Arguing About Pokemon Physics

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I wasn't sure about whether or not to post this in the physics interaction thread, so I just made my own.
This is because today we are specifically discussing Pokemon physics. God have mercy on our souls.

Here are my goals, so everyone knows where I'm coming from:

• Give Pokemon the power to meaningfully affect their environment without immediately jumping to GM fiat so you can have stories like "a Volcarona has made a nest in a forest and turned the entire area into a blazing hellscape so it's comfortable" happen naturally.
• Detail obvious interactions so people without physics degrees can still enjoy classic tabletop mayhem.
• Pin down the less obvious interactions so "What is a Fairy and what does a Moonbeam do?" doesn't have a different answer at every single table.
• Work within established Pokemon mores whenever possible; ensure new content fits in with existing conceptions.
• Prevent this section of the rules from spiraling into a never-ending rabbit hole that bores people to tears.

To this end, I will list out each Pokemon type, detail what it means within the setting and game, and include as many meaningful interactions between different types as I can.
: "TAA, what the fuck are you telling me this for?"

Great question, strawman. We all know Pokemon is heinously popular and everybody has their own interpretations of the myriad topics that are never explained anywhere in the franchise. This is definitely one of those topics... so I'm going to spitball what I've got so far and I want you to yell at me and tell me I'm a retard who spent 2 hours on Wikipedia and I don't know shit about physics, because that is true. There are some smart and very professionally educated people here, as well as people immersed in different parts of Pokemon culture than I am. I figure if anyone I talk to would know this stuff, it's you guys.

Again, to reiterate: Pokemon physics. I have no intention of changing what types are immune to one another, so just refer to this if you don't know what that means.

---

There are 18 total Pokemon types, and some of them are obviously more easy to figure out than others. You throw water on fire to put it out. Ground dissipates electricity. Punching a rock with kung-fu powers makes it explode. That last one is a bit more... questionable, but not hard to imagine. Parsing 18 different types at once can be difficult, so I've decided to split them into three categories based on where the power of the Type comes from. Sort of like arcane and divine magic, I suppose.

• Elemental Types: These types each have their own dimensions (read: elemental planes) which creatures are able to access to generate their special powers. They make up the bulk of reality and have the most interactions with one another. They are considered the ‘building blocks’ of the world. This energy is nearly limitless and the most versatile, but the least powerful.
  Types: Normal, Flying, Ground, Rock, Steel, Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ice, Poison
• Aura Types: These types are founded on Aura, the life energy that all creatures have. This energy does not come from another dimension, but from a creature’s spirit or willpower. These types tend to involve using one’s life energy for power. As a result this energy is limited, but powerful.
  Types: Fighting, Ghost, Psychic
• Primal Types: These types draw on the natural energy of the environment around them to enact their will. This energy can only be accessed through rituals and is influenced by emotion and spirituality, but is the most powerful once controlled. These rituals can seem bizarre or incomprehensible to humans.
  Types: Bug, Dragon, Dark, Fairy

So I guess we'll start here first. I think defining where the 'energy' of each power comes from is helpful in figuring out what each type is truly capable of, especially since some types are more like a genus than an entire element or something. I'm not 100% set on these categories, but I like them so far. I plan to detail (especially for the Aura and Primal types) what exactly makes them different from one another, since it may not be immediately obvious.

I'll get around to posting the Ground type later (since I thought it would be a good foundation ), but I'll let this digest a bit first. Are these categories stupid? Should I even be doing this, or is this best left to the GM? If any of this shit is actually brought up in a Pokemon episode at one point, please let me know so we can argue about whether or not it's dumb.

[MGuy]

I know that I've been slowly writing up the rules by which my the magic in my setting work for a long time now so I clearly think it's good to have a system that has defined effects. The biggest issue is that it turns into a lot of material. I made a post about it in another thread. Can't remember which. You're setting yourself up to produce a lot of material and then you're going to be hoping your players can digest a good deal of how the intersections work and be able to recall it when it matters. I suspect that writing distinct interactions for all the elemental tags you're going to end up with is going to be very daunting. Especially if you're going to fill out the Pokemon move list and it's various effects on top of that.

I'm not that big of a fan of Pokemon anymore so all I can say is good luck.

[Archmage]

I'm not fully sure I understand the purpose of the three divisions you have. Body Slam and Comet Punch are Normal and therefore Elemental. Body Press and Brick Break are Fighting and therefore Aura. But from a "how do these things affect the environment" standpoint I'm not seeing why there would be a difference between Body Slam and Body Press, and the fact that one is Elemental and the other is Aura doesn't help me figure it out. There are too many types where the only reason an attack is that specific type is because the designers said so and the types need to be reasonably balanced. Pokémon moves weren't designed to be parsed in terms of what they do to the world around them and consequently you're significantly hamstrung from the word go. Why are Drill Run and Thousand Arrows Ground-type moves? Why is Bite Dark instead of Normal? What makes Dragon Claw substantively different from Slash? How can you even consider the notion that Dragon Tail and Spacial Rend belong in the same "category" in terms of their environmental effect? The mind reels.

I think that if you want to do Divinity: Original Sin type environmental interactions that 18 types is too many and the 3 categories you've designated don't actually help. The physical vs special split is more useful information than whatever these categories are intended to provide. You're going to need to write an entire physics textbook worth of material to formally define all these interactions and at the end of the day you're still going to end up handwaving things every once in a while because it'll take too long to look up and you're going to have effects that interact illogically with Pokémon because they strictly obey typing rules instead of the environmental effect rules. Psychic types are immune to Dark, does that mean my Raticate is literally incapable of eating an Alakazam because it can't Bite it? (Of course not, you say, because Bite is a Dark-type attack and it's qualitatively different from just sinking your teeth into something, but then you start thinking about how Bite will interact with non-Pokémon environmental objects and can only conclude that having the effect be anything aside from literally taking a bite out of the target is brain-rending nonsense.)

I think there's no way to realistically wrangle the video-game logic of Pokémon moves into an environmental simulator without first recognizing that a move's Type might tell you absolutely nothing about how it interacts with the world, unless you're doing what you kind of hinted at above and saying that when you use a Body Press on a rock one specific outcome always happens and when you use Body Slam on an identical rock something totally different happens specifically because the moves were different types and the in-game description of how they happen is meaningless.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Good points, Archmage.

You are absolutely right in that the source material never had any of this in mind when it was being made and their primary concern was making sure the different colored lasers being blasted around weren't too broken. My idea here was to split Pokemon moves into two different kinds: Struggle Attacks and Moves. Struggle Attacks would be things like Body Slam and Body Press, where they're just hitting somebody while flashing white or red and nothing particularly interesting happens, and these can be generated with their own system, since the effects aren't that special and can be qualitatively assessed. Moves are the hot shit that actually give you superpowers, are granted through leveling up or class features, and includes things like Teleport and Spacial Rend.

So right away, we're culling a lot of moves that are simply boring variants on one another and saying "make them up using this system or refer to this Book O' Example Attacks". That brings us to your next point: Why is Bite Dark instead of Normal? This is an obvious video game-ism that has no answer based on the setting itself. It's a balance decision. That obviously doesn't fly in the tabletop realm, so we need a better answer, and for that we look at the other Dark-type moves to see if there's a common thread between them. My interpretation is that they tend to be vicious, dirty, and unscrupulous; sometimes they harness the literal power of darkness and shit. From this, we can go back to Bite and determine that it's Dark because it's a "dirty" move. But wait, Fire Fang and Ice Fang are the same fucking thing, but they aren't Dark, so what's the deal with that? Clearly just biting something doesn't mean it's a Dark-type attack.

I believe that the Type of any given attack just draws on an energy source of some kind, and that's what differentiates them from one another. Your Raticate can eat an Alakazam because it's just chewing on it, which makes it a Normal-type attack like your basic weapon attacks are, and if it decided to pump a little darkness into its mouth while doing it, it would fuck your Alakazam's world up because Dark is immune to Psychic. Could it eat a Ghost? No, they're immune to all Normal attacks, so only things that have Scrappy or some other way of bypassing that immunity could chow down on them. But wait, Ghost is weak to Dark, so as long as the Raticate had some shadows in its jaw, it could actually eat a ghost. The ones that have physical forms, that is.

Additionally, every object in my system is going to have HP & DR like in D&D, but also a Class and Type on top of that. This computer you're reading this on? A physical normal-type object with 5 HP. That bonfire spreading around the woods? A special fire-type object with 20 HP per square meter. Physical objects resist Special attacks, and vice versa.
I have had a way easier time thinking of Physical objects instead of Special ones, but I expect that to change as I go through each type and examine its moves across various media.

So let's say you do decide to Bite... I dunno, a trash can or something. It's Steel-type, so it would resist your bite, but it's just a fucking trash can and all you'd do is destroy it. However, if you blasted it with a Fire attack for a few rounds, you'd reduce it to slag. There's not really any special interactions between them.

That's part of why I wanted to split the types across 3 categories, because coming up with interactions for fucking Dragon energy is, plainly, complete nonsense, because "Dragon energy" doesn't fucking exist even within the Pokemon series. I can extrapolate what it might do based on its moves, but I am just going to have to make this shit up. If that means that mystic dragon energy only really interacts with the other Primal types, then so be it, but I want to know what this is and have it make sense and be fun to use in-game.
Anyway, it's late and I'm rambling. I'll shut up now and post an example type tomorrow.

[Archmage]

I can't believe I forgot a Type interaction/read the chart backwards and remembered Psychic as immune to Dark when it's the reverse. That Type was literally introduced as part of the G/S/C era's systematic nerfing of Psychic.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Yeah, I didn't want to be too much of a dick about it.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

After a bit of thought, I think I've come to the conclusion that types don't have special interactions with other types outside of their categories. For example, Fighting, Ghost, and Psychic all have special interactions with one another, but none with Elemental or Primal Types, and vice versa. I don't see a need to twist myself into knots over trying to have every time have interactions with every other type, because that's dumb.

Also, a note on class: As I've gone through the moves, I've determined that Physical attacks involve hitting someone with solid matter, while Special attacks involve liquid or gaseous matter instead. With this, we can determine that all Physical objects are solid, while all Special objects are not. There might be some exceptions, but I think this is how it generally works and it makes sense to me.

Additionally, every substance is split into three categories: Softened, Regular, and Hardened. This just affects how much DR and HP it has. Softened substances have half as much DR & HP, while Hardened ones are doubled.

---

Anyway, onto the shit I actually made this thread for. I'll be starting with two Types, since Normal is the blandest and most generic one.

Normal
Normal is the “mundane” type. Normal objects tend to be boring and lack special properties - if you’re looking at an object and it doesn’t fit into most types, it’s probably a Normal object. However, Normal energy is the most malleable and can easily transform into other types - in its malleable state it is known as “Origin Energy”.
Physical example: A computer, glass, most furniture
Special example: Sound waves, Light, Origin Energy
Attacks: Most Normal attacks are simply striking something or blasting it with sound or light. A few moves, such as Judgment, Transform, and Tri Attack, involve Origin Energy.
Type Interactions: Normal objects have no special interactions with other types unless they are imbued with Origin Energy, which allows its type to be changed to any other.

Ground
The Ground type consists of soil, clay, sand, and mud. Naturally, these can be found almost anywhere in the world.
Physical example: Soil, clay, sand
Special example: Mud
Attacks: Physical Ground attacks involve striking something with earth-moving force or manifesting earth/sand. Special Ground attacks involve turning the ground into mud and flinging it at the opponent, or erupting raw Ground energy from cracks/holes.
Type Interactions:

• Rock: If something rocky is reduced to small enough pebbles and then exposed to water over a period of time (typically minutes), it will become mud or sand, depending on the makeup of the rock and water. If mud is left to dry long enough for plants to grow in it (typically days), it becomes soil.
  Rocks can also be eroded by wind over a longer period of time (typically years) to become sand.
• Fire: Ground-type substances excel at putting out fires. Mud that is exposed to fire over a period of time (typically minutes) dries out into Hardened Mud, halving in volume.
• Water: If half of a body of water’s volume is filled with soil, clay, or sand, it becomes mud. Water attacks targeting the ground can also create mud according to the attack’s AoE.
• Grass: The majority of plants grow in Ground-type substances, typically nourishing the earth to make it easier to grow in the future. Some plants penetrate deep into the earth, causing certain areas of topsoil to be Grass-type instead. The Sprouter capability can quickly create plants that cause this change.
• Electric: Electricity striking a ground-type substance is completely negated, unless it is striking mud. Due to its moisture content, mud is not immune to electricity and takes neutral damage from it. It still cannot conduct electricity, only be destroyed by it.
• Ice: Mud that is frozen or exposed to an Ice effect for a long period of time (typically years) is turned into permafrost. Colder Ice effects can accelerate this process.
• Poison: Soil that is exposed to Poison energy over a period of time (typically minutes) becomes contaminated, reducing its Yield to 0 and making the ground Poison-type.

I'm not even sure how many hard rules I need in this section. Given how broad and interpretable the subject can be, are guidelines acceptable? This is all an outline and I'm not certain how far I need to go with this. And most importantly: Are my interactions fucking stupid and am I missing anything?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Perhaps this next one will spark some discussion?

Electric
The Electric type consists of pure electricity and ‘overcharged’ objects. An object is ‘overcharged’ by being imbued with electricity or from having a high natural charge, such as certain metals and crystals.
Physical Example: An ‘overcharged’ metal rod, quartz/graphite with an electric current running through it
Special Example: Electricity
Attacks: Physical Electric attacks involve imbuing an object or the user with electricity and striking. Special Electric attacks involve blasting a target with pure electricity.
Type Interactions:

• Fire: Electrical currents that impact flammable objects can cause them to become aflame, and can burn objects that are not easily flammable. Flashes of electricity are hotter than almost any flame, but do not exist long enough to significantly heat the air around them.
• Flying: Electricity is the only phenomenon that can destroy Special Flying-type objects.
• Ground: Electricity striking a ground-type substance is completely negated, unless it is striking mud. Due to its moisture content, mud is not immune to electricity and takes neutral damage from it. It still cannot conduct electricity, only be destroyed by it.
• Ice: Electricity that travels through conductive materials that are below freezing travels more efficiently and quickly. At absolute zero, no electricity is wasted.
• Rock: Certain crystals and ceramics excel at holding an electric charge and are capable of becoming ‘overcharged’, gaining the Electric-type.
• Steel: The majority of metals are capable of becoming ‘overcharged’ as long as they remain in contact with a source of electricity, gaining the Electric-type. Certain metals are capable of holding a charge even after being disconnected from a power source. ‘Overcharged’ metals are almost always hot to the touch. The hotter a metal, the more quickly it loses its charge, and vice versa.
• Water: Water is an excellent conductor up to a certain point; if it becomes too dirty it gains the Ground-type and is Immune to Electric attacks, while if it becomes too pure it becomes an insulator and Resists Electric attacks. When an Electric attack strikes water, it becomes an AoE attack, where the radius of the attack is equal to the damage dealt. Water that is pure enough to insulate is extremely rare, typically only found underground.