It's been long enough and we're nearing the end of the book, so let's get on with it!
Chapter 9: Gear and Items
You will carry 10,001 more items than Red does.
Now we arrive at everyone's second favorite thing to procure in this game:
Loot!
The Pokedex makes its appearance here, and, uh... I just realized I never gave my party any kind of analogue. Oops. As a Standard Action, a Trainer can use the 'dex to scan a Pokemon within 10 meters and learn "the average height and weight of the species, height and weight of the individual being targeted, Moves that the Species learns through Level Up, and some brief facts about the species’ typical behavior." Presumably you learn what species it is, too. I think the reason my players never bugged me about it is because they really don't care and can figure out that a bird does, in fact, learn Flying moves. These fuckers cost
$12,000, though they recommend giving them away for free at the start of the campaign.
The upside to not giving out 'dexes is that if they want to learn about a specific species, they have to watch it in the wild or go ask someone who does that. It can feel a bit more like going on safari.
I can't remember if I said exactly how Pokeballs work earlier, so here: You make an AC 6 Status Attack, with a range equal to your Throwing Range. After that you make the capture roll, and what Pokeball you're using will modify the capture roll accordingly. A large chunk of the existing Pokeballs are here - 25 total. They generally impose a -20 modifier to your capture roll if you meet the requirements: A Repeat Ball gives you a -20 if you already own a Pokemon of that species, for example. The Master Ball, rather than just auto-catching, gives you a -100, so
technically something healthy and overleveled could break out. They cost
$300,000 and are sold nowhere. WTF?
Basic Balls go for only $250, Great Balls are $400, and Ultra/Special Balls are $800, though they recommend having some Special Balls available at some shops and not others, to distinguish them. Yes, these magical monster-ensnaring devices are actually pretty cheap. They're supposed to be.
Travel Gear
We've got Bait, for luring in or distracting Wild Pokemon, Collection Jars for getting some Honey or delicious MooMoo milk, or, y'know... anything else you can shove in there. First Aid Kits let you regain some HP, Fishing Lures are like Bait but specifically for fishing and it can be used over and over again. Saddles are very useful - they give a +3 to checks made to mount or stay on the Pokemon when you get hit. The catch is that saddles that fit one type of Pokemon may not fit others, obviously.
There are 3 kinds of Rope: Basic, Utility, and Sturdy. Basic Rope has a tensile strength of 77 lbs, Utility's is 176 lbs, and Sturdy is 500lbs. Anything but the Sturdy Rope is shit, even if it's 4 times as pricey as Basic Rope.
You can also buy Sleeping Bags and Tents! They don't actually fucking do anything. No, really, I'm serious.
Are you fucking with me, man? This a joke? I couldn't abide by this, so I made it where sleeping in a Tent gives you +1 to Body Rolls the next day, and sleeping in a Sleeping Bag gives you +1 to Mind Skills. To complete the trifecta, I introduced the
Towel, a cheap
Hitchhiker's reference way to stay clean and get +1 to Spirit Rolls, too. This means that if you're a good adventurer and sleep all cozy in your tent, bundled up while using your towel as a pillow, you just get +1 to all your rolls forever, as long as you remember to fucking go to sleep.
There's also Lighters (just catch a Fire Pokemon), Flashlights (no, it doesn't give ANY details on how far the light is cast), and Water Filters. This brings me to an interesting question: Is it safe to drink water that comes from a Pokemon? What if it's like... freshwater?
![confused :confused:](./images/smilies/confusedyellow.gif)
Can I just get Squirtle to
spit in my mouth instead? oh god nevermind
Anyway, Repels are a thing. They repel Pokemon from you. If you're an asshole, you can just spray a Repel right onto a Pokemon and it'll try to run away from you as quickly as possible... assuming it isn't at a decent level.
If you don't have at least one encounter like this in your game, I question your methods.
There's a variety of healing items, which are very important unless you stay tethered to the Pokemon Center like a little bitch. Of note: Full Restores only heal 80 HP instead of all of it.
DO NOT EVER USE THESE IN COMBAT. Except maybe Revive, if another PC gets knocked out of the fight and they can't send out any more Pokemon, and even then it's questionable. Why? "Applying Restorative Items, or X Items is a Standard Action, which causes the target to forfeit their next Standard Action and Shift Action, unless the user has the “Medic Training” Edge. "
Goddamn!
Bandages are also critical: They're applied as an Extended Action and last for 6 hours, doubling your natural healing rate and healing 1 Injury if it stays in place that whole time. Taking
any damage causes the Bandage to stop working. Yes, you can slap on multiple Bandages at once, but you can still only heal a max of 3 Injuries per day. If you're doing any real adventuring, you need these.
Jessie without her usual stupid haircut is a total fox, prove me wrong.
Food Items are their own category. These include Candy Bars, Honey, Leftovers, Black Sludge, Chef Snacks, and Berries. These you eat before a battle and get a weird "Digestion Buff", and you can only have one at a time (unless you have the Gluttony Ability, in which case you can have
three at a time. Yes, that includes Triple Leftovers). Refreshment Items are a bit different - they're all drinks that heal you, but they can only be used outside of combat, because you're supposed to relax and have a sippy. From weakest to strongest, these are: Enriched Water, Shuckle's Berry Juice, Super Soda Pop, Sparkling Lemonade, and MooMoo Milk. The last thing here is Baby Food, which just gives a 24 hour +20% EXP boost to Pokemon level 15 or lower.
There's some rules for growing your own Apricorns, Berries, and Herbs. Unless you plant them in some good soil, you're not gonna be yielding much of anything... but hey, it only takes 2 days for a plant to Mature and you get to make Yield Rolls every day after that! 1 Apricorn a day can add up if you fuck around enough. Apricorns are for making Pokeballs, Berries have a ton of baggage and I hate them, and Herbs are just a different kind of healing which can make your Pokemon butthurt cause they taste bad.
Then we have a solid
two page chart detailing every single fucking Berry the Pokemon franchise has ever had. They're not mechanically bad, some of these outright let you resist a certain Type or restore Frequencies. There's just... so many.
66 of them, to be precise. God.
Crafting Kits
All this stuff you either NEED to create things, or it just makes you WAY BETTER at doing it. There's Chemistry Sets, Cooking Sets, Poffin Mixers, Pokeball Tool Boxes, Portable Growers, and Dowsing Rods. Those should be self-explainatory except for the last one - Dowsing Rods let you go play minesweeper for 10 minutes while looking for colored Shards.
The way crafting generally works in this game is that, if you have the appropriate toolkit and Edges/Features, you just pay some cash money and come out 15-60 minutes later with your item. However, using your adventuring funds can be a bit of a drag, so we have the
Scrap mechanic. It's simple - Scrap is money that can only be used on specific crafting. For example, literally dumpster diving for Food Scraps that you can use to make... Candy Bars. Ugh. They have 5 categories, though I added one more: Food, Medicine, Repellent, Pokeball, and Fashion Scrap. I added Tech Scrap, because
of course I want to loot the machine after I blow it up. It's a neat way to let you do the crafting you want to do without biting into your real money.
I fucking love all of the art in this chapter.
Equipment
CRY 'HAVOC' AND LET SLIP THE HOUNDOOMS OF WAR!
This is all of the shit that helps you kill and not get killed in return.
Trainers have a reasonable 6 Equipment Slots: Head, Body, Feet, Main Hand, Off-Hand, and Accessory. Personally, I allow an extra Accessory Slot because I throw shameful amounts of loot at my party.
Equipping/swapping out items is a Standard Action, and so is handing an item to someone else... although they still need to spend THEIR action to fucking equip it! Notably, it doesn't mention what kind of an action it is to simply
drop an item you're holding. Is it Free? I dunno. Equipping a Pokemon makes them forfeit their next turn. These guys really,
really want you to handle all this shit before the combat music starts.
WEAPONS! Because this is Pokemon and not fucking D&D, we don't have any of that "weapon table" shit here. It's nice and fucking simple. Weapons have a Quality and a Category. Quality ranges from Crude to Simple to Fine, and the better the quality your weapon, the more Moves you unlock as your Combat skill increases. Yes, this is the main use of the Combat Skill. Crude gives no moves, Simple gives an Adept Weapon Move, and Fine ALSO gives a Master Weapon Move.
The Category of Weapons determine the range and damage of your Moves made with that Weapon (keep in mind that some Class Features let you use regular Moves as Weapon Moves). Large Melee Weapons are your greatswords and shit - They give a +1 AC penalty and raise the Damage Base of all moves by +2. Small Melee Weapons are one-handed and simply give +1 DB. Foot Weapons are mentioned, and they say you should make them shittier Small Melee Weapons. Next are Short Range Weapons, which are one-handed and have a Range of 4 meters. Long Range Weapons raise the AC and DB by +1 and have a range of 4-12 meters, being unable to attack targets near them. If you want to distinguish weapons further, you can tweak the template from there. A Spear, for example, would probably be a Large Melee Weapon with Reach.
The other half of this equation are the Weapon Moves. Certain Moves can only be used by certain kinds of weapons, distinguishing them further. As an example, Backswing just inflicts a ton of damage onto 2 dudes in Melee range and is only usable by Large Melee Weapons. Bullseye crits on a 16+ and can only be used on Ranged Weapons. That sort of thing. There are even some Status Moves like Take Aim, which just makes your next Weapon Move roll damage twice as if you'd critted... except you can still crit. I have a lot of fun making up new Weapon Moves for increasingly bizarre weapons, like an Urumi that causes you to bleed out when stricken. Adept Weapon Moves all require Adept Combat and are EOT, while Master Weapon Moves require... Expert Combat and are Scene x 2. Up here is where you find shit like "Riposte", which annihilates someone who misses you in melee, and "Slice", which lets you move through a bunch of dudes and deal damage to them just like in the animes.
Behold, the Meteor Masher. It gives you Backswing and Titanic Slam.
Then we get to the equipment list. I am... unimpressed in its brevity. Armor gives you DR and comes in Light and Heavy varities. Light only gives +5 DR to Physical OR Special Moves, while Heavy Armor is straight 5 DR. Heavy Armor price:
$12,000. Totally worth it. There's Fancy and Stealth Clothes as well, if you need to look fly or inconspicuous. My favorite Headgear are Sunglasses - they don't do anything to protect against the sun, they just give you a +1 to Charm, Guile, and Intimidate checks. Ballin'. We have a whopping 4 footwear choices, most of which are generally useless: Snow Boots, Flippers, Jungle Boots, or regular fucking Running Shoes. I wonder which one of these I should get first...
![Bash :bash:](./images/smilies/bash.gif)
Hand Equipment you
can't kill people with include Fishing Rods, GLUE CANNONS, Hand Nets like all the cool bugcatchers have, Weighted Nets, Capture Stylers straight out of Pokemon Ranger, Shields!, and Wonder Launchers. The Wonder Launcher lets you shoot X-Items into your Pokemon from a distance and not forfeit their next turn. Oh, and other items too, if you're a Researcher. Just shove it all in there, baby. Our Accessories are short: A Focus, which just gives +5 to a Stat, chosen when crafted, but they can also be Head, Hand, or Off-hand items. You can only benefit from one at a time though, fuck you. We've also got Mega Rings, essential for Mega Evolution, and...
Snag Machines. Big Snag Machines can turn Pokeballs into Snag Balls permanently, while portable Snag Machines can only do one Pokeball for a single round. Yeah, you can totally fucking go there if you want.
They then mentions that you might want to make your own equipment. I kind of have to since this section is barely longer than the goddamn fucking Berry Chart.
We start winding things down with Pokemon Items - specifically Held Items. Pokemon can only hold a single Held Item, which seems kind of lame to me. Why not 2? Trainers already have the edge in that they can drape themselves with all sorts of shit. All of this stuff is from the games, but not everything from the games made it in. Don't worry - Rare Leeks and Thick Clubs are still in. You can also buy Egg Warmers to double hatching speed, Groomer's Kits, and Reanimation Machines. For reanimating
fossils, sicko. Of course, there are also Evolutionary Items. This was never changed "officially", but since the game isn't being worked on officially I don't really give a shit anymore: In RAW PTU, some Pokemon can only evolve with Stones. You know how it is. In the newer, "unofficial" Pokedex, Evolutionary Items merely allow you to evolve into that Pokemon 5 levels earlier than usual, so you can get a Flareon at level 20 instead of waiting until 25. Honestly? Thank fucking god.
There's Vitamins, which increase your base stats or give you Tutor Points or, if you get a PP Up, boost the Frequency of one of your Moves. Rare Candy does the level thing. There are even Stat
Suppressants, which further highlights the stupidity of the Base Stat Relation rule.
Of course, there are also TMs and HMs! But OH NO!!! They ignored the advancements the video games made here!
TMs DISAPPEAR AFTER ONE USE! Excuse me, what the FUCK??? HMs can be used indefinitely, but only once per day. I cannot tell you how much I hate this. I made things more... interesting. TMs are infinite-use, like they should be, while HMs are one-time uses that can be used on
anyone. Yes, you can learn Surf. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they would do this, especially when there's going to be a TON OF POKEMON WALKING AROUND! If you have even 3 players, then they have around 12-18 Pokemon on then at any given time, to say nothing of what's in the box. And only one player is going to benefit from it! AND EVEN THEN, ONLY ONCE!
I SPIT ON YOU!
GROWLITHE CAN'T EVEN LEARN ENERGY BALL! NOW YOU'VE GOT ME MAD AT THE FANART YOU STOLE!
Let's wrap this up: This chapter ends on a lame note with Combat Items. Spikes, Toxic Spikes, Smoke Balls, that sort of thing. You can guess what those do. Here is where Cleanse Tags are finally detailed: they all have Power Values and they stop anything within 30 meters of it from Phasing through walls unless they can beat the Power Value with a Focus Check. Passing the check destroys the Tag while failure repels phasers for at least an hour. You can literally smack them onto a weapon or "appendage" and hit Ghosts with your Normal or Fighting-type moves. On top of that, smart Occult kiddies can burn a Tag to get rid of Cursed, Suppressed, and Disabled conditions... OR cause everything within 30 meters to be incapable of going Invisible or Phasing for 5 minutes. Very niche, but it sounds neat. Pester Balls are little balls filled with chemicals that inflict Status Afflictions. You can also use Dream Mist as a melee attack to put someone to sleep? Uh... okay, then. Finally, we have Magic Flutes - these are tied to a specific Status, and when played, anyone within 20 meters is cured of that Status.
This is not what I had in mind when I read "Smoke Ball"...
With that, we've finished the gear chapter. It's fine, but I honestly think it could go farther in some areas. Perhaps they didn't want too much focus to be on the items or something, but all of this stuff is really meant to make Trainers better, since Pokemon are still limited to a single Held Item slot. This whole section was 32 pages - does that seem like too much or too little?
I will share another bit of homebrew I've done: Introducing Off-handed Weapon Moves for dual-wielders and shield-bearers and giving every Weapon Move an additional effect when used as a "sneak attack". Bullseye, for example, crits on a 12+ as a sneak attack. It makes sneaking around and shit much more fun, according to my "rogue" player. I also threw in EVEN BIGGER SHIELDS, because sometimes you want a bunch of goons with tower shields blocking a hallway.
Anyway, up next is the longest chapter in the game, the one that eats up literally a quarter of the book and has its own separate PDF for easier searching. It will detail all of the
4e Powers Capabilities, Abilities, and Moves in the entire game. It's only, uh... 137 pages. I'm kind of stuck on how I should handle this one, guys. Should I do a one-sentence summary of each Capability and just take requests for Abilities and Moves while highlighting some of the PTU-exclusive ones? I hesitate to consider going through all of it...
Next time: Chapter 10: Indices and Reference