Tag: signature moves

Rockcutter64 asks:

Since they seemed to have abandoned mega evolution for the moment, any idea what you’d do with megas of the 2nd gen starters?

Not really… I’ve never been wild about any of the generation II starter Pokémon (not even Meganium, who enjoys the benefit of my blanket fondness for all Grass Pokémon), and honestly I don’t really like designing mega evolutions very much.  Typhlosion in generation VII actually got an interesting little almost-signature-move (she shares it with Moltres, and it can be bred into Growlithe, but hey, who’s counting?) – Burn Up, which gives you one really powerful Fire attack and then strips you of your Fire type, which in Typhlosion’s case makes her typeless.  I’d sort of like to give Meganium and Feraligatr something new to match, and then maybe these putative mega forms could have new abilities that mesh with the signature moves somehow.  For Typhlosion, you could have her automatically regain her Fire type at the end of the turn after losing it (for any reason – Burn Up, but also Soak, or anything else added to the game in the future that can cause a Pokémon to lose its original type) and increase her special attack whenever that happens.  Meganium ought to have something better than Sweet Scent that emphasises her ability to quell violence and conflict or restore life… maybe a kind of mass Wish, a delayed full restore that affects everything in play, with an ability that causes all healing from Meganium’s moves to recur one turn later, with reduced effect.  And Feraligatr can just… I don’t know, be able to bite everything in half, or whatever.

Alex-Littleboots asks:

Assuming you’ve met every new pokemon of alola, what do you think of the addition of signature move/ability for each pokemon(evo line) ? I think it’s very cool since it’s a good way to make them more unique

I think I’ve met almost all of them now (I’m further through than my write-up suggests; I’ve actually finished the Elite Four now).  I hadn’t realised they all had something like that, but yeah, I like it – I’ve kinda always had a habit of wanting to give signature moves to everything, and I think there is a point at which you just plain run out of unique ideas.  One of my old mantras, though, is that Pokémon “should be good at the things they’re good at” – that is, if we’re told a Pokémon has a certain lifestyle and fighting strategy, then those things should actually be a part of what it can do, and do well, and signature moves/abilities are usually a good way of doing that.