This is a long story, I apologize, but it happened recently so it's top of mind and I think it's a great example of this.
The party in my pathfinder 2e campaign are currently competing in a tournament. (Sidenote: I would very much recommend tournaments as a structure to anyone running PF2e. This is a crunchy, combat-as-sport game with a ton of extremely situational but powerful items, spells, and abilities. In a structure where the characters are given the ability to research and prep for their opponents, the system absolutely sings.) It has been a long tournament, six rounds of qualifiers and then a 64 team double elimination bracket, but they are in the losers bracket in the top 4.
Their opponents are one of the teams they've tentatively made friends with over the course of the tournament, but the grand prize is a matter of life or death for both sides. No punches will be pulled. Over the course of the tournament, the party has faced opponents with a wide range of skills, synergies, and strategies. This team isn't the most powerful in the tournament, but they're in the top 4 because they are the smartest team in the tournament. That's how the characters became friends with them in the first place: when the party needed help analyzing their enemies and finding weaknesses, they went to this team. Now, they know that same analytical eye is going to be applied to them.
To ensure the players' expectations are aligned with what the characters would know, I am very frank with them. I tell them that I sat down and looked at every fight they'd done in the tournament, and any strategy, ability, or approach that they used repeatedly, the enemy had planned for. I didn't cheat, didn't give them anything they couldn't get access to in their prep time, but I had done all the planning the enemy would have, and I am very prepared to win.
The party decides their best approach is to do something new, something the enemy can't have seen coming. They buy scrolls of Water Walking for the whole party and bid their tournament currency on the flooded arena layout, one they haven't had to fight in yet.
This pays off massively for them. I hadn't had the enemy prep for that, and with only one of them having much skill in athletics, swimming is a weak point for them. This confines them to the few sections of platforms and bridges that are above the water, as well as a single raft. The party takes advantage of their superior mobility to split the enemy, and go after the softer targets. I'm forced to dig deep through their abilities and spells, narrowly managing through a few lucky misses to keep all the enemies alive and consolidate their position onto a single bridge.
Once everyone is on solid ground again, reflexively, the party falls into their old habits. And that, unfortunately, is just according to keikaku. The enemy knows just where to position themselves, has just the right consumables and spells on hand. Attacks of opportunity shred their attempts to heal. Dispels rip through their magical defenses. The inventor is forced to shatter his shield to survive a brutal critical, and in a panic, the party falls back onto the water and throws down a smoke cloud to protect themselves from the onslaught of arrows raining down. Just as they've done in a half dozen other fights. And, so, the enemy is prepared. Beads of Fireball, purchased with the same tournament currency the party used to buy this arena, are hurled into the smoke, blasting every one of the player characters down into critical health.
The enemy front liners leap down onto the raft to pursue and finish off the rapidly depleting party healer. The martials rush in to stop them, and the players' dice betray them while mine do not. In a brutal exchange, both of the party martials are dropped, leaving only the healer and the bard on critical health. Neither of them are capable of dealing any significant damage.
We all realize that the fight is as good as over. I'm disappointed. The drama of the tournament had been building, and I was excited for the climax. But, apparently, that's not what this story is. That's okay, I can roll with it. I just have to finish off this fight.
The party healer, a divine sorceress, realizes that after charging in and getting on the raft, all the enemies are, coincidentally, standing in a line. She starts casting a spell.
Inner Radiance Torrent is one of my favourite pathfinder 2e spells. It's basically just a big dumb line AoE damage spell, but what makes it special is the fact that the caster can spend an additional turn charging it to really crank the damage up. This is almost never practical to do. Unlike in Dragon Ball Z, the enemies do not stand still while you charge up your beam attack. But in this one case, the enemies mobility was limited, they had a single target to pursue, and they couldn't see what she was doing in the smoke. They had no reason to break from their positioning, and she had nothing left to lose. I play their turns as optimally as I can without using information they don't have. They blast bombs into the smoke, and she nearly goes down. They refresh their buffs. They row the raft forward, weapons at the ready.
The smoke clears. Bloodied and burnt, standing atop the water's surface, the sorceress has a fully charged Inner Radiance Torrent gleaming between her palms, giving the enemy just a split second to realize the mistake they'd made before she unleashes a desperate, last chance kamehameha wave through them.
We all know the DC of the saving throw. I roll the dice openly. Fail. Critical Success. Fail. Fail.
It's the enemy alchemist, the mastermind of the group, who succeeds. I describe him throwing himself aside as the beam rips through the rest of his team, dropping all of them, ripping through the bridge behind and sending a storm of debris raining across the arena. By delightful coincidence, drawing the line across the map, the beam keeps going and hits the box where the BBEG is watching the tournament from. I roll a save for her as well. She critically succeeds. I describe her calmly raising her hand and stopping the beam, the massive wave of energy dispersing harmlessly around her. This is not going to help with how much they want to fuck her.
The alchemist gets back up and fights to win, but at this point, high on their comeback, the PCs are unstoppable, and this weak fucker can't row very well so they rip him apart from range and secure the win.
It was an absolutely incredible fight, an amazing session, a memory that I'm sure will last ages, and it could never have happened if we hadn't all been sure that the player characters had lost, that the fight was over, if we hadn't known that I, as GM, was playing as hard as I could to beat them. It's the kind of win you can only get when you came so close to losing, and the idea that I would give that up for something that I planned? Unthinkable.
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