features when the pack needs a shove, not at every opening. If the pool is full and the Leader has done nothing for a while, then I spend. Until then, the pack carries the pressure.

The pack as hands

Minions and Standards do the dirty work. They make the party spend Hope, draw out Help an Ally, and open space for the Leader’s feature when it finally fires. When the Leader’s action is to give an order, I narrate the order and spotlight one of the cheaper adversaries. The table still feels the boss, and the fight stays fair.

A Leader fight that worked

On the second night at Scholea, the party went up onto the dam, and I put a remnant overseer there as a Tier 2 Leader with two groups of Minions and one Standard. For three players that came to 7 points of an 11-point budget, which left room for the dam itself to push back, with the ice wall groaning above everyone.

The Minions rushed the walkway first while the overseer held back. My first Fear spend was a shove from the pack that put both groups of Minions in Melee with Lenobius. The overseer’s first real spotlight came in the middle of the scene, when Ratchett, our Clank Warrior, rolled a Success with Fear on an attack. It used that moment to send the Standard straight at Lenobius. My second Fear spend came late, when Tak tried to shoot the overseer past the pack. The overseer went down after most of the Minions were cleared. It felt hard, and nobody went down.

What I would change is how close I came to wasting Fear. I nearly spent it on the overseer three times in the first few minutes, and holding back kept the pack alive as a threat. The drone foreman needed a different fix, because that whole room was overbuilt, and I would cut that Leader entirely. I wrote about that room in building an encounter that lasts one scene.

What I would do tonight

Write one line for the Leader’s job and one line for what the pack does without it. Spotlight the pack first, and spend Fear on the Leader when a command would change the scene. End when the scene’s job is done, even if the Leader still has Hit Points. When the pack is a swarm rather than a squad, running a Horde so it feels like a horde covers that side, and spotlighting Minions versus a Solo covers the rest of the mix.

There are free sheets on the Resources hub if you want paper for the pack.