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Escape Battle Technique

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One of the Standard RPG Items, or sometimes a skill. Unlike your regular Escape command (which may or may not work, depending on player/monster stats like Agility or Luck or allow the enemy to beat you up without retaliation while your party is busy skidding in place), this is an item/skill that is a guaranteed escape from any Random Encounters.

You generally won't find this in games that don't make a distinction between "field" and "combat", and you can't use it to flee from predetermined battle encounters (or a Boss Battle).

If the game normally penalizes the player for escaping mid-battle, this item/skill can be used to escape without penalty. Alternately, in games where experience/money is awarded only for defeating all monsters in battle, this item may allow the player to receive experience/money for whatever monsters were defeated before they fled.

Compare Escape Rope, which is used for escaping a Dungeon Crawler, and Hyperspeed Escape, which is running away very, very quickly. The Ninja Log and Smoke Out are often used to do this.


Examples:

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    Live-Action TV 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons's The Deck of Many Things. One of the cards was Fates, which allowed you to avoid any situation, once.
  • Fabula Ultima: The Rogue's See You Later skill lets them spend a Fabula Point to immediately get the hell out of the current scene. They can then reappear in a later scene to wow their allies with the details of their miraculous escape.
  • Munchkin has several cards that can work this way; however, many of them can also be used to force your opponents to escape from battles they're actually capable of winning, which is often the preferable option.

    Video Games 
  • The Dash Phase in Atlas Reactor is devoted to techniques like this. Dashes resolve before attacks ('blasts'), and thus using a dash means giving up a chance for an attack in return for not standing where your target expects you to when their attack resolves.
  • In Attack the Light, Steven's Escape lets the Crystal Gems run from battle, but it costs 4 Star Points and has a chance of failing. It can be upgraded to reduce the cost by 1 SP and increase its success rate.
  • Obscure DSiWare game Crystal Monsters has the smoke ball item, which does this. The difference? It can be used to escape boss battles and similar scripted encounters, and when used as such it counts as a win.
  • Etrian Odyssey:
    • Etrian Odyssey and II: The Protector can learn the Flee skill, which always escapes the party from any battle where they aren't trapped, and has a chance of dropping them at the last staircase they used.
    • Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City: The Ninja's "Tonsou Jutsu" skill works similarly to Flee from the previous games' Protector, but it's no longer a guaranteed escape (merely an increased chance). The Shogun's "Retreat" skill simply takes you out of the battle.
    • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: Starting from this game, the Escape option is present in the menu to try to escape a battle, though it's disabled in fixed encounters as well as boss and miniboss battles.
  • A staple of the Final Fantasy series, usually in the form of the "Escape" spell or the occasional consumable item, but also:
    • In Final Fantasy IV, Edge can use a smoke bomb to get the party out of a battle.
    • Thieves in Final Fantasy V can learn the Flee command, which allows you to escape instantaneously without fail.
    • Final Fantasy VI has the item variant.
    • Final Fantasy VII has the Exit materia, which lets you use the Escape spell to flee from battles. The materia also contains the Remove spell, which is the inverse of Escape by forcing all enemies to be removed from battle. If you somehow use the spell on your own party, it counts as a Total Party Wipe.
    • Final Fantasy IX has Zidane the thief, who can learn the Flee skill using his initial sets of weapons.
    • Final Fantasy X has the Flee command, found near Tidus' starting point on the Sphere Grid. Unlike the standard Escape command, which only lets that individual party member flee, the Flee command makes the whole party flee at the same time and it never fails unless you're not supposed to flee.
    • Final Fantasy XII is a subversion to the trope. Since all battles take place in real time, there aren't any escape techniques. Holding the flee button forces the party to put away their weapons and their running speed is slightly increased to help them get away from enemies.
  • For the King: Coward's Clover is a consumable item that grants the user (and only them) an automatic escape from a battle at the cost of their next turn.
  • Kingdom of Loathing has piles of items and abilities which allow for a guaranteed escape, but the truly powerful ones are the ones that let you escape without spending an adventure. One of the most egregious examples had to have an Obvious Rule Patch added to restrict its use to a reasonable number per day, as every one of them that would ever exist had been created during a long-past holiday. Nowadays, the devs are less fond of this idea and are more interested in turn-free One Hit Kills.
  • Mega Man Battle Network has the Escape Battle Chip in its first two games. In the first game, this was the player's only method of escape. The second game implemented the ability for the player to retreat using the L button (which has a chance of failure in exchange for always being available), and the now-obsolete Battle Chip disappeared from all subsequent games.
  • Mother
    • The first game has the 4-D Slip PSI, which allows a guaranteed escape from battle. Considering how brutal the late game enemies are, it's very helpful at times.
    • The fan midquel MOTHER: Cognitive Dissonance also has 4-D Slip, learned by Col. Saturn, which has early plot significance but is also useful the entire game to escape battles.
  • The Other: Rosie's Road of Love: Rosie, starts off with the Escape skill, which costs 5 Mana Points, to "Escape the battle.", as a move instead of as a choice whether to fight or escape when starting the turn.
  • Pokémon:
    • The move Teleport (which causes problems when teleport is the only move the wild Mon knows) and the items Poké Doll and Fluffy Tail (when used in battle) and Smoke Ball (when held in battle).
    • Pokémon with the "Run Away" ability can escape from any wild Pokémon guaranteed just by using the normal "Run" command.
    • The "Roar" and "Whirlwind" moves are inversions: they end wild Pokémon battles by forcing the opponent away, rather than the user, therefore working in situations where the user is blocked from escaping. Starting with the second generation, they can also be used in battles against fellow trainers, though not to escape—instead, when the opposing Pokémon runs, one of the trainer's other Pokémon is sent out in its stead.
    • As of Generation VI, all Ghost-type Pokémon can't be prevented from attempting to escape battle or switch, presumably due to a degree of intangibility.
  • The Shining Force series has the "Egress" skill, usually only given to the main character. Since you (usually) cannot replay battles after finishing them, using Egress is one of the keys to Level Grinding.
  • Shin Megami Tensei:
    • Most games have Trafuri, a support skill that allows the party to escape from normal encounters.
    • In Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, Trafuri can be combined with any Dark spell to form the Fusion Spell Wonder Story, which is an inversion — it makes all enemies leave. Getting rid of enemies this way doesn't give you any experience, but they still drop money.
    • Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth has the smoke ball, which is a godsend when trying to run from F.O.E's
    • The Quick Escape skill in Digital Devil Saga increases the chance of escaping, but only works if the character with Quick Escape is the one that uses the Retreat command.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Mario RPG has the standard Run Away command, but it can sometimes fail, causing your turn to be wasted. Halfway through the game, you could get the See Ya! item that lets you run away from fights successfully.
    • The Mario & Luigi series has a 'Run' option for this. In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, you had to hammer the A and B buttons to make Mario and Luigi run while coins fell out their pockets, in later games you just hit the run command and immediately flee the battle. As per the norm, it doesn't work in boss battles.
  • ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal had the garlic extract that scares away any attacking wild faeries but you have to buy it beforehand and it only works in the short time between being attacked and the Fight Woosh. During a fairy duel, making your way to the miniature sun at the center of the area allows you to escape random encounters (but not boss battles). In a particular bit of cruelty, the wild fairies can use it, too, if they are losing badly, robbing you of the XP you earned in blood (that is, fairy hit points).

    Web Original 
  • Sword Art Online Abridged: Like the original, teleport crystals are meant to allow players to escape battles. However, due to the buggy nature of the game, they tend to fail at the worst possible times... or work at the worst possible times (such when as an allied NPC used as a Human Pack Mule escaped an unwinnable battle, leaving the human party members behind).

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Origami King Flee

Mario flees from battle.

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