[Meta Thread] Dragonstrike's Pokerole Test Game: Mount Coronet Mystery

[Dragonstrike]

Hello, and welcome to the meta thread for my test game/prologue for my (eventually) upcoming Pokerole campaign!  If you're here, that probably means you're either one of my players or just want to read along to see what crazy stuff I've got cooked up!  Well, as a brief primer/reminder, here's the story!

The Story

Strange things are afoot at Mt. Coronet as of late.  Traversing the paths that cut through the mountain typically only takes about 2 hours, but recently, travelers have been claiming they've been taking anywhere from 3-18 hours to get through them!  There have also been reports of rare and powerful pokemon not native to the mountain showing up in larger numbers!  Beasts such as aggressive Aerodactyl, massive Torterra, mischievous Gengar, and many more have been sighted, and the populations of Hearthome City, Oreburgh City, Eterna City, and Celestic Town have started to get a little nervous about it.  Rumors of what might be happening abound, and they're all wildly different from each other, but they all agree on one thing: it's becoming very clear that something strange is going on...

Professor Rowan has decided that this matter warrants further investigation, and has recruited several talented trainers to help look into it!  The trip to the mountain will likely be dangerous, so the Professor of Pokemon Evolution has primarily been looking for trainers with a lot of raw talent and skills that may be helpful while exploring the mountain's caves and peak.

Professor Rowan has made efforts to keep this job a secret, so as not to cause even more unrest among the Sinnoh region's population.  After a week of preparing for the expedition and a second week of looking for promising trainers to join it, he's asked all who will be involved to meet him in Snowpoint City, where this story will begin...



Note: For reference, this game takes place in a separate universe from the ones that feature the Skull Ruins and Celadon City campaigns.  As such, that means the timeline is going to differ slightly.  Many of the events of both the Skull Ruins and Celadon City campaigns are canon in this universe, but are somewhat altered at my discretion so that they mesh together with each other and the story I have planned a lot better.  The events of this test game are set about a year after the events of Skull Ruins, and a little over 10 years after the events of Celadon City.  If questions about past events are relevant, I shall answer them, but don't worry about them too much.  The story I have planned is unrelated to the stories of the other campaigns.

The Rules

The first thing I need to say is that we'll be using the 1.2.5 version of the Pokerole rulebook.  If you need to download that version, you can get it here.  (Don't worry if it says it's the download for v1.2.  The button should start a download for v1.2.5)

A good portion of the rules from the Skull Ruins Campaign are going to carry over.  Those can be found here.  Iron's covered most of the rules fairly well, so definitely give this post a read to get a grasp of some of the basic ideas if you need to.

Some of the rules from the Celadon campaign are also carrying over.  Those can be found here.  It is a very different campaign by nature, however, so expect many of those rules to be exclusive to that campaign.

However, there are definitely some rules that are not carrying over, or are changing due to the nature of this campaign.  So, let me list what some my game's rules are going to be.

Dice

As with the other two campaigns, all dice will be rolled by the GM.  If you're new to Pokerole, here's how rolling the dice works:

- Most significant actions will require a pool of dice to be rolled.  How many dice are in that pool are determined by what action you are trying to perform, how many actions you're trying to perform, and what Attributes, Skills, and Specialties are related to those actions.

- A 4, 5, or 6 is a success, and a 1, 2, or 3 is a non-success.  Two (1) results is a -1 success.  For most tasks, you only need a single success for the action to succeed, though more complex tasks might need more successes at GM discretion.  And generally, getting more successes means you do a better job of succeeding as well.

- If I'm not able to roll physical dice, I will roll digital ones.

Attributes and Other Stats

- Separate Stats: Unlike in the other campaigns that have been run on this forum so far, pokemon and trainers will have separate stats from each other in this game, as per the original rules.  That means that making the pokemon or trainer you desire to have will take more total exp, but they'll ultimately be a unique individual.  No two people or pokemon are the same, after all!  It also makes the character sheets more complicated, but eh.

- The Contest Skill and the Social Attributes: I'm also readding the Contest Skill and all the Social Attributes, partially so we can use all of the original accuracy rolls in the book instead of replacing almost everything with Dexterity + Fight + [Insert Specialty Here].  Contest is the proper Skill for Specialties such as Intimidate, Perform, and Etiquette, and the Social Attributes are involved in rolls linked to social situations and actions.  Rolls involving Social Attributes can't be Evaded due to the basic nature of their action, which is an important thing to note.  Oh, and Social Attributes increase whenever their corresponding Attribute does, so you never have to spend exp on them.

- Limitation on Specialties: Also per the book's original rules, Specialties cannot be increased to a value higher than their corresponding Skill.  If you're not good at Fighting, then you're not going to be able to specialize very well in actions that involve it, such as Throwing, Brawling, and Clashing.

- Cost of New Skills: New Skills (specifically, increasing them from 0 to 1) only cost 6 exp again instead of 8, as per the book rules.  Increasing them from 1 to 2 and so on still costs 8 times the current level amount of exp as normal.

- Wiki Movesets: The pokemon in this game will use their Gen 7 learnsets, including all TM, Tutor, and Egg moves.  As far as 0 exp moves go, they will generally follow the ones listed in the 1.2.5 book with the exception of moves the pokemon learns upon evolution in Gen 7.  Bulbapedia is my main reference for movesets.  Exceptions may be made for pokemon that have wildly different level up moves in the book (like Delibird and Volcarona), however.

Mechanical Changes and Notes

- Statuses: As per the original rules, Statuses of all kinds may be stacked with each other.  Burn won't reduce Strength, either.

- Multi-Action Accuracy Bonuses and Penalties: The Single Action +2 Accuracy Bonus is back once more!  However, the multi-action penalty is being changed to the one in the 1.2.5 version of the book.  First action's accuracy penalty is -2, second's is -4, third's is -6, and so on.  You still have to say how many actions you're using before starting the Round, so no conditional number of actions.  If you run out of accuracy dice, one of two things happens:
   > The action fails and nothing happens.  No major penalties.  The character simply doesn't have enough energy to attempt the action during this Round.
   > A Luck Die is rolled.  This is a mechanic that the other campaigns haven't used much, but I expect this might come up more in this campaign.  If you intentionally risk pushing your dice pool low enough that inflicting a Pain Penalty could reduce your dice pool to 0, or if the pokemon is desperately fighting back for one reason or another (whether on command or out of desperation), one of these infamous dice could end up being rolled in place of an action straight up failing.  You can keep fighting and pushing your luck in this case, but the consequences for (rather likely) failure can range from 'inconvenient' to 'life threatening', depending on the situation.  Other conditions that may trigger a Luck Die being rolled at GM discretion could also come up.  These are just a few examples.

This means that there's less distinction between the accuracy rolls of early actions for long action chains (unlike in the Skull Ruins system), but it should help increase the viability of lower accuracy moves in long action chains, help make critical hits just a little more common, and also have other varying impacts on how a Round progresses.  But you need to plan your orders carefully, as the punishments for pushing yourself too hard can potentially be severe.

- Move Usage Limitations: You can only use each move a pokemon knows once per Round.  Basic maneuvers such as Strike and Evade are not moves, and thus can be used multiple times per Round.  But Fire Blast, Horn Drill, Tackle, Spore, etc?  Only once each Round.  My hope is that this will help encourage move diversity, and it increases the value of Evasion and Clash.  Oh yeah, Clash!

- Clash: A specialty that was added in the 1.2 version of the rulebook, this is an alternative to Evasion for pokemon with moderate to high Defenses and Offenses but low Dexterity.  Some pokemon just aren't suited to nimbly dodging attacks, and have a much easier time with deflecting the majority of the damage away from them with powerful attacks of their own.  Torterra, for example.  Using a Clash action counts toward the once per Round limit on moves, however, as you have to use a move as a part of the Clash.  Generally, a Clash needs to make some logical sense to succeed as well.  Some moves may be impossible to Clash with other moves.  As long as the explanations for a Clash seem reasonable at my discretion, though, I'll allow them.  I'll try to not be too restrictive on them, either, as the Specialty is already at a disadvantage compared to Evade since it doesn't fully nullify all damage taken guaranteed.

- Throw: Your pokeballs won't just all automatically make contact with wild pokemon in this game.  If your trainer wants to throw a Pokeball in the middle of a battle, I'll roll Dexterity + Fight + Throw to see if you actually hit your target with the projectile.  If the roll scores 5+ successes, it results in a Critical Capture, increasing the pokeball's Seal Strength by 2 for that throw.  Outside of battle, no roll is necessary, but they can't score Critical Captures.  Some wild pokemon may try to evade a thrown pokeball as well, though most will focus on any battles that could cause them more immediate problems instead.

- Physical-Special Split: I'm reintroducing the Special Attribute (which corresponds to Sp. Attack) and separating Vitality into three different stats: Health (which increases HP.  The maximum value it can reach typically corresponds with Vitality as of right now, but exceptions for pokemon with massively skewed HP stats in the games like Blissey and Shuckle might be made at GM discretion), Defense (which corresponds with Vitality, as normal), and Insight (which now also serves as your Sp. Defense stat in addition to the other functions it has).  I felt that having all three defensive stats lumped into one was a bit much, as it made it far too easy to make many pokemon much bulkier than they probably should be.  Onix and Steelix aren't going to be shrugging off Hydro Pumps as if they were almost nothing now since their Sp. Def is now tied to their lower Insight instead of their incredibly high Vitality, and Gallade aren't going to be doing as much damage with Psychic as they can with Psycho Cut, either.

- Number of Targets: When using Spread move such as Electroweb, Icy Wind, or Hyper Voice, the maximum number of targets they can have is equal to the pokemon's Special stat.  This is a rule in the book that I'm reimplementing along with the stat.

- Move Functions: The way that some of the moves work in the book don't make a lot of sense to me.  As such, I'm likely to change some them at my discretion to be more like the games' iterations.  Some big examples are Assurance (which will work more like Brine than Revenge) and Razor Shell (which will have a 5 D6 chance to lower Defense by 1 instead of 1 D6).  Hopefully that better appeals to those of us who know the Pokemon Games well.

- Misc. Type Functions: Remember how the book says Grass types are immune to Sleep?  Well, they aren't in the games.  Grass types are immune to Powder and Spore type moves and effects, which isn't quite the same.  It's also the rule I'll be using.  Another one I'll be using is that Toxic will never miss when used by Poison types.  And another two are Dark types are immune to Prankster boosted moves and Ghosts are immune to being Blocked.  There may be other mechanical differences from the games that I'll be applying.

- Accuracy Rolls: As stated previously, the plan is to try out using all the original accuracy rolls in this game.  That means Strength, Special, Contest, Social Attributes...all of it can potentially be used in Accuracy rolls.  Anything that uses Will for its accuracy has a base dice pool equivalent to the user's current Will Score.

- Levels: As a pokemon grows, so does its Level!  Another mechanic I'm reintroducing since the stats are being separated.  Whenever a pokemon's Attributes and Skills increase or it learns a new move by spending exp, its level increases!  This affects the damage of moves like Psywave and Seismic Toss, and will hopefully help me with scaling the difficulty of encounters a little (though Level isn't the only factor in an encounter's difficulty for obvious reasons).

- Initiative: As I was reading through the 1.2.5 book, I noticed that Alert is also factored into a character's Initiative rolls!  Initiative bonuses are determined with Dex + Survival + Alert in this game.  The only other change here is that initiatives are rerolled every time a pokemon leaves and reenters battle.  Another by the book change.

- Abilities: Abilities are going to mostly follow what's listed in the book with very few changes to them, if any, unlike in the Celadon City campaign.  Hidden Abilities are going to roughly follow what they are in the games, but Surprises can give pokemon access to Abilities they normally can't have or add effects to their existing Abilities.  The big change here is that pokemon are not restricted to a single Ability.  At the start of each day, they can pick the Ability that they're going to use for that day from all of the ones they currently have access to, Hidden Abilities and Surprise Abilities included.  They can only use one Ability at a time unless they have a Surprise that lets them use multiple ones simultaneously, however.

- Lethal Moves: Lethality is going to follow much the same model as the Skull Ruins campaign.  If you want to inflict a Burn 2 with Flamethrower or a Burn 3 with Fire Blast, don't hold hold back on the move's lethality!  Moves cannot be made more Lethal than they already are, unlike in the Celadon City Campaign.

- Lethal Damage: Lethal damage will work similarly to how it does in Skull Ruins.  Healing 2 or more HP can also be converted into healing 1 Lethal Damage per 2 HP like in Celadon City Vandals.

- Gaining Will: You can now spend EXP equivalent to 3 times the current Will Score to gain a Will Point manually.  Useful when you want to stockpile Will and have some spare EXP to spend.

- Critical Hits: If an Evasion or Clash reduces the number of successes of what would be a Critical Hit to less than 5 successes, the resulting attack will no longer be a critical hit (again, this should hopefully make Evasion and Clash more valuable).  In addition, if a Critical Hit is scored, the extra 2 damage dice are applied after the standard Defense calculations (making the minimum number of damage Dice for that attack 3) instead of before.  Critical Hits are meant to reflect that you've found a gap in the target's defenses, and no defense is perfect unless it's under an effect that completely nullifies Critical Hits.

- Overtraining: As the stats have been split, that means that this mechanic from the book is back!  Some pokemon have Attributes that have a lower maximum after they evolve, such as Onix and Scythers' Dexterity after evolving into Steelix and Scizor respectively.  If you increase their attribute to a value higher than what their evolution can possibly have, then the Attribute remains at the value that it was before evolution, giving the pokemon a stat higher than it would normally have.  Other Limit Breaking methods are planned to appear later on in my main game as well.

- Stat Increase Stacking: stat boosts from items will stack with ones from both moves and Abilities.  The highest one in each category will still be the one that applies for that category, however.

- Natures: This isn't actually a mechanical thing, but more relevant to the roleplaying side of things.  As an example, if I'm not sure what kind of personality a random wild pokemon might have, I may roll to randomly decide its nature and figure out their personality that way.  They may be reintroduced in some form, but by no means do I intend to nitpick about using them, as they don't affect much of anything from a mechanical standpoint.

- Surprises: They're still present as well, but exp costs for buying surprises may differ from what they were in Skull Ruins and Celadon City.

- Gaining Experience: As I am reintroducing the Level system, that means I can use it as a basis to figure out how much experience an encounter is worth.  Particularly tough individuals, heroic actions, dangerous situations, and more may also increase the amount of experience you gain from the encounter.  Experience will also usually be split as equally as possible between pokemon that participated in the battle (another by the book rule), though I may still split it differently at my discretion.

- Healing Moves: For the time being, I'm going to partially reapply a rule in the book and make moves that grant a Basic or Complete Heal cost 1 Will Point to use.  The Will Point is spent upon the move being successfully used.

- Will and HP Recovery: In light of the above rule being reimplemented, all characters regain 1 Will Point at the start of each day.  In addition, natural HP recovery will be as follows: if a character is damaged at the end of an encounter and is not fully healed, they will recover 1 HP at the end of both encounters 2 and 3 for the day.  They will also naturally recover 5 HP overnight.  I might need to apply some GM discretion to the HP healing, and it might need to be altered later, but that rough model that's based on the system used in Skull Ruins should hopefully be a good place to start.

- Various Hold Item Rules: Generally, if an item's effects can only be activated during battle in the games, the same will apply in this Pokerole game as well.  Items such as Oran and Sitrus Berries which can be used by the trainer on a pokemon outside of battle in the games can be used in that manner as normal.  Speaking of berries, though, I may also apply HP thresholds to their usage in the future, though I haven't finalized that decision yet.

Can I join?

Unfortunately, joining this test game is by invitation only, as I wanted to go through it with players who are already at least a little familiar with the Pokerole system.

However, I'll be running my main game at some point after the Skull Ruins campaign is finished, and depending on how many players I have participating, there might be open player slots for that one.

Response Times

I'd like for this test game to not drag on for too long, so I'd like to remind my players to check in daily at a minimum.  If we're going to complete this test game before or a little after Skull Ruins ends, active participation is going to be a necessity.  If you need me to put your character on autopilot because you're too busy irl, let me know.

I'll do my best to respond to posts whenever I have the time.  If I can't respond in a timely manner on a particular day, I will do my best to let everyone know at the soonest opportunity if possible.

As you can probably tell from the sheer amount of changes, this campaign is going to play rather differently from the prior ones.  I'm not sure how well all of this might work, but that's what this test game is for: to help me iron out the kinks in the rules so I can try to make my main campaign as enjoyable as I can.  I can't do that alone, though, for obvious reasons, which is whyI have some wonderful players joining me for this adventure (and hopefully the next one as well).

The Beginning

@Lord Windos, @Mikaruge108, and @Spiritmon, you may all introduce your characters now if you wish (if there are secrets you wish to keep for the time being, you don't have to reveal your characters' entire backstories if you don't wish to).  After everyone arrived in Snowpoint, they would have had about a day to get to know each other (and each others' pokemon) before the story truly begins.  If you wish to do any introductions IC, I may post the Game Thread before the 9th specifically for that.

I believe I covered most of the basic information.  If anyone has any questions, let me know!  I am planning to officially start the test game/prologue on Sunday June 9th, 2019, though I may start it sooner or later depending on irl stuff and if I feel like I've finished my preparations.

EDIT: Started the game early since I finished the majority of my preparations!  Just for the heck of it, I'll leave a (completely unnecessary) note saying we started on Thursday, June 6th, 2019.  It was rather late at night, though, so it's more like we started on Friday, June 7th, tbh.