The Gaming Den

We've gotten through most of the rough parts of the game, so hopefully it's (relatively) smooth sailing from here on out. I'm sure that there will be random bullshit the game doesn't need, so point it out along the way!

After learning how to make a character and their Pokemon, the game finally starts to tell us how to actually play the damn thing. Only 220 pages in! So what does the game think I need to know first?
Well, you always round down, even if the decimal is .5 or higher. Percentages add together, they don't multiply (uh oh, percentages...), and "specific rules trump more general ones". Good old exception-based design. I guess the issues with that are more with specific implementations rather than the idea itself, so I guess we'll see how the game handles this...

There's basic stuff here - tell the GM when you want to take an action, sometimes there are Skill Checks but you shouldn't make them if it's trivial or uninteresting, beat DCs, yadda yadda. They mention you should suggest which Skill you're trying to use, just so the GM and you are on the same page. There's Opposed Checks, which work like you'd expect, and then we have cooperative actions. There are Team Skill Checks - the GM sets a DC as normal, then multiplies it by how many people the expect to be necessary for the task - but there's an explicit example that a Gyarados with Power 13 should count their roll twice when helping the team make an Athletics check to hold back a boulder. There's also Assisted Skill Checks, where a DC is set and if someone is helping them, they can add half their Rank to the roll, so up to a +3... and your helper MUST be a Novice or higher in that skill to help out. Notably, it doesn't mention how many people can assist with a check. The exact wording is "There is one primary actor in the task, and someone else may assist them in minor ways", and it never mentions multiple people helping out here. Is this an oversight, or something intentional so the whole party doesn't Assist their way past every skill check? Given how Skill Ranks work, I'm not entirely sure how this is supposed to go.

There's also a few paragraphs on margins of success. In general, beating something by 4 or 5 should get you something extra, if only a cooler description, but if you narrowly fail a task, you might succeed... at a cost. Personally, I don't like succeeding at a cost unless I explicitly choose to succeed instead of fail, but that's just me.

There are 4 kinds of Actions you can take: Standard, Shift, Swift, and Extended. It took me a while to call it a Shift Action instead of a Move Action... do we really need most of our actions starting with S? Especially when two of them are a single letter apart? I digress. The first 3 work as you already probably know, and Extended Actions are simply ones that can't be taken in combat, but how long it actually takes is up to the GM... meh. It can take anywhere from a couple of minutes (12 rounds) to 30 minutes, depending on what you're doing. Time is... rather fluid here.

Speaking of fluidity, here is where Scenes get defined. And they are "defined by the narrative." Yeesh. They say to think of a scene from TV or a movie, where if you cut away, have a time skip, or everyone leaves after something dramatic happens, it should be a new scene. Battles are typically a Scene, but Scenes can totally contain several battles. In my opinion, they definitely should. What are our examples for a Scene? "when the party splits up to do shopping in town or visits a Pokémon Center, when wrapping up a wild Pokémon battle and speeding through some mundane travel time, when finishing up an investigation of a crime scene and leaving for another location, and when entering a new city after a journey through the wilds." If I must be honest, I didn't have too much trouble figuring out how this works when I picked the game up, but still carries the issues that this kind of time management usually has. I dunno, it gets the job done for me just fine, and I can't recall my group ever arguing over about whether or not something was a new Scene - some questions occasionally, sure, but never arguments.

For some reason, Extended Skill Checks come here. Odd bit of organization. These are tasks that have a DC set as usual, then it's multiplied by 2-5 based on how long and complex the task is. The examples are a 2 would represent harvesting a plant, while a 5 would be disassembling a superweapon. Next, the GM decides the Time Interval for the check - how long it takes to make a check in the task. This can rangefrom a few minutes per check to once per day, or even longer. The last thing the GM decides is whether it's possible to hit a "wall" in your progress - they have to reach the Extended DC within a number of Skill Checks equal to half the Rank in the skill they're making checks with. Fail to meet the DC in time and you eat shit and realize it's just totally beyond your current understanding. I would appreciate it if the book had some details on when you could come back to try again, but it doesn't. I don't really use this aspect of Extended Checks, but I do use them every single game as an ongoing way to give my players power for free. I've talked about it in another thread, so I won't blab about it here.

Basic Capabilities are the biggest way to know how to take non-combat actions, outside of just MTPing it. These are: Power, Throwing Range, Jump Distance, and Movement Capabilities. After that, you have Special Capabilities, which are the cool things all those Pokemon earlier had. Power has a nice little chart of how much you can carry:



Being within your Heavy Lifting range means you take a -2 CS penalty to Speed, and -2 Evasion and Accuracy. If you're over your Staggering limit, then you can only move 1 meter per Shift and can't take any Standard Actions - the previous penalties are doubled, too, and you need to pass a DC 4 Athletics check every turn to keep moving. Stuff over your Staggering limit can be dragged at the rate of 1 meter per round. This is... fine, but am I the only one who thinks maybe Pokemon should be stronger than this? For some reason, only Trainers have throwing ranges, which is Athletics Rank + 4. Presumably Pokemon capable of throwing shit would be similar, but this section is literally 2 sentences.

You already know how Long and High Jumps work, so we'll go over the different Movement capabilities. First is Overland, which is how much ground you can normally cover. You can Sprint to increase this number by a meager 50% (nobody can actually run fast in this game... at all). Burrow lets you dig a hole as big as you while you move, but you have to spend a Standard Action to stay underground, because they don't want you to stay down there very long. Sky determines how much you can move in the air. Swim is for swimming. Levitate is for floating around, and you can't float any higher than half your Levitate Capability - so if it's 6, you can't float higher than 3 meters off the ground. The last one is Teleporter - yes, some people can teleport as a move action in this game. You need line of sight, have to end the teleport while touching a surface (no double jumping), unless you have a Sky or Levitate speed.

There's a page on how Pokemon work, though it seems mildly redundant to me. Players are only supposed to have direct control over their Pokemon in battle - otherwise the GM should roleplay them. Pokemon should generally listen to their trainers, but all the Pokemon-specific mechanics were in the last chapter, and the combat mechanics are in the next, so... yeah. Go look there. This whole section can be summarized in a single sentence: "Pokémon Amie is adorable, but it can’t beat the depth of character development you can express in a roleplaying game."



This last section are just player tips: RP-wise, you should only focus on 1-2 Pokemon at a time - this refers to screentime and plot development, specifically; you should still have a full party. Since this isn't the video game, you're generally free to use whatever your favorite Pokemon actually is... or to try out something you've never particularly liked before. You can surprise yourself just by catching random shit and bonding with it. Players should actually tell the GM what the fuck they're trying to do when they declare actions, rather than making the GM guess your intent. "Be ready to accept losses" is a good one, but... not one I've actually used much in practice. Maybe I'm too soft. The final tip, and the most important one of all: Talk to your GM. This system doesn't take a stance on really anything, be it Pokemon behavior or even what genre the game should be, and coming in with assumptions from the video games is a recipe for a bad time. Even if your GM's running something straight from the games, there are still questions that must be answered before the game even starts, or you might have stupid shit like trainers going around challenging literally everyone they see, or actually trying to catch 'em all... and nobody actually wants to deal with that in a cooperative roleplaying game.

Overall... I want more from this chapter. Outside of Capabilities and Skill Checks, there are few ways to actually interact with the world around you, which I think is a failing. Sure, the GM can always make something up, but I don't find that satisfying from a game design perspective. This would be a good place to have environmental rules or object HP or SOMETHING beyond "you can move around and make skill checks". I don't think there's any actual bad information in this chapter, it just doesn't go far enough for my tastes. This could be a really meaty chapter, and it's only 7 pages! It doesn't even use those 7 pages very well! Alas.

Next time: Chapter 7: Combat

Speaking of combat, last night I had an extra 2 players, plus a couple of NPCs accompanying the party, so they were 6 Trainers strong... it was a bit hard to keep track of, especially since they split into three groups. But they were assaulting a fortress while flying an invisible ghost snake, an ice bird, and a noise wyvern. One of them immediately got shot out of the sky and subsequently KO'd by not-orcs while the others stuck to the plan to open a gate to the fort, so they could try to rescue the enslaved humans and pokemon inside.
POKEMON!

Are you ready for some more weird-ass rules that are kind of overly clunky? Buckle your asses in, because it's time we learn how the REAL part of this game works: Hitting shit until it falls down.

There are actually two entirely separate kind of battles in this game: Pokemon League battles and "full contact" fights. In the former, it's like in the video games where you and another guy send out Pokemon until you, uh... resolve your disagreements, and the Trainer can't intervene directly. The rules for this are all the way in the back of the book where they belong, because I think I've done this kind of battling maybe two or three times... in the past 3 years. Full contact is exactly what it sounds like - there are no rules, so you can be as unscrupulous as you'd like. It says the criminals are the unscrupulous ones, but we all know how PCs tend to be.

Players always get two turns: One for their Trainer and another for their Pokemon, even if one or the other is KO'd.
Rounds are 10 seconds long in this game, and Initiative is static, relying on your Speed stat and any Initiative bonuses you may have. Oh, I remember why I don't play League Battles: it has fucking action declaration and I'm too young to have done that before, and I don't have any intention of starting now. In full contact fights everybody just goes from highest to lowest speed. Any ties are settled with d20 roll offs, although I personally allow people on the same side of the same Initiative to just choose who goes first.


Every update my AD&D comparison gets more and more apt.

There is also a delay action! Once per round, you can hold your action until a specified lower Initiative value. I don't think there are actually any Ready actions, though, so you're basically jut choosing to take your turn later in the round. I've never needed them to tell me the actual number though, I let them delay until someone else's turn. Things that last "one full round" last until the same Initiative Count next round... I actually forgot about that. I usually just go until that person's next turn, but it's possible for their Initiative to have changed in some way. Hrm.

Action Types

We've got our Standard, Shift, and Swift Actionsss. You can take any number of Free Actions you want, but Triggers can only be activated once per Trigger. Okay then. It's explicitly mentioned that at the beginning of a fight, Trainers can draw weapons or send out Pokemon for free, since it's just tedious otherwise... unless they're ambushed, of course. My PCs are maniacs who always run around with their weapons drawn, so... their enemies are too! Makes it easier when people spot each other and throw down Pokemon and we just cut the bullshit. You can do the things you'd expect with a Standard Action, but if you use it to get a Shift Action back, you can't use it to move unless you haven't moved already, for whatever reason. Shift Actions are for moving and activating some Features, handing items to other Trainers, and even returning OR sending out a Pokemon, or if it's Fainted, you can just swap it out for free. Pretty simple. Swift, Extended, Full Actions... blah, blah.

We also have Priority Actions, which come in three forms: Priority (Limited), Priority, and Priority (Advanced). Aye yai yai. Priority moves can be declared if you haven't gone this round, and you just take your full turn for that round whenever you want - but it has to be done in between turns. Priority (Limited) means that you can only take the action that has Priority, not your full turn - you take the rest of it later, as normal. Priority (Advanced) lets you go even if you've already acted - you just give up your turn on the next round. Is this level of granularity really needed? Can't we just make everything Priority (Advanced)? Yeesh.
We've also got Interrupt Actions that work kind of like Priority moves in that you can only take the action that Interrupts, not your full turn. Protect would be one such move - you block an attack, but you can't move around until it's your turn.

Players decide what the Pokemon do when their turn comes around, and there's an explicit list of what Pokemon can do.



I'm sure they can do things outside of this... the book just doesn't say so.
It also doesn't offer too much advice on how to handle "uncommanded" Pokemon - they say you should be able to walk around with all your Pokemon if you want, the idea is that you don't let the players have an unfair advantage. Gentleman's agreement, I suppose? Nobody really wants to resolve 3+ Trainers with multiple Pokemon on the field is the real answer.
However, they recommend making Double or Triple battle events where all Trainers involved can command multiple Pokemon. They also recommend letting villains have multiple Pokemon out at once, if "encounter balance" dictates. I don't like this... but I still do it sometimes, usually the villain has a "boss pokemon" that bosses around smaller versions of itself so the villain doesn't have to.

Pokemon Switching

Oh god, there's literally a fucking flowchart. And a full page of examples afterwards.


Any mechanic in any TTRPG can be made to look ridiculous with the use of flowcharts. Any mechanic.


I'm gonna not elaborate on this and see if y'all still get it. It's actually not that complicated in practice, but I still enjoy making fun of it.

Movement and Positioning

Go get a fucking grid map. You don't have to, but you should. You know why.
Small size creatures can fit in the same square as another Small or Medium creature, and they and Medium creatures take up 1x1 square.
Large creatures take up 2x2.
Huge creatures take up 3x3.
Gigantic creatures take up 4x4.
And Colossal... oh, wait, that's as big as they get? I forget how fucking tiny most Pokemon actually are. However, they recommend using different shapes for things with different body types: a Gigantic Steelix could be 8x2 instead of 4x4, or a Huge Aerodactyl is 2x4 because of its wingspan. I have Gyarados and Onix as 1x8 giant snake things - it's out of control when they start using Burst moves and shit.

You Shift around to move, but if you're using different Capabilities that turn, like running into a lake and swimming a bit, your maximum movement that turn is the average of those Capabilities. You cannot split up a Shift Action. I always wonder why games do this - I think the idea is to minimize kiting and shit, but I've seen the discussion on DMFs. You can have a DMF Pokemon. It totally fucking happens. Still... it always feels limiting and I feel bad telling players they can't do it. I still do, though.
Diagonals work like in 3.5, thankfully. There's a difference between Adjacent and Cardinally Adjacent - oh, boy. If you're Stuck, you can't move, but if you're Slowed, you can only move half your movement. Getting up from being Tripped is also your whole shift action.

There are 3 kinds of basic terrain, and then 3 modifying terrain types: Our basic terrains are Regular Terrain, Earth Terrain, and Underwater Terrain. They require Overland, Burrow, and Swim respectively. On top of that, we have Slow Terrain, Rough Terrain, and Blocking Terrain. Slow Terrain makes you Slowed while you move through it, and Rough Terrain imposes a -2 Accuracy penalty on targeting through it. Rough Terrain is usually, but not always Slow Terrain. Think tall grass, waist-high walls, and general cover. Interestingly, spaces occupied by other creatures are Rough Terrain, not Blocking Terrain. Blocking Terrain are fucking walls. This is a good set, it's covered pretty much everything I need for 95% of my games.
Then I bust out the poison spills and homebrew magic terrain and shit.

Flanking simply means the target has -2 Evasion - the flankers get no bonuses unless stated otherwise. This visual should be able to explain the implementation:



If you're into theatre of the mind, there's a whole page on how to do it. Pretty basic stuff - separate areas into zones, describe landmarks nearby, go with the GM. I had to do some last night, since they were split into 3 different groups, it worked out well enough.

Combat Stats

I've told you how stats work and I won't reiterate them here. However, there are some limits you should know about: Combat Stages, including Accuracy, can never go beyond -6 or +6 stages. You can never gain +6 Evasion from stats, which is why nobody invests beyond 30 Speed, since at least DEF and SPDEF give you damage reduction. If you have other sources of Evasion, you can still never, ever go beyond +9 Evasion... which still cranks the AC of a move like Tackle up to a fucking 11. Things with max Evasion fighting things with max Critical Range (spoiler alert: there is no max Critical Range) can get silly. When Combat Stages are cleared via Haze or whatever, that also clears Accuracy and Evasion bonuses/maluses.

I've been talking about Combat Stages this whole time, yet nobody has actually asked me how they work in this game. After all, in the video games, it's a 50% boost applied to the relevant stat per Stage. Well... I'm just gonna cut the shit and post the chart.


God have mercy on our wretched souls.

This has to fucking change. This is unacceptable, even if you just write down on your sheet how much DEF you'd get per Defense Curl or whatever. It's nice that the higher your stat, the bigger the boost you get from Combat Stages, and that is something I'd like to replicate, but actually multiplying percentages during a game is not fun. Speed is special, though: You get a bonus/penalty to all Movement Speeds equal to half your current Speed CS, up to +3. Not bad.

So let's say you want your Rattata to Tackle the Pidgey. You look at the AC of Tackle (it's 2, as are most moves), then add the relevant Evasion of your target. Let's say the Pidgey has 2 Speed Evasion, so the AC of the move would become 4. Now you roll a d20 and add your Accuracy to see if you beat the AC. A 1 always misses and 20 always hits. Even if the target wants to be hit by the attack, you still have to at least beat the unmodified AC. Once you hit, you roll for damage! How much damage? Depends on the Move, of course! This is Pokemon, you know each Move has its own accuracy and damage, right? Well... each move has a Damage Base in PTU. For example, Tackle has 40 Power in the video games, so its Damage Base is 4. However, our Rattata is also Normal-type like Tackle, so it benefits from STAB - STAB always increases the DB of a move by +2. Always. So Rattata's Tackle is Damage Base 6. Then we look at... the chart. The Chart!


This is the other chart you need to be able to play this game. Fortunately the game comes with the Pokemon Experience chart and the DB chart on the same page... it is The Chart. The Chart!

If you're into rolling (of course you are), you now roll 2d6+8 for damage, then add your ATK stat, since it's a Physical move. If there are any other modifiers to the DB, you would do that here, before you roll. Once you've arrived at your Total Damage, your target subtracts their DEF, to a minimum of 1 damage. After this, you apply Weakness/Resistance: SE attacks deal x1.5 damage, Doubly SE attacks deal x2 damage, and the rare Triply SE attack deals x3 damage. Resisted hits deal x0.5 damage, doubly Resisted hits deal x0.25 damage, and (mercifully) rare triply Resisted hits deal x0.125 damage.

No, I'm not reposting the Type Effectiveness Chart unless you want me to.

Some moves like Night Shade simply deal Hit Point damage. Fuck whatever your defense is, it does that much damage. Eat shit. Critical hits add the Damage Dice Roll twice. For example, that Tackle normally does 2d6+8 damage, but if you crit, then it would deal 4d6+16 damage. You never add your stats twice, thank fucking god. Some moves have a higher crit chance - Stone Edge crits on a fucking 17+, before modifiers.

Deal enough damage and you inflict an Injury: if you deal more than 50% of their Max HP in one attack, they take an Injury. Also, when they reach certain Hit Point Markers, they take an Injury: These are 50%, 0%, -50%, -100%, and so on. If you get hit below 50% and take an injury and heal up to 51% HP, if you get hit below 50% again, you take another Injury. Watch it. This game also has the concept of "Tick of Hit Points". This is always equal to 1/10th of someone's Maximum HP, and it comes up a lot. I actually really like it, since you can say something deals 2 Ticks of damage and people know it can fuck you up regardless of who you are.

There's a, uh... damage formula. Honestly, it took me like 3 or 4 months to remember where to apply Weaknesses and Resistances.


I sure do like going through 9-step processes every time I make an attack roll. The part that takes the longest is between steps 6 and 7, because math is hard when you've been drinking.

One note: Type-Effectiveness doesn't affect Status Moves, so Confuse Ray could totally hit Normal-types. I think this is how it works in the video games, but I don't use enough status moves to really remember... Oh, also, certain Types are immune to certain Status Effects or kewords. Electric-types can't be Paralyzed, Fire-types can't be Burned, Ghost-types can't be Stuck or Trapped, Grass-types are immune to Powder Moves (ie. Stun Spore and shit), Ice-types can't be Frozen, and Poison & Steel-types are can't be Poisoned.

But what if you don't have any Moves because you're a shitty Trainer who got caught in a fight despite being a total nerd who put everything in Knowledge skills? Well, you can still make Struggle Attacks... they have an AC and DB of 4, unless you're an Expert at Combat, at which point the AC is 3 and the DB is 5. These can be modified by weapons, but if you're making Struggle Attacks... you should reconsider your life choices. Certain Capabilities also modify Struggle Attacks: For example, if you have Firestarter, your Struggle Attacks can be Fire-type Special attacks, if you want. Y'know, cause you can just make fire whenever.

Combat Maneuvers

Attacks of Opportunity are what you'd expect: You can make a Struggle Attack against someone, once per round, unless you're Asleep, Flinched, or Paralyzed. This activates when someone next to you uses an offensive Combat Maneuver or Ranged Move that doesn't target you, or if they stand up, move out of a square adjacent to you, or use their Standard Action for item manipulation. In short: nobody really cares. I beefed them up by allowing you to make any Combat Maneuver as an AoO. Including grappling. Especially grappling.
Disengaging sucks dick. You Shift 1 meter and don't provoke an AoO. That's it. I'm considering making it up to half your maximum Movement instead, because jesus christ is it hard to run away from anything in this game.
Disarming has an AC of fucking 6, but if you beat them with a Combat or Stealth check, their Held Item, Main Hand, or Off-Hand item drops to the ground. You can't even kick a sword across the room with the same action - it's literally just right there.
Dirty Tricks are actually 3 Maneuvers that can only be used once per Scene per target. Hinder is an opposed Athletics check and the target is Slowed and gets -2 to Skill Checks for... a round. Blinding is an opposed Stealth check that Blinds the target, giving them -6 Accuracy!... for a round. Low Blow is an opposed Acrobatics check and the target is Vulnerable and has their Initiative set to 0... until the end of your next turn. Unless your build is based around using these, nobody will ever give a fuck about them because nobody would spend a whole Standard Action to do any of this shit when you can hit someone for SE damage.
Manipulate is also 3 Maneuvers, but unlike thee others, they have a range of 6 meters and can only be used by Trainers. Bon Mot is an opposed Guile check, and you Enrage the target and they can't spend AP for a round. Flirt is an opposed Charm check that Infatuates the target for a round. Terrorize in an opposed Intimidate check that causes the target to lose all Temporary HP and they can only use At-Will moves for a round. I don't think I've ever used any of these.
Pushing is an opposed Combat or Athletics check, and you can push them 1 meter, or you can keep moving and pushing them around... unless they're heavier than your Heavy Lifting rating. Jeez, man, you can't even push a guy across the room like in a kung-fu movie? You may notice a pattern here in that all of these Combat Maneuvers kind of fucking suck.
Sprinting is a whole Standard Action, and all it does is increase your Movement Speeds by 50% for the rest of your turn. Last night I had someone stand up with his Shift Action, and he asked if he could Sprint away from the bad guys... and I had to remind him that 50% of 0 is 0. Ouch.
Tripping is also AC 6, except you at least knock the fucker onto the ground. This is mildly useful.
Intercepting Attacks works differently based on the attack: For ranged attacks, you make an Acrobatics or Athletics check and can Shift a number of meters equal to half your result to put yourself in the way of the attack. If you make the distance, you eat the attack instead... unless the move can't miss. Or you can't move. Melee attacks are a similar check, except it has a DC equal to 3 times the number of meters you need to cross in order to push your ally out of the way. If you still are in the range of an AOE attack... tough shit, you both get hit.
Grappling... oh, boy. I'll admit that I just adapted how grappling works in Tome for this game and it's way better. So, you and your target make opposed Combat or Athletics checks, and if you win, you gain Dominance. While you're both grappling, you are both Vulnerable, can't take Shift Actions or any actions that would cause you to Shift, gain a -6 Accuracy penalty to hit anyone outside the grapple, and has MORE EFFECTS based on this fucking Dominance shit. If you start a Grapple and you don't have Dominance, you can contest the grapple as a Full Action, and you both make checks again. The winner can either gain Dominance or end the grapple. Phasing and Teleporting pokemon can just zip out of grapples. If you DO have Dominance, you can end the grapple, Secure the grapple to get a +3 to your next check in the grapple, hit with an unarmed Struggle Attack, or Shift, where your Movement Capability is lowered by the other guy's Weight Class. You can actually use Moves during a grapple - the devs said so in a Q&A. Doesn't really seem to mention that here, though.


You cannot actually replicate this picture in-game, since I cannot fucking imagine how Dominance works with more than 2 grapplers involved.

Improvised & Environmental Attacks

Let's say you have some pocket sand and you throw it in a guy's face... but you don't actually know Sand Attack. The example here says the GM might treat it as an AC 5 attack that reduces a foe's Accuracy by -2 until the end of their next turn. (Sand Attack's AC is 2 and it imposes a -6 penalty!) You shouldn't hand out Type-associated attacks often - throwing a rock is just a Normal attack, not a Rock one. But if you hit something with your Torch, that could be Fire-type... but then your Torch breaks. Perhaps setting up a landslide on your enemies might simply be a Rock Slide attack, or maybe the GM could asspull some Skill Checks, and base the damage off that. They say you should reward players for doing this stuff, but... it really won't happen often. There's a mention that Water or Electric attacks might fuck up a trainer's electronics or a Blizzard might freeze their unprotected Potions. Hilariously enough, this is where the game mentions you can use Moves to attack things that aren't creatures. Gee, I really can use Flamethrower on a tree? Thanks, game!

Other Actions in Combat

Taking a Breather is so shitty it's unreal. You eat a Full Action up to move as far away from the action as possible, trip yourself, and make yourself Vulnerable. In exchange, your CS get reset, you lose all Temp HP, and you get cured of Volatile Status effects. Trainers can make Command DC 12 checks to do these to their Pokemon to calm them down, curing them of Rage and shit.

Making skill checks in combat should be hard - if you make a Skill Check and you've been attacked in the last round, you're supposed to make a Focus DC 16 check in addition to your normal check. Failing your Focus check gives you a -1 on your other check, with -1 more per 4 you fail by. If you WERE hit, you also take a -2 penalty to the check. If that attack ALSO injured you, you take further -2. This only applies to MTP stuff - you don't do this for Combat Maneuvers. Probably why I forget about this rule most of the time.

Status Afflictions

Hey, I recognize these! There are Persistent and Volatile statuses - unlike the games, there's no limit to how many Status afflictions you can have at once. Persistent statuses stick around after combat - these are Burned, Frozen, Paralysis, and Poisoned.
Burned causes you to take a Tick of damage when you use or are denied your Standard Action, and you have -2 DEF CS.
Poison is similar, except for SPDEF... and Bad Poison. That deals a flat 5 HP, which is then doubled each consecutive round. Nothing can survive 5 rounds of Bad Poison because that's 155 unavoidable damage.
Frozen means you can't act, but you can make a DC 16 Save Check to be cured, or DC 11 if you're Fire-type. Save Checks are a simple d20 roll. You get a +4 bonus to this check in Sun and -2 penalty in Hail. If you get hit by a damaging Fire, Fighting, Rock, or Steel attack, you get unfrozen.
Paralysis imposes a -4 SPEED CS penalty and at the beginning of your turns, you need to make a DC 5 Save Check to act. Fail and you can't do anything. This has since been errata'd - now your Initiative is halved and you need a Save Check of 11+. Failing this one means you can take a Standard OR Shift Action, you're Vulnerable for a round, and you can't make AoOs. I like it a lot better.



There's a lot more Volatile statuses, but they go away at the end of an encounter, or when you Faint or are recalled into a Pokeball.

Sleep means you have no Evasion and cannot act, unless you have a Free or Swift Action that could cure Sleep. You make a DC 16 Save Check to wake up, but you also wake up if you take damage or if someone else wakes you up as a Standard Action - but this is direct damage! Poison or Sandstorm would not apply. Bad Sleep is rare - when you make that Save Check above, you take 2 Ticks of damage, even if you succeed.
Confusion makes you roll a Save Check. On 1-8, you hit yourself with a Typeless Struggle Attack, which you resist... and that's your turn. 9-15 lets you act normally, and 16+ cures you of Confusion. In the errata, while Confused you cannot make AoOs, and when you attack you roll 1d2 (lolwut?). On a 1, you lose half your Attacking stat in HP after resolving the attack - if was a Status Move, you eat 2 Ticks of damage. You're still cured with a DC 16 Save Check at the end of your turn.
Cursed makes you eat shit. Every time you take a Standard Action, you lose 2 Ticks of HP at the end of your turn.
Disabled targets a specific Move you know, and you can't use it anymore. Yes, this stacks.
Rage means you MUST use a damaging attack, and at the end of your turn you cure yourself on a DC 15 Save Check.
Flinch used to make you eat shit - you just lose your whole turn, though the effect didn't carry over into the next round, so it was better on faster units. Now, you're just Vulnerable for a round and you have -5 Initiative for the rest of the Scene, or until recalled. I've been told that this isn't as huge of a nerf as it seems, but I have yet to be proven wrong in actual gameplay.
Infatuation makes you do a Save Check at the beginning of your turn. From 1-10, you can't target whoever you're Infatuated with, but you can still move and attack as normal. On 11-18, you can move and attack without restriction. 19+ cures you. I like the errata version more: the creature that Infatuated you is now your Crush. Infatuated targets deal -5 damage to things that aren't their Crush and their ATK & SPATK are halved when attacking their Crush. On the bright side, you're cured on a 16+ now.
Suppression means your frequencies are lowered: At-Will moves become EOT, EOT and Scene x 2 moves become Scene. The errata'd version is simply that you can only use At-Will moves for a full round, unless specified otherwise. Much easier to remember.
Temp HP is also mentioned here, but it works exactly like you'd expect.

There's some Other Afflictions, but they aren't really Status Afflictions.

Fainted is one - you're at 0 HP and you can't do shit! You don't wake up unless you're fed a Revive or your HP is brought back above 0 - and if it was done with a Potion or other non-Revive healing item, it takes 10 minutes to take effect, so it's useless in a battle context. It says a Pokemon gets cured of all Persistent and Volatile statuses when you faint... I always wonder if Trainers were meant to be excluded or not. I assume not, but I don't know for sure.
Blindness gives you a fuck-off -6 Accuracy penalty and you need to pass DC 10 Acrobatics checks when travelling over Slow or Rough terrain to not be tripped.
TOTAL Blindness isn't just darkness... it's advanced darkness. You have no map awareness at all and must declare shifts as distances relative to you... and you have a -10 Accuracy penalty! No Priority or Interrupt moves allowed, either. If you move at normal speed and run into ANY irregular terrain, you get tripped. Go fuck yourself. Caves are completely impossible to navigate without light.
Slowed means you move at half your Movement. Duh.
Stuck means you can't move at all, and your Speed Evasion is gone.
Trapped just means you can't be recalled at all.
Tripped means you need to spend a Shift Action to get up before you can take more actions... the fuck? You mean I can't just crawl or roll away? That's bullshit.
Vulnerable just means you have no Evasion whatsoever.



Miscellaneous Rules

Finally, we're almost done here. It says some of this stuff might come into play out of combat... but it's usually brought up in a fight.

The way suffocating works is that for every minute (6 rounds) something goes without air, it begins to suffocate, taking 1 Injury during every round of suffocation, but once they can breathe, those injuries go away. Personally, I changed it to depend on your Athletics Rank.
Falling damage will fuck your world up. It's a Typeless Physical attack, with the Damage Base determined by your weight class and how far you fall. WC 1-2 take +1 DB per meter fallen, up to 20 DB. WC 3 and up take +2 DB per meter fallen, up to 28 DB... the maximum damage in the game. If you fall for 4 meters, every 2 meters after that will incur an additional Injury upon crashing. Pokemon with natural Sky Speeds take 1 Injury for every 3 meters, at least. If the surface is yielding, you might ignore 1-6 meters of falling, where 1 is soft grass and 6 is deep water. Falling onto rocks might increase the DB by +1, or if you fall through a tree you might take +1d6 damage... because it's not like increasing the DB also increases the variable amount of damage, usually? Weird. If you're intentionally jumping, you can ignore a number of meters equal to your High Jump. If you make an Acrobatics DC 12 Check (or 20 if you fell unintentionally), you can ignore an additional meter.
All this adds up to say that, no matter what, if you're a regular person and you fall more than 14 meters, your lower body will fucking explode like a bag of jelly unless you do a flip or something. Falling off something is more likely to kill you than literally anything else in this game, in my experience.

Speaking of Injuries, how do they work? I said how you get them, but here's a better example: If you go from Max HP to -150% HP in one attack (it's happened to me), that would be 6 Injuries. They mention you should really describe what kind of injury they get and describe their bruises and cuts and shit. Since I work on Anime Logic, this means a lot of inexplicable bloodsplosions followed by more rounds of combat. If you want to be a real prick, you can impose random Combat Stage penalties for getting injured, like having a Speed penalty because you got hit in the leg and shit. Trainers and Pokemon alike die when they reach 10 Injuries, because for every Injury you have, your Maximum Hit Points are reduced by 1/10th. Any effects that go off your Max Hit Points still use the real maximum, like for Ticks of damage and percentage-based healing. As I mentioned, if you go below 50%, get healed over 50%, then get knocked beneath the threshold again, you eat another injury. If you're not watching it, you can wind up with 8 Injuries in a single fight like one of my players in their dumber moments. If you have 5 or more Injuries, you are Heavily Injured. Any time you take a Standard Action in combat, or when you take damage from an Attack, you lose HP equal to the number of Injuries you have. You can get your HP knocked around all day, but as long as you don't hit 10 Injuries or fucking -200% Hit Points, you won't die. And I really appreciate that - it can be a pain to make characters in this game, so making them this hard to kill is good, because that means I can still slap them with silly bullshit and not actually be in risk of killing them off. In League Battles, the -200% HP rule doesn't usually apply, since the battles are more "friendly". Injuries still kill you, though.



This game also has the good old Coup de Grace. It's alright - the target has to be Fainted or otherwise "completely helpless". No, having the Sleep status effect isn't completely helpless... but I've ruled that sleeping in your bed in town without your armor on is. It's vague. It's a Full Action and you can use any attack you'd like. When it hits, it's does +5 damage and crits (yes, the crit multiplier applies to that +5 - there's an ability that cranks the multiplier up to x3 damage). They explicitly say that these rules are for finishing off wounded opponents in battle, you don't really have to "force this mechanic outside of battle where a chance of failure does not make sense". They also say you can just not deal with Injuries and Death... if you're a pussy. That last part was mine.

Resting is simply "any period of time during which a trainer or Pokémon does not engage in rigorous physical or mental activity" and the specific activity is supposed to be up to the GM. Usually it means sleep, or "at least sitting down for a while". Meals usually count, but travelling for extended periods of time almost never counts - one of my players was asking if he was healing while flying on the back of a Gyarados for a few hours, and I had to tell him this isn't Avatar: TLA and the ride isn't nearly that comfortable... he should get a flying Wailord for that. You heal 1/16th of your Max HP every half an hour... why not just say it's 1/8th per hour? Weird. If you're Heavily Injured, you can't restore any HP through rest until you have 4 or less injuries. Injuries heal naturally after 24 hours of not getting any more. Trainers can remove Injuries as an Extended Action by Draining 2 AP, and you can heal up to 3 Injuries per day naturally. Extended Rests are only 4 hours long, and remove Persistent Statuses, restore Drained AP, and refresh Daily moves. Pretty sweet.

Personally... I don't use Pokemon Centers in my game. They've stolen plenty of money and healing from the bandits, and they can just scavenge up medical supplies from the grasslands and forests and shit. Why do I do this? Because in a single hour, Pokemon Centers completely heal you and restore Status Conditions and Daily Moves. It also takes 30 minutes per Injury on the Trainer/Pokemon, and 1 hour per Injury if they're Heavily Injured. That can still eat up most of, or an entire day if you have enough Pokemon and you're bad at fighting, but it's a bit too fast for my taste. Going from your deathbed to perfectly fine in 3 days stretches belief, even for a gameplay mechanic. But of course, nobody wants to sit around in the hospital after every fucking adventure, do they? So we deal with it. It's also recommended that Pokemon Centers be free, because duh. Even if you don't have Pokemon Centers, healing is still really easy to come by, even if you don't have Trainers that want to make medicine. No complaints here.



Whew... that took most of the day to write. All that's left is a Combat Demo, and I don't fucking care. It does its job. Read it if you want.

Otherwise, I'm gonna go steel myself to get ready for the next chapter... because I haven't looked here in ages. We'll see how worthy the Contest rules are...

Next time: Chapter 8: Pokemon Contests

That picture with Hilde tackling N... nice

That's actually Hilda tackling Cheren, tackling N.
... I've always loved those shorts.

Does the Porygon entry mention that it gives kids cancer autism diabeetus epileptic seizures?

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: Then I bust out the poison spills and homebrew magic terrain and shit.

Well the video games have already added five types of entry hazard, four types of Special Terrain, 2 types of altered terrain from pissing on the field or whatever, 6+ types of weather (depending on what you want to count as weather), 3 types of special move combo Pledge terrain, 3? magic room types, and a partridge in a pear tree.

This has to fucking change. This is unacceptable,

Yeah that's a terrible idea in tabletop. Just do a bonus/penalty. I mean, multiples of 10% aren't hard, but still, that's a pain in the ass.

Bad Sleep is rare - when you make that Save Check above, you take 2 Ticks of damage, even if you succeed.

Is that the Nightmare attack/Bad Dreams ability, or some other special thing introduced just for this game?

The bit where you can avoid burn damage by sitting still (seeing as you're not *on fire*, your skin is simply charred and cracked and half-melted) makes enough sense, and I suppose that kind of works as a replacement for the lowered attack power. I don't really have any complaints about how most of the status effects are changed here.

You heal 1/16th of your Max HP every half an hour... why not just say it's 1/8th per hour? Weird.

What's weirder is the game already changed most other HP percentages into 10% ticks, which is sensible, but here they are fucking around with 1/16 like it's incredibly important to have it break down into a power of 2. Make it "one tick" per hour, and no I don't care much that this works out slightly worse than before.

Koumei wrote:Does the Porygon entry mention that it gives kids cancer autism diabeetus epileptic seizures?

No, but it can "enter machines and travel through connected electronics through any cords that connect them instantly." Only Rotom can actually control the machine, though... they shouldn't be that special.

Koumei wrote:Is that the Nightmare attack/Bad Dreams ability, or some other special thing introduced just for this game?

Correct, Bad Sleep only comes from Nightmare. A fair amount of Pokemon are able to learn it - I thought it would just be Darkrai. I try to mention whenever I diverge from how the game is played RAW.

Koumei wrote:Make it "one tick" per hour, and no I don't care much that this works out slightly worse than before.

Honestly, you might as well make it a Tick per half an hour, since an Extended Rest lasts 4 hours. Healing in 5 hours seems to fit the timescale better than 10 hours. It's really weird when the game starts getting into fractions that aren't just 1/10th, since the whole Tick concept can really be applied to a lot of places.

Koumei wrote:Does the Porygon entry mention that it gives kids cancer autism diabeetus epileptic seizures?

I forget if video game Porygon learns confusion moves, but the card game does:

Upon closer inspection, Porygon does not naturally learn moves that cause confusion. But you bring up a good point by acknowledging the card game, because it does at least one thing I'd like to emulate: It is not afraid at all to make up new moves for various Pokemon. Personally, I think signature moves and shit are awesome, and since I'm aiming for about 50-ish moves that can be learned naturally (about 10 per tier), that means I'm probably going to have to make up even more fucking moves. Fortunately, it isn't hard. Stealing moves from existing sources is even easier.

I'd make Porygon's Seizure Pattern move just Nuzzle, except Normal type and Special rather than Physical. Then I'd call it a day and have a nap.

You've already gotten into the spirit of homebrew, I see. It's really that easy!

Having personally bashed Pokémon and D&D stuff together at various points, I totally get how you'd end up with something that looks on first or second glance to be a completely random collection of 3rd edition D&D rules and terminology and numbers culled from various Pokémon computer games. I totally get that.

Without running too far down the Raboot hole, is that what this actually is?

Actually designing something out of Pokémon and 3rd edition D&D OGL material that is more than just a random assortment of rules and ropes is pretty hard and takes quite a bit of vision. And it kinda sounds like you're describing more of a Pathfinder 2E deal, where it actually is just a random walk of changes until the accumulation of differences makes backwards compatibility impossible without actually generating a strong argument for its own existence.

So that's my fundamental question: say we're going to play a Pokémon based elf game. How is this set of rules a better starting point than the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook? Assume I am physically capable of writing stats for Solosis and Cloyster and also Pokémon that don't look like butts or vaginas.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Having personally bashed Pokémon and D&D stuff together at various points, I totally get how you'd end up with something that looks on first or second glance to be a completely random collection of 3rd edition D&D rules and terminology and numbers culled from various Pokémon computer games. I totally get that.

Without running too far down the Raboot hole, is that what this actually is?

Actually designing something out of Pokémon and 3rd edition D&D OGL material that is more than just a random assortment of rules and ropes is pretty hard and takes quite a bit of vision. And it kinda sounds like you're describing more of a Pathfinder 2E deal, where it actually is just a random walk of changes until the accumulation of differences makes backwards compatibility impossible without actually generating a strong argument for its own existence.

So that's my fundamental question: say we're going to play a Pokémon based elf game. How is this set of rules a better starting point than the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook? Assume I am physically capable of writing stats for Solosis and Cloyster and also Pokémon that don't look like butts or vaginas.

-Username17

Well, I'm surprised you think it's based on 3rd Edition, since the closest comparison would be 4e - PTA was based on 4e, and PTU is based on PTA. Now, they might have stolen some concepts from 3.x, and to be honest, I've done the same, especially for environmental rules and shit. Since I didn't make the game nor do I have access to the devs anymore, I can't really speak as to how the game wound up the way it is. However, while everything seems random, I do know that a lot of it was in response to the direction PTA was headed, and the PTU guys wanted to, well... unify the system. As you can see, it's been a clunky job so far, but I consider it an improvement over the absolute insanity that PTA was.

I don't think backwards compatibility was really any design goal during the making of this game, since it's different enough to make the leap impossible. I think their vision was "make the game easier to actually play" and "allow for most campaign ideas beyond gym crawls", which... while not that lofty, was enough to get the job sorta done. As someone who has actually designed TTRPG shit, I'm curious as to what you mean by "actually designing something".

Now, could you just play D&D 3.x instead? I've seen people do it here at the Den, and to be honest, I never understood the appeal. 3.x has a great core system that a lot of RPG have stolen from, but it was never built for Pokemon-style shenanigans at all. Frank Trollman might have years of homebrew Pokemon material and classes and mechanics, but... PTU was made explicitly for all of that shit as the baseline and you can do heroic fantasy on top of that - you can slap some Pokemon coat on a D&D class chassis, but shit always gets incredibly complicated when you actually start catching Pokemon and trying to use them. From most of my lurking and googling, in a 3.x hack, your class is going to be Pokemon Trainer and maybe you'll prestige into Champion or something, assuming that's not just a class feature. In PTU, the classical "pokemon trainer" class is really just two classes out of 50+ and you have a ton of options over what kind of trainer you are. Plus, Pokemon in D&D aren't actually Pokemon - they're just monsters with a Pokemon paint slapped on. What TMs can I teach D&D Pokemon?

... oh, fuck, now I realize that the Pokemon d20 shit I'm looking at is, in fact, yours.

To be honest, I have a problem with the very first sentence of your premise:

Pokemon d20 wrote:D20 has creatures set up into creature types already, d20 Pokémon defines some of these types as Pokémon (Aberration, Beast, Dragon, Elemental, Magical Beast, Ooze, Outsider, Plant, Shapeshifter, or Vermin).

Pokemon already have Egg Groups, that's how they're classified! You're grafting Pokemon onto D&D and diluting the actual Pokemon part of it. That's why a Pokemon TTRPG with some effort put into it is better than hammering D&D into yet another d20 hack... to me, at least. I run a very D&D-esque game, and if I wanted to actually play D&D, I would be playing D&D.

TAA wrote:Well, I'm surprised you think it's based on 3rd Edition, since the closest comparison would be 4e - PTA was based on 4e, and PTU is based on PTA. Now, they might have stolen some concepts from 3.x, and to be honest, I've done the same, especially for environmental rules and shit.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if there was a hodgepodge of 3e and 4e concepts going into that stew.

... oh, fuck, now I realize that the Pokemon d20 shit I'm looking at is, in fact, yours.

Yeeeah. Reading your review there is a very prominent feeling that this all measures up pretty poorly to the default. And that's with the default literally being "half assed homebrew I personally wrote up nearly two decades ago to amuse my sister and my dorm mates."

As for the question of how much Pokémon versus how much Dungeons and Dragons to get in your Tabletop RPG, that's a matter of taste. But the reason I went for a Pokémaster that could plug directly into an otherwise very normal D&D campaign is that I had players that ran the entire gamut from Pokémaniac to utterly disinterested in Pokémon lore. Creating a system where one player could be a Pokémon Trainer and another player could be a Sorcerer and have that mostly work out OK was definitely the right move for those groups.

And I've run it in otherwise pretty straight D&D campaigns (in one, a player's "starter Pokémon" was Ash Rat and in another a PC ended up being the head of the Chaos Gym with signature Pokémon of Slaad) and in reasonably Pokénormal campaigns (in one a player made concessions to the Pokémon world by playing a spirit shaman, but roleplaying all of their spirit interactions as getting weird and creepy advice from Shuppet). If you could guarantee that all your players wanted to do deep dives on Pokémon Lore, you could make your game be more Pokémon centric, but that seems to be a pretty big ask.

Still, I don't think I've ever seen a group of D&D players crack up as hard as the one time an NPC yelled after them "Stop! Or I'll call the cop!"



But even if we were fully committed to doing a very Pokémon table top, you'd still have to make your explicitly Pokémon themed game very tight before it would be as good as playing 3rd edition D&D with everyone playing a Pokemaster with different specializations as prestige classes. Control limits by CR is just a very effective mechanism at keeping the different players on something remotely similar to the same page. Without that, you're going to have to come up with your own balancing mechanisms, and those are pretty hard.

-Username17

I haven't read too much into your Pokemon d20 stuff, but I still think that having a separate Pokemon TTRPG is a goal worth having. D&D 3.x has a lot of great core mechanics, but D&D is still its own genre: D&D. It has a lot of the baggage that comes with the brand and that gets in the way of people who want to play a fucking Pokemon game. D&D is about imaginary dudes going cool places and coming home laden with fat sacks of loot, while Pokemon is about imaginary dudes going cool places and coming home laden with a pocket full of monsters. There is a lot you can overlap between the two, but the central premise differs in a very important way.

You are right, though - a straight-up Pokemon tabletop game needs to have a lot of the kinks ironed out, but I think it's worth noting that D&D has been around a lot longer and had a lot more people talking about its problems than with PTA or PTU, or the ever-more obscure Pokemon RPGs out there. 3rd Edition D&D is a tight fucking game because it had 20 years of history and a dedicated group of professionals, and some of them knew what they were doing... and then they just kind of went out of control with splats and shit. But I look at your Pokemon d20 stuff and I see these weird types and subtypes that are a mash of Pokemon and D&D and I think, shit, these aren't actual Pokemon types, as far as I can tell. I prefer something that's actually built from the ground up for Pokemon, no matter how much better 3.5's rules are. I would much rather take the concepts and ideas from 3.x that work and implement them into a Pokemon game.

It's probably going to be a pain in the ass to figure out something akin to CR for a Pokemon game, but I don't think it's impossible - they already have levels and people generally understand that evolved Pokemon are better than unevolved Pokemon, some pokemon are Legendaries, some are pseudo-legendaries, etc. I think it's very important to be able to take your knowledge from the video games and generally apply them in a tabletop context without having to re-learn everything, but without being so wedded to the video games that you make the same mistakes that PTU has.

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:D&D is about imaginary dudes going cool places and coming home laden with fat sacks of loot, while Pokemon is about imaginary dudes going cool places and coming home laden with a pocket full of monsters. There is a lot you can overlap between the two, but the central premise differs in a very important way.

If basically every town is prepared to give you an item of power because you saw off some Pokemon menace/brought peace to the land/were awesome in your gym battle, that covers that.

TAA wrote:But I look at your Pokemon d20 stuff and I see these weird types and subtypes that are a mash of Pokemon and D&D and I think, shit, these aren't actual Pokemon types, as far as I can tell.

No two generations of games have precisely the same type list, right? Also, the classic types are horribly unbalanced (looking at you: Alakazam), and the thing where Pokémon can only have two types and thus we get bullshit like Dragons that aren't Dragon type and Flying creatures that aren't Flying Type and so on and so on is 100% just an artifact of the restrictions of the original Game Boy.

The fact that Mega Charizard X is Fire/Dragon and Mega Charizard Y is Fire/Flying is bullshit, and having Drapion lose its Bug type is an actual insult. Not only are the specific types of the main Pokémon franchise not sacred cows (see: Fairy Type and Dark Type and so on and so on), but if you made it a tabletop RPG you'd change up the types on specific Pokémon even if you kept the official list from whatever game.

But the bottom line is that for an RPG you don't need to have Flying Type at all. Creatures that are currently in the air for whatever reason can be immune to Fissure attacks and creatures that are on the ground for whatever reason won't be. And being in the air won't make you immune to fucking Mud Shot because fucking obviously. The entire coding of Thousand Arrows is complex as hell, and you don't have to do fucking any of that in an RPG because attacks can just have range and shit.

Taking the Pokémon video game rules and fucking with them is simply not a profitable way to try to make a tabletop game. You want to make a functional tabletop game and then start converting Pokémon into it until you have enough content. But step one is "Make a functional game" not "decide what Grass Type does."

-Username17

So how do you do that without hacking D&D?

Types in general are just arbitrary. I mean, Gyarados is Water/Flying... yet it doesn't learn any flying type moves until fucking Black 2/White 2, where it can learn Bounce via tutoring. For seventeen years, Gyarados's second type just served to make it explode when hit with electric-type attacks.

Similarly, Lucario being Fighting/Steel makes no sense, because what the fuck about a martial artist fight dog says steel? It SHOULD have been Fighting/Psychic, y'know, cause reading auras and shit.

Oh, and lets not forget fucking Gligar, who's freaking GROUND/FLYING... and it's like, WHY? It's a fucking Bug/Poison if ever there was. I mean, it's based on the fucking scorpionfly, for fucks sake! Flying I could see an argument for, but where the ever-raping fuck do you get GROUND from?! Jesus Christ, now I'm all angry. I always get that way when talking about Gligar...

Hey, I'm not opposed to slaughtering some sacred cows. I've been thinking about scrapping the Flying-type and just making it a status that only comes into play when you're actually flying around, and I'm not opposed to things like triple types, but that would be difficult for players to remember.

The problem from where I'm sitting is how far do you go? Is making Charizard Fire/Dragon acceptable? What about turning Gligar into Bug/Poison? Do we start introducing fake types, too? What about a Rock/Cosmic Lunatone? These aren't questions I feel safe answering myself.

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:but that would be difficult for players to remember.

If there's one thing I know about people who like Pokemon, they have no limit for the amount of trivial information about fictional Pokemon that they can retain.

Ultimately, type is a short-hand for a bullet list of abilities and you'll write those abilities where they belong. If you want flying type to be weak to electricity you'll give them a lower AC against it, extra damage from it, or something and you write that down and you don't have to remember if it comes from being flying type or bug type or whatever - it's just a vulnerability that the specific creature has (until it doesn't because it picked up a special ability that nullified that weakness).

How is that any different from exactly how PTU does it?

I think I'm going to make fun of you to a greater or lesser extent. Mostly the latter because you're not a raging idiot (as far as we've seen so far), you're just unaware of a few things when talking about something that is related to these things of which you are unaware. Like the "Oh shit I didn't realise you created those rules" thing, which is just funny.

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:You've already gotten into the spirit of homebrew, I see. It's really that easy!

Feel free to search Pokemon + Koumei on the Den and you'll see that I've been combining these since the good old days of DPPl. And that wasn't the first homebrew stuff in general I've put here (let's ignore how much of it is actually any good, for the time being).

Collectively, the Den has been toying with various "roleplaying Pokemon" ideas in many different ways since before the current Pokemon players were sperm. So pitching the game system as "something you might want to play" is a hard sell. Especially because the default assumptions are "I'm a knight who rides a Rhyhorn" "I am a Warlock who makes pacts with DigimonUltra Beasts and MissingNo," "I am a Druid, my animal companion is Wooloo" and "I am the Water Gym Leader: I have two Water Elementals, one Terlen, one GIANT MOTHERFUCKING CRAB, a Selkie and whichever Dragon is most associated with water". And then "Okay, but what do we actually get for chasing Team Rocket out of here?" or indeed "Can we just take over Team Rocket?"

That said, Frank has made one massive error and will be deducted eight points: the Type list changed in 2Gen, then remained the same in 3. 4 didn't change the list but it did give the Special/Physical split which is basically a change in Type mechanics, and they stayed the same in 5. It changed again in 6th with the introduction of Fairy and mild weakening of Steel on the defensive side (ie "Fuck, we made Aegislash and it's just too good, WE MUST WEAKEN MAGNETON TO FIX THIS"). I'm pretty sure that hasn't since changed. Not including subtypes like "These are classified as Contact, Biting moves" where there probably have been changes every generation, but that's more a movelist thing and not locked to Types.

Koumei wrote:That said, Frank has made one massive error and will be deducted eight points: the Type list changed in 2Gen, then remained the same in 3. 4 didn't change the list but it did give the Special/Physical split which is basically a change in Type mechanics, and they stayed the same in 5.

Good point. With the completely massive overhaul of the moves in Gen 3, I forgot that they hadn't actually changed any of the types. Bug being strong against Psychic only matters if there are any decent Bug Pokémon who get decent Bug Moves to get STAB on. Although of course even then Generation 3 added contest subtypes such as Tough and Cool.

And if you wanna get really pedantic, Generation V removed the "???" movetype. The changes between each generation are pretty extensive, and the broader point that because there's no reason to expect any particular move or pokemon type to stay the same in the next video game, there's no reason to feel constrained to keep these the same as any particular videogame in a tabletop conversion.

TAA wrote:So how do you do that without hacking D&D?

Dungeons & Dragons isn't the only functional system. You could hack Shadowrun instead. Fixed hit points and LMSD wounds would be better at scaling, which would be important if you actually wanted to have Kyogre vs Groudon and Marill vs Sandshrew combats appropriate to the lore.

You could also write your own core mechanics. Or go back farther in time than just RPGs that had a good edition in the early 2000s. Like, HERO isn't balanced but it's incredibly good at modeling things - plus it's got an incredibly tight system for micro-advancement. It wouldn't mean anything if Combusken cost more or less points than Clobbopus, but you could advance either one slightly but noticeably with a few additional points and repeat that several times.

You have to decide what it is about Pokémon that you're trying to emulate at the table. And then make a game that is capable of delivering that. And then converting a bunch of content into the game.

You don't have to start with D&D. You can, and I did, and it works fine. But there are other options if you're looking to focus on other aspects of emulation.

-Username17

Koumei wrote:Feel free to search Pokemon + Koumei on the Den and you'll see that I've been combining these since the good old days of DPPl. And that wasn't the first homebrew stuff in general I've put here (let's ignore how much of it is actually any good, for the time being).

I may have been unwittingly condescending, sorry about that - I've actually seen some of the Pokemon stuff that people have thrown around here and it doesn't suit my tastes. I don't remember if it was yours or someone else's, but there was this system that was being bantered about that had these absolutely insane move ranges, like it was a tabletop fucking touhou or something.

Koumei wrote:So pitching the game system as "something you might want to play" is a hard sell.

I'm not really trying to defend this specific game, just the concept of a Pokemon TTRPG that can handle a wide variety of situations. Sure, D&D can do that, but it's easier to pitch a game to people as "Hey, do you guys wanna play Pokemon tabletop?" than "Hey, do you guys wanna play D&D, but with homebrew Pokemon rules on top?"... unless you're super into D&D, that is.

Frank wrote:And if you wanna get really pedantic, Generation V removed the "???" movetype. The changes between each generation are pretty extensive, and the broader point that because there's no reason to expect any particular move or pokemon type to stay the same in the next video game, there's no reason to feel constrained to keep these the same as any particular videogame in a tabletop conversion.

Well, if we're being pedantic, the only Type that has ever been changed after its initial inception was Steel, back in Gen 6, losing its resistance to Dark - and as far as I'm aware, while the back-end mathematics of how a move works might change, I cannot recall a single time that an actual move was changed outside of fucking Gen 1 moves. You're making it sound like they just change everything willy-nilly, when they're really consistent as games get released. They add things, but it wasn't until SwSh that they started taking them away, and that rightfully caused a shitstorm. You can expect shit you know from the last game to, more or less, stay the same. Sure, sometimes they'll change a Pokemon's abilities and tweak their movelists as time marches on, but that's on a far less fundamental level than shit like moves and types.

Frank wrote:You have to decide what it is about Pokémon that you're trying to emulate at the table. And then make a game that is capable of delivering that. And then converting a bunch of content into the game.

That's a good question. To be honest, I would be lying if I said I didn't want D&D-style shenanigans, I just... don't actually like D&D that much. I'd like to emulate the things that the games can't or won't do: A rich world full of ways to interact with things, a tactical combat system that literally gives new dimensions to pokemon battles, and the sweet high of enslaving something you just fought because it looked cool. I want to have greater adventures than the video games could ever dream of, travelling the land with my friends while we get into trouble.
I would like to have world-shattering battles with legendary pokemon that are full of insane power, but I would also like to be able to scale a Magikarp to the max level and almost be able to use it sort of maybe. I really like the interplay of Pokemon mechanics, what with all the different kinds of moves and Types changing how you approach a situation (even if you're just fishing for SE attacks most of the time). I would like to be able to allow people to play a Pokemon game in any setting they want, with almost any Pokemon they want.

The problem is that I'm not sure what the best ways to do that are, hence me flailing around in this review.

TAA wrote:I would like to be able to allow people to play a Pokemon game in any setting they want, with almost any Pokemon they want.

That is something you cannot do.

The kind of Pokémon stories you intend to tell require a set of game mechanics for them to be told in. And those game mechanics necessarily will not and can not generate stories with significantly different assumptions.

Let's talk about Mewtwo in the movie continuity and the mobile game continuity. If the cartoon movies, Mewtwo can make Akira-style explosions that destroy whole cities and in the handheld game continuity he has a pretty good stat line and is considered by most competitive players to be unfair. In the handheld, Mewtwo might be too good for one on one matches (unless you're playing without a ban list and people can use Kyogre and shit), and in the movie continuity Mewtwo can blow up thousands of Pokémon at once with mind explosions.


Movie continuity Mewtwo is not going to lose a fight to a fucking Houndour.

Anyone who comes to the table with one of those expectations will encounter a ruleset that either tells the appropriate story or does not. But a ruleset that tells one of those stories will not tell the other story and vice versa.

Pokémon has been around for decades and exists in many different kinds of media. The basic parameters of the Pokémon world are quite different one from another. It isn't just the physics differences that come naturally from different genres (although that happens as well), it's that basic questions like "how big is a thundershock?" are answered definitively but differently in different source material.

Before you can make a functional Pokémon RPG you need to decide what roles the Pokémon will have in your RPG and then have rules that reflect and enforce that. And whatever choice you make will necessarily exclude the stories of people who would have made different choices.

-Username17