[Meta thread] Iron's PokeRole Adventure: The Skull Ruins

[Dragonstrike]

Spoiler

*cuddles Primal Glaceon and suffers frostbites* There's still interest to trade for that Never-Melt Ice, but since you said you wish to keep it I didn't pry. If something about changes, please let me know, okay? ^_^

(...) Another pokemon I could add to that list is Shiva's Ditto.  Can serve the same purpose as Nathan's, but with much less randomness and a free transformation into Umbreon, so that allows for much more flexibility (including what's essentially immediate access to any of Shiva's pokemon and possibly other group members' as well) (...)

That Ditto will always go to sleep when having transformed into a female Umbreon, and my intuition tells me that she/them wouldn't really enjoy to be seperated from her/their mate and Eevee-son or being asked to transform into anythingelse. They're still pretty wild and untamed (but just obedient with 1 Loyalty vs 1 Custom-Disobediance) and I wish to keep them small familiy together, so while the thoughts are good, it's unfortunately not a real option.

As for your comments on my mons...well, there are a lot of pokemon I'd like to train with, but there are two that I'd like to squeeze in if possible.

- Emolga: we're looking for Marco now, so that's the main justification for bringing him since that's the big reason he joined Nathan's party in the first place.  Encore and Nuzzle are great moves, so are Acrobatics and Electro Ball if he learns them.  Not worried about Rock types when at least half of Nathan's team has moves SE against them.

- Snivy: the other pokemon who joined to help with Ruins business.  Not as high priority as Emolga since we might not be dealing with the source of the Vines during this trip, though.  Might still be helpful to have in case we encounter the Vines/Tangrowth/Claydol, though.

- And then I'm also considering Solosis since she's basically the only dual screens user in the party atm, and I do want to use her a little more as well.

In that case I'd replace Grid with Emolga and put effort into them learning Electro Ball fast to put your huge Dext into good use in combo with Nuzzle. Encore is a nice trick that Raphael can use as well. Hehehe....

If Snivy wishes to be added, then I'd take them instead of Ditto, but me fears the advantage of doing so is relatively small compared to the disadvantage, not looking at in-chara reasons. I remember that this Sniva has lots of good moves including Coil, but your other 'Mon are already offensive enough that it feels like a good choice to add a versatile supporter like Ditto instead of the grassy snake.

Access to both screens sounds pretty good and useful, but if I struggle to find a 'Mon to replace with them in your team apart from maybe Ditto. I'd definitely advice to keep them with Nathan = not loan them to any other chara for various reasons though, you probably understand why.

No shame in asking to borrow stuff, particularly when we're about to go on a major group mission and are trying to optimize things for it.  If I do decide to trade it after all, I'll definitely let you know.

I think more specifically it's that Ditto always ends the day Transforming into an Umbreon, not that they're getting ready to sleep when they turn into one.  Ditto can always turn back into forms they took prior in the day without using an additional Transform slot.  Another thing to consider is that Umbreon and Ditto probably don't want to put Eevee in any danger, and one of them would prefer to stay with the young one (probably Umbreon most of the time) while the other fights off the danger (typically Ditto I imagine due to how powerful Transform is, like when we visited Ancestor Cave).  It's just a little hypothesizing about their behavior based on what little we've seen of them so far, but it's a place to start.  If Ditto knows it's helping to fight for the safety of its family, maybe it wouldn't mind being away from them for a short time so much.