How do I write adversary Fear features that get spent?

I used to write Fear features that looked clever on paper and then never spend them. Some were too bland to matter, and some cost too much for the spike they gave. The rules describe Fear features as high-impact effects that cost a Fear to activate. I want each one to be a memorable spike, about once a fight, tied to the fiction and priced so I will actually pay it when the dice go loud.

What tempts a spend

I spend when the feature changes the fiction. That might be new space, a character becoming Vulnerable, a new wave or a hard choice. If a feature only adds a little damage, I would rather spend the Fear on the environment. If the name tells me what the move does, I remember to fire it.

Cost against impact

A token is worth it when the feature pulls someone out of position, forces a Reaction Roll across a wide range, or makes someone Vulnerable so the next attack matters. It is not worth it for a roar with no mechanical change. If I never spend a feature in play, I rewrite it or cut it.

Before and after from my notes

The Collector was the Solo at the end of Mother’s first job in our Motherboard campaign, an eight-legged remnant with a basket of captured townspeople on its back. My first draft of its Fear feature was a line about spending a Fear to make it loom terrifyingly, and I would never have spent it. The version I ran was called Into the Basket. For a Fear, the Collector makes an attack against someone within Very Close range, and on a success they are Restrained in the basket netting until they break free.

I spent it the first night it hit the table. Ratchett climbed for the basket, and I put him in the netting beside the people he was trying to save. Tak shot the netting loose two spotlights later. That feature pulled the whole fight toward the basket, which is where it needed to go.

The second was the remnant sniper I improvised on the ice at Scholea. When I wrote it up properly afterward, my first Fear feature added 2 to its next damage roll for a Fear, which is the kind of thing I never spend. I replaced it with a feature called Crack the Ice. For a Fear, the sniper shoots the ice above a target within Far range, and everyone within Very Close range of that spot makes an Agility Reaction Roll or marks a Stress and becomes temporarily Vulnerable.

A note from play

Crack the Ice fired the next time the sniper showed up, when the party spread out across the slope to flank it. Two of them went Vulnerable, and the next attack against them mattered. The old damage bonus would have wasted the token.

What I would do tonight

Write one Fear feature and read it aloud. If you would not spend a real token on it tonight, rewrite it. I wrote about inventing that sniper in the first place in improvising an adversary mid-scene, and about how much Fear to spend in spending Fear without feeling like an adversarial GM.