Author: pokemaniacchris

Addendum to Dedenne by SkarmorySilver:

And another one from Skarmorysilver, who challenged me to come up with the damn thing in the first place!

pokemondayandnight:

RAIDENNE (Raiden [Thunder and lightning in Japanese]+Antenne [Antenna in French])

THIS IS A WIP. THE FULL POKEDEX WILL BE AVAILABLE LATER.

Thought I’d make a quick little something for pokemaniacal! The story here is that I challenged him to try and redeem one of his least favorite Pokemon from X and Y, Dedenne, into something genuinely creative. He came up with a Robin Hood-style folk hero with a tail like a bowstring, so I decided to go and put it on paper. There’s a bit of jerboa in the evolved form as well, just because it sounds like “gerbil”. The shiny colors are the same as Dedenne’s except with a darker shade of brown, cream instead of orange, and Robin Hood-style green instead of red.

I was actually going to look for some Japanese folk heroes to use as a source for the name, but the pun on characters named Raiden was too good to ignore. XD

Addendum to Dedenne by Z-Nogyrop:

I will it, and the internet makes it so!  Many thanks to Z-Nogyrop for the creation of more awesomeness!

z-nogyrop:

Oh no I did a thiiiiiiiing

image

Dendatic- Zap Arrow Pokemon

Stats- 

HP- 87

Attack- 68

Defense- 77

Sp. Attack- 101

Sp. Def- 87

Speed- 121

New Moves- Flash Cannon, Zap Cannon, Pin Missile, Flamethrower, Nature Power, Focus Blast, Dazzling Gleam (remind me again why dedenne doesn’t already learn this), Signal Beam, Me First, Assist, Dark Pulse, Trick, Magic Arrow*

*Fairy, 90 power (because signature moves should always be better than their normal equivalents- I LOOK AT YOU, ZYGARDE), 100 accuracy, 10 PP, special, hits target’s physical defense

Same abilities, though I was kind of tempted to ditch Pickup for Mega Launcher.

Anyway this probably wasn’t exactly what you were looking for, but SCREW IT, I like it. Pin Missile is useless but flavourful, since, y’know, arrows. Zap Cannon was to have an Electric move that could be justified with the whole arrow-launching thing, Dark Pulse is in the same vein, Signal Beam because every other Electric-type (except Pachirisu, for some reason) learns it, Trick because I imagine this guy being pretty tricky, plus Dedenne already learns Thief and Covet. The name is up for changes, but I like it.

Anonymous asks:

I don’t know if you have answered this before but, do you have any theory about what happens to Pokémon once their trainer die?

Hmm. Tricky.

I feel like this must have happened in the anime before, but only three examples readily come to mind, all of which are unusual cases simply because of the nature of the Pokémon involved (please share any other examples, as I’m sure there are more I’m not thinking of):

Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Any thoughts regarding the Champions’ teams in the PWT’s Champions Tournament? Do you like the new lineup for some of them (like Hoenn’s Champions, or Alder’s)?

Hmm.  Never really thought about them before.  Let’s see…

So, their teams are as follows (movesets and items are generally an improvement on their basic lineups):

Red: As his Heart Gold/Soul Silver team
Blue: As his Heart Gold/Soul Silver team, but swapping Pidgeot for Aerodactyl
Lance: Salamence, Haxorus, Kingdra, Flygon, Hydreigon, Dragonite
Steven: As his Emerald team, but swapping Skarmory and Claydol for Archeops and Excadrill
Wallace: Sharpedo, Swampert, Walrein, Starmie, Ludicolo and Milotic
Cynthia: As her Black 2/White 2 casual team, but swapping Milotic for Roserade
Alder: Reuniclus, Chandelure, Krookodile, Conkeldurr, Braviary and Volcarona

So, Red doesn’t change at all, and Cynthia just reverts to another of the Pokémon she used on Platinum.  It’s odd that Blue would replace Pidgeot, who is his strongest Pokémon on Heart Gold and Soul Silver, but throwing in Aerodactyl instead certainly makes for a more menacing line-up, and fits his obsession with rare Pokémon (although I seriously question his decision to teach it Fire Blast, particularly in a Choice Band set…).  The changes to Steven are, likewise, straightforward; Archeops over Skarmory fits his interest in rare stones and fossils; Excadrill over Claydol gives him another Steel-type to replace Skarmory and helps him to dig up cool new rocks.  I’m really not sure about Head Smash on Archeops with Defeatist to worry about, but I suppose it combos decently with Sitrus Berry and Acrobatics, and I’m glad to see the back of that bat$#!t special attacker Aggron set he used in the third generation games.

Wallace changes out most of his team, keeping only Ludicolo and his signature Pokémon, Milotic.  Wallace doesn’t have much of a unifying theme to begin with other than being a Water trainer; his battle philosophy revolves around grace and elegance, but all that translated to in Emerald, as far as I could tell, was using Pokémon who were a pain to kill, like Amnesiac Whiscash and Double Team Ludicolo.  His new team seems generally more heavy on offence, mostly due to the presence of Sharpedo and Starmie, but I don’t think that makes it any more or less appropriate to him.  I’m not keen on the fact that his Swampert is a special attacker, but I suppose it’s not as bad an idea as a special Aggron.

I actually don’t like Lance’s all-Dragon team much, simply because I was fond of the way his original Gold and Silver team worked around the single-type limitation while still making him very obviously a ‘Dragon Master.’  It made him stick out a bit amongst all the other single-type Gym Leaders and Elite Four members.  Multiple Dragonite is obviously a no-go, but I think I would have gone with a compromise team, replacing Haxorus and Flygon with Aerodactyl and Charizard, and maybe Gyarados over Kingdra too.  Also, Solarbeam on Flygon, particularly without Sunny Day anywhere on his team, strikes me as a… poor decision, especially when he could have just given it Flamethrower or Fire Blast.

Alder certainly gets more difficult by losing his focus on Bug-types, and there was nothing about Escavalier or Accelgor that made them strikingly appropriate for him (I mean, Reuniclus and Chandelure are kind of weird choices for Alder as well since they’re very calm and subdued by nature, but whatever).  Conkeldurr and Braviary appear on his casual Black 2/White 2 team as replacements for Druddigon and Vanilluxe, and I think they’re good ones; they’re more dangerous on the whole, and they fit Alder’s energetic style.  It’s unfortunate that Bouffalant is gone, because he almost works as a secondary signature Pokémon for Alder, sharing his excitable temperament and ridiculous hair.  Krookodile is okay as a replacement, I suppose, and probably stronger.  I’m neither here nor there on Alder’s lineup as a whole.

Hey Chris, a little while ago you talked about moves and the trend of proliferation for all of them. It got me thinking about proliferation of moves on Pokémon themselves. I’ve long thought that the expansion of movepools is actually not diversifying Pokémon but just reducing them all towards a point of “these moves give perfect coverage and power, this is all you should run”. How would you feel if the movepools were drastically reduced so each mon has more clearly delineated roles in battle?

Well, “less is more” is very much a core belief of mine in picking apart this franchise.  I don’t think it’s so much a matter of ‘more clearly delineated roles,’ because most Pokémon do have that down pretty well anyway; the problem is how easy it is to be outclassed by things that have a similar roles, and making moves less widely available might help with that.  The presence of TMs in some ways is a little unfortunate, because the increasing ease with which we’ve been able to teach those moves over the years (first breeding to recycle them, then just outright reusable TMs) sort of devalues the Pokémon lucky enough to actually get some of those awesome moves in their level-up lists.  Panpour is the only Pokémon in the game who naturally learns Scald!  Did you know that?  I sure didn’t.  Do you care?  I sure don’t, because just about every other Water Pokémon who isn’t also an Ice-type gets it too!

This is sort of part of the messed-up incomplete charm of the original Red and Blue – a lot of Pokémon just don’t have access to very good techniques, and with single-use TMs and no breeding, you have to think long and hard about what to do with those precious discs (well… except for the part where the games are so horribly glitchy that you can basically turn them inside out and make them your bitches without any special equipment or expertise whatsoever, but I’m a theoretical kind of guy, so sue me).  It was a little unfortunate that this ‘feature’ of Red and Blue came with little, if any, thought for game balance (something that I doubt was a major fixture in Game Freak’s mind at the time), so some of its victims are Pokémon like poor Sandslash, who will never get any Ground attacks at all unless you spend your Earthquake TM on him, and remains lacklustre even if you do.  Maybe today, though, it’d be a neat balancing factor on a really powerful Ground-type like (say) Excadrill if Game Freak were willing to arbitrarily say “yeah no Earthquake for you lol use the goddamn signature move we gave you” (and, in that particular case, it encourages Excadrill to be more like Excadrill too).  Might also give more of a point to some moves that look and sound cool but just have no reason to be used, ever, like Aurora Beam – every Pokémon that learns it also gets Ice Beam, with the exception of one (Xerneas, who has better things to do with his time).

On the other hand, can you imagine the backlash from the fanbase if that were implemented in a future game and hundreds of Pokémon lost many of their best tricks?  People get annoyed enough by the obsolescence of move tutors and the occasional TM.  I sure wouldn’t want to be the one to announce that.  Accumulating more and more skills and abilities for Pokémon just seems to be the way this franchise typically operates, and I don’t think that’s likely to change any time soon, whatever I might think of it.

I had a thought about a very special hypothetical pokemon move. One that, when you use it, allows you to pick two of your other moves in a sequence of your choice to use in one turn cycle. The move itself would be priority, but when the two other moves are used depends on the pokemon’s speed or that move’s own priority. What would you say the implications of such a move would be?

Well, if I’m understanding you correctly, you can use two moves in one turn.  You have to give up a moveslot to do it, which is a big sacrifice, fair enough, but in return you’re getting probably about 50% more attack power (being conservative because your second attack might be made without STAB, or be resisted or something).  People happily give up the ability to switch attacks for that kind of power (by using a Choice Band or Choice Specs).  That’s also without getting into the kind of combos you can pull.  You can use Dragon Dance and Outrage in a single turn, potentially giving your opponent no chance to respond if you were already faster than whatever they had out.  Ghost-types can paralyse you with Thunder Wave and follow up with Hex.  Dream Eater is finally viable against human players for the first time in Pokémon’s history.  Basically, you get one attack, which would otherwise be a perfectly good use of your turn, and then you get a second attack with some kind of bonus which would normally require careful set-up or big risks.  It also magnifies the number of possibilities your opponent has to be able to prepare for on any given turn.

I think this would be a very fun signature move on a specific Pokémon, something with lacklustre stats, but an interesting movepool with lots of neat support techniques (something like Spinda, maybe?).  The idea of making it widely available sets off a series of very loud and insistent alarm bells in my head, though.