Charm
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/5cbAKuS.png)
This is one of the most erotically charged images I've seen in a TTRPG book.
This is your diplomacy skill. Mechanically, you really can just use it to improve the disposition of wild Pokemon. It says that when you're rolling to convince an NPC, the GM should just set a static DC instead of opposing it with another skill. I ignore this shit and just have it be an Opposed Check vs your target's Focus or social skill, depending on whatever's highest. I appreciate having multiple social skills, but without any kind of rules or guidelines on how to fucking use them, I prefer to resort to options that don't involve me pulling numbers straight from my asshole.
The Edges here are also for Poffin shit, but you can also pick up Baby-Doll Eyes... it lowers a target's ATK by 1 Combat Stage. It's Growl, but at a distance, so it fucking sucks and you'll never use it. There's one Edge here really worth taking: Smooth. You get +4 Evasion against all Social moves and a +2 to Saves against Rage and Infatuation. It's still really situational since Social moves aren't too common, but the numbers are good enough to almost make it attractive.
Command
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/dpSy3uE.png)
Nothing pithy this time, just a reminder that the Battle Subway was stupid and awesome.
This is THE social skill and the among the most useful in the game - you need to make checks to command pokemon with low Loyalty and you're FAR more effective at training your Pokemon than everyone else, giving out tons of free EXP. It also lets you Take a Breather, the worst combat maneuver I've seen in my life, and it is often used in Opposed Checks, to either keep people together in a fight or knock people out of supernatural compulsions. This probably governs your "force of personality" moreso than Intimidate does.
The Edges here are all gravy, aside from the Poffin shit: One of them lets you give experience during Training to UP TO TWELVE POKEMON AT ONCE! You can give out EXP during Training based on your Command rank: Rank 2 lets you give 2 pokemon experience, Rank 6 lets you give 6 pokemon experience. You can see how this immediately spirals out of control. Adepts can pick up the Move After You - the best Move we've seen so far, since as a Swift Action you can make someone who hasn't gone that round take their turn after you. It's fucking hilarious. If that wasn't enough, you can pick up an Edge to give out EVEN MORE EXPERIENCE WHILE TRAINING! I appreciate how strong all these Edges are, but this is over the top - there are very few Edges as good as these, because if you're not retarded you'll be Training your pokemon every single day.
Focus
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/RfMFJEO.jpg)
For some reason, Ice-types are associated with this skill. I don't get it, either.
Focus is basically willpower, and it's typically used whenever you make a check during combat or if you're particularly fucked up. To be honest, I don't really use it for that very often. Their example here is wild: "A complicated maneuver such as jumping into the air, throwing a knife to hit a specific target, then teleporting to a platform mid-air and pulling a lever at an exact timing when landing would also call for a Focus Check in addition to the Acrobatics Check that would be invoked." What the fuck kind of games are these people playing? Do they platform often? Typically I use Focus for powering supernatural abilities that aren't combat related, but it is also used to resist mental effects. I think the idea behind this skill is to make it harder to do stuff when you're fucked up or doing something intense, but it just sounds like more rolling to me. Perhaps that's more my problem than the game's.
Holy shit we can learn Confusion here. That is an early game trainer's bread and butter... but it actually doesn't have any Focus prerequisite at all! It needs an Elemental Connection edge, which is completely unrelated to skills. Why is this here? That's weird. We can also pick up Work Up, which beefs both our ATK and SPATK, which isn't bad. It can be handy to have a buffing move or two so you have something to do when nobody's in range. You can also pick up Smooth, like in Charm, but also Iron Mind - which lets you know whenever somebody tries to read your mind. That's extremely situational, but probably awesome if your game involves a lot of Psychics. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Good on them for finally introducing Moves I'd actually use.
Intuition
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/XrnDMet.jpg)
Mercifully, this game was released before Detective Pikachu, so we just have a picture of a regular detective here.
This is one of my favorites - it's about "making decisions from the guy or gaining insights into a situation though instinct". If that sounds like "make a check to get a hint from the DM", then you have good intuition - that is exactly how I use it from time to time. It also governs reading people's social cues, which is basically getting hints during social time, too. In a weird twist, artsy stuff falls under here as well - including cooking! Chefs are really good at telling when someone's lying to them, apparently.
Our Novice Edges are both pretty good: Basic Cooking lets us make Candy Bars and Baby Food, and it explicitly lets us fluff it however we like. Mystic Senses is some magic shit that lets us use Intuition instead of Charm to make wild Pokemon like us more, but it's incompatible with Elemental Connections - the devs don't want us mixing too many magical powers together, which is something I can understand. There's also an ultra shitty one mixed in here: Trainers have Action Points and can spend one to get a +1 bonus to whatever roll they want. Now you can get an Edge that lets you get +2 instead! Holy shit, my cock is so hard thinking about getting a +2 instead of a +1 when I expend my resource that powers my class features! Thank you, PTU devs! Thank you!
Those are our 17 Skills, and they have issues: The biggest one being that some skills are blatantly more useful than others. It doesn't matter if I'm in space or underground or whatever, being able to see shit and get around nimbly is always useful, but Occult Education might be useless in a Wild West campaign or something... but I think this is an issue a lot of skill systems have. Is it worth trying to combine some of these Skills together? I can see the need for the granularity between them, but I'd like to trim the fat wherever possible. I believe the new game, Pokemon Journeys, just has 7 not-skills that are shit like "Wits" and "Grit", and I really hate that kind of nebulous shit that you'd argue with the GM about. I dunno.
More Fucking Edges
This is the part where it really tells us how Edges work: you'll be spending most on Skills, and they're split into five categories: Skill Edges, Crafting Edges, Pokemon Training Edges, Combat Edges, and Other Edges.
Skill Edges are straightforward. In addition to ranking a skill up, you can also get +1 to a specific Category, like all your Body rolls. There's also an Edge that gives you a +2 to 2 different Skills and can be taken multiple times.
However, there's an interesting Edge you need to be a whopping level 20 to pick up: Virtuoso. It's weird and I hate it. Here's the wording: "Choose a Skill at Master Rank. Consider that Skill to be effectively “Rank 8” for any Features or effects that depend on Skill Rank." It's phrased this way because you do not actually make your Skill Rank 8. To give an example, remember the experience training Edge I ranted about? Can you comprehend training SIXTEEN POKEMON AT ONCE? Too bad you'd still be rolling 6d6 despite being a total badass. I kind of really hate this - if it were up to me, I'd just let people rank up from Master to Virtuoso, signifying the true peak of the skill system, but nope. Eat shit. There's also a Skill Stunt edge, which I quite like: You say you have something like: "Perception Stunt (Farsight)", and then whenever you're rolling Perception to see something far away, you can instead "roll one less dice, and instead add +6 to the result". Sounds like maximizing one of your dice to me. This is a good Edge to stick onto items and shit.
Crafting Edges all let you make shit, and I've already touched on them: Pokeballs, food, gems, repels, Cleanse Tags, and Apricorns. This is a good category.
Pokemon Training Edges are sketchy - you have Poffin shit, Breeder, Groomer, Paleontologist, the two Training edges, and the one that lets you bully your Pokemon. These, especially right next to each other, look a bit unbalanced.
Most of the edges are Combat Edges - lots teach you moves, but there's one new one in this part: Weapon of Choice. It sounds badass, but it just lets you pay an AP to not get disarmed. Lame! Most of these are fairly lame, actually. The best one here is Slippery, which is actually thematic AND useful, but most of them just teach you shitty moves you'd forget past Pokemon level 10.
Other Edges are the most random, naturally. Here is the Elemental Connection edge, which basically means you have a connection with Pokemon of a certain Type... and you can become a Power Ranger if you're using splats. You get a +2 to all social checks targeting Pokemon of that type, which is pointless compared to shooting lightning from your eyes.
Overall, Edges are a huge mixed bag. You have some legitimately neat and character-defining stuff in here next to crap like learning fucking Leer. Why would I ever get excited about that, even at level fucking 1? I think the idea of Edges is a workable one, but it needs some quality control so that people don't accidentally take trap options. And don't fucking tell me that learning Baby-Doll Eyes isn't a trap! IT FUCKING IS!
Next time: Features!