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I'm currently GMing Strength of Thousands and at least for the first couple books, assuming the party can escape a tough fight, they could go and get help. But how would they actually escape?
If a fight is going badly, someone might be lying on the ground, an enemy might be looming over and have reactive strike, enemies might have about the same or higher speed than the slowest member of the party and so forth.
It feels to me like you'd need to actually have an edge to be able to stage a getaway. Something you maybe prepared beforehand, like packing the right spells or items. But what would it be?
What are your tips for how a party can prepare for having to flee a fight, so that they have a better chance of getting away? I'm thinking it might be an interesting lesson for one of the teachers to set up for the players (compare the mock combats against the leshie mechas).
Escapes and tactical retreats are difficult to coordinate, especially if (as I run at my tables) the players talk to each other through their PCs (meaning enemies can hear, which can encourage using codewords or sharing an unusual language). That's not the primary difficulty, it's that combats run so fast. The party pretty much has to go in knowing exactly how they'll get out in one round.
For example, in 3.X/PF1 when it was easier to teleport/Dim Door multiple PCs, I had parties who would designate teleporter A & B, with each PC assigned to one of them. When retreat was called, the teleporters would Ready or Delay until all of the As or Bs reached them then cast to escape. This saved one party on more than one occasion.
At lower levels, doors help a lot. So somebody calling retreat might run to a door and Ready an Action to shut it when the last PC exits. Other PCs might toss down obstacles, Ready to spike the door shut, etc.
Which is to say it's quite difficult to execute AND that's if players can discern and agree upon when they should run! If running requires having downed PCs, that only exacerbates issues. If PCs run too soon, that's giving enemies time to adjust & coordinate or by spending actions fleeing they might lose a battle they didn't know they were winning.
Note this is for a more freeform campaign with more level/threat variance. In an AP, having emergency consumables and PCs prepared to cover for each other would likely work better than full flight. Battles will be (generally) tighter, yet manageable enough the PCs learn to push through, so players won't likely know to escape until the dominoes have already begun falling. One important point IMO is that all PCs, even the pacifists or supporters, should have a significant offensive option (if just for emergencies) or maybe a Wall spell. If contributing vicariously through other PCs, great, PF2 rewards that, but they'll need to contribute when their favorite PC is out of play too.
Your PCs should talk to their dorm-mate Strands-of-Golden-Dawn Tzeniwe and learn friendfetch. That spell is one of my players' favorites because it is great at getting an ally out of a deadly situation. For example, I added a battle against five Giant Hermit Crabs to Spoken on the Song Wind, and whenever a crab grabbed a person in their big claw, the party friendfetched them to safety (Virgil Tibbs, Playtest Rune Smith comment #16). friendfetch has a range of only 30 feet, but that distance enough to move an unconscious party member away from the enemies for safe Battle Medicine.
My players frequently used friendfetch before our Strength of Thousands campaign and they were delighted to discover that the spell had been invented as a flavorful spell for Tzeniwe.
Repositioning an unconscious ally can also move them 10 feet away from an enemy. I have an example of that at River Into Darkness Revisited comment #3.
My tactically-savvy players know to retreat their character when their hit points fall one critical hit away from unconsciousness, so we seldom have an unconscious party member on the field. Occassionally, an opponent delivers a critical hit and a regular hit on their turn, so the party has to deal with unconsciousness. Then the party springs into action to distract the opponent while a spellcaster casts Heal or Soothe. In a pinch, the cantrip Rousing Splash can get a PC back on their feet for 1 minute.
Whenever my players plan an encounter against tough opponents they also plan a retreat. In Strength of Thousands adventures they sometimes rescue people in danger and get them to safety via their retreat plan. One bard is fond of Cyclone Rondo to discourage enemies from closing in on the party.
But the biggest aid to a party's retreat is the enemy's true motives. Only two enemies in the first two modules have had the death of the party as their goal:
A few weeks ago, on a jungle road in Hurricane's Howl, the bard cast Phantasmal Protagonist to aid in a battle against a single large monster. The monster, by lucky rolls, defeated the phantasm and then dragged off its illusory body to eat, leaving the rest of the party behind.
The teacher of the Escape class can illustrate the value of prinal wall spells and arcane illusion spells. (The two bards in my campaign are unusual as occult spellcasters attending a school of arcane and primal magic.) So the lessons of the class could be:
1) Protect the injured before they fall unconscious.
2) Distract the opponent while rescuing the injured or unconscious.
3) Rescue with minimal risk, such as by friendfetch. (Maybe have Tzeniwe as a teacher's assistant for this part.) Waking up an unconscious ally is easier than dragging them.
4) Cover the retreat with walls, illusion, difficult terrain, or other obstacles (Castilliano suggested closed doors.)
5) Judge how relentless the enemy will be in pursuit.
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I'm going to go a different direction. Mechanics be damned - if the party wants to run from battle, and the GM is good with that as a plot event, then the encounter should switch from combat mode to a skill challenge. Turn it into a chase scene. Set a challenge level and base skill check DC and number of VPs needed to escape. Drop out of initiative order for combat and start rounds of chase scene.
If an ally is unconscious, that is going to be a problem. But not an insurmountable one. The lack of a party member contributing skill checks for the chase challenge is punishment enough to represent the team carrying their unconscious ally. You can also have it only take one round of chase scene to have one character cast a healing spell and the fallen character can start contributing to the chase at that point.
I'm going to go a different direction. Mechanics be damned - if the party wants to run from battle, and the GM is good with that as a plot event, then the encounter should switch from combat mode to a skill challenge. Turn it into a chase scene. Set a challenge level and base skill check DC and number of VPs needed to escape. Drop out of initiative order for combat and start rounds of chase scene.
If an ally is unconscious, that is going to be a problem. But not an insurmountable one. The lack of a party member contributing skill checks for the chase challenge is punishment enough to represent the team carrying their unconscious ally. You can also have it only take one round of chase scene to have one character cast a healing spell and the fallen character can start contributing to the chase at that point.
I agree with that concept, though personally I'm more comfortable handwaving things like unconscious PCs if someone in the party has at least 3-6 bulk worth of carrying capacity to spare. That's one of the fun benefits of monks, eidolons, and animal barbarians. They have fast movement and little equipment weighing them down. I saw one party where the monk would often scoop up a gnome or halfling ally and deposit them on the other side of the battle field in the space of a single turn.
Skill challenges are also a good way to abstract out questions like "Will the enemy be able to Track to find us again."
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I'm not against the idea of using a skill challenge for it from time to time. But I also think that it should be possible to as a player display game skill to be better prepared for it. For example, by thinking ahead about which talismans, potions, smoke bombs or whatever could be used to make it doable.
Friendfetch is definitely a really good suggestion for this. I expect there to be more things in the game that can serve well, but by now there's so many character options that I went looking for Advice seeing the forest for the trees :)
What happens if the PCs lose the Chase?
This is a good case for a fail-forward skill challenge: the PCs can't lose the chase. The checks of the chase determines how badly they get beaten up while running away and how many other problems arise from it. Do well and it's a relatively clean escape. Do poorly and there's problems, but they still get away.
I'm a firm believer in letting players run away if they get in over their heads and it's even remotely reasonable that they could run away. Players don't tend to like doing it and it's humiliating for their characters, so it can add personal stakes to an encounter. It also means they don't get TPK'd and the campaign ends with everyone feeling lousy about it.
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I always love the Airlift spell (two action, 60foot fly for you and all creatures in a 10ft emanation). It is fourth rank, so not available early on, but for an evac type maneuver I've found it useful a number of times. Especially if you have another caster who can either repeat it to chain further away, or a wall or cloud spell to break line of sight/stop pursuit.