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

[Dragonstrike]

Spoiler

Wow, yeah, that IS important to note. Nathan has 12 Will Power right now, so he should be able to easily fuel the cost of her 'second' Ability!

Yeap, but hey, it's still a good idea, seeing as Calam doesn't have much in the way of Ranged Attacks or Spread Moves (Razor Wind is there, but it's a Charge Move, so....). It's certainly something to look forward in the future, I think.

Hm....so depending on what Form it's in at the start of battle, we'll have to change how we attack it accordingly.

D-D probably will have some form of resistant to The Sword's Attacks and could null even SE Damage, so indirect tactics/Moves would have to be used to either break past it or force it out of that form (Like Rage Powder or Taunt), while D-N will probably require heavy usage of The Shield's Anti-Brainwashing Effects + The Halbuk switch the protection around to avoid it 'turning' our allies on us. That, and in that form it could be able to use Items/Those psuedo Capture Devices, so Taunt, Magic Room, and/or Embargo (We have anyone that knows it, or can learn it?) might be necessary to counter that nasty trick of it's.

D-S will be focused on blitzkrieg assault and dodging our attacks, so we either need to find some way to use that against it, force it into Attacking one Target so that it can't immediately Evade, OR use Attacks that are really hard to dodge (Like AoE, Field Moves, Contest Moves, or Buff). D-A, meanwhile, should both be the easiest AND hardest to deal with, as it's likely not going to resort to any tricks to dodge/avoid us Damaging it, but the trade-off is that it will be trying its damndest to nuke us all into oblivion. Shield Damage Protection on priority targets would be crucial at that point, me thinks, or swarming it with so many Targets that is can't take care all of them before it gets wailed on.

There's also the assistance we'll be receiving from Mespirt and the League too, and perhaps other allies if we can manage to wrangle them into our group. No telling how their aid will influence the battle, really. Also, if DMG is any indication, any debuffs that manage to stick on it might fade away after a Round, and Field Buffs like Tailwind/Lucky Chant could be aborted at the end of a Round.

Finally (For now), we have to worry about it's Learnset. It has Recover in all forms, so it could just end up Recovering off any Damage we deal to it, and it has Snatch in all forms but Attack to steal away any buffs we have to benefit itself. We can mitigate this to a degree, but if it gets either off at the wrong time....game over! Deoxys Attack has access to Taunt itself and SUPERPOWER, so it could majorly disable some of our Support Mons/OHKO and/or Insta Kill our Dark types while it's blitzing us down. Defense Mode has Spikes and Counter Moves, the former of which could be empowered to do PD Damage and therefore make ANY of its attacks OHKO and/or Insta Death, and the Counter Moves used against a Sword Boosted Mon......welp, that's one way of dealing with a pest permanently. Then we have Psycho Boost, an Attack ALL modes of Deoxys has. Given it's a Signature Attack of its and Iron's propensity of giving Legends all SORTS of Plot Devices, it's highly like that particular Move is going to be SO much nastier than it is in game (If you can believe that). The Shield might not even be able to fully defend against it, so we have to think of something to counter it beyond fielding Dark Types or using Out of Bound Moves to dodge it (Or trying for a Crit Evasion, which only Nathan could really do, given his insane DEX and Evasion scores).

....If they are not, then Terra won't invite Nathan onto the project/fire him immediately. He's pragmatic enough to empower Arete even if they/she won't like the processes, but he knows Nathan's stance on Pokemon rights (Which he shares, for the most part) and wouldn't subject them to such a moral delimea (or invite their scathing criticism on himself) and take the full moral responsibility himself.

Let's consider some basic Attribute traits and matchups again.
Strength: how hard you hit
Vitality: Bulk
Dexterity: Speed
Insight: reading situations/resisting statuses

Raw Strength is usually countered in one of two ways:
- dodging attacks (high Dex)
- tanking attacks (high Defense)

Strong Defense is usually countered by:
- striking hard (high Strength)
- striking many times (high Dex)

High speed is countered by either:
- taking low power hits effortlessly (high Defense)
- landing a few strong blows that are harder to Evade instead of many weaker ones with low accuracy (high Strength)

Insight doesn't usually contribute much to battles, infortunately, but you could argue that higher Insight would better help with judging what the correct course of action may be, and might also encourage more complex strategies.

Those are all one to one Attribute comparisons, of course.  Combinations of high stats makes everything a bit more of a grey area.  Still, depending on what Insight counters, that may help determine the rest.

Another fact to consider is that at minimum, these Deoxys Clones will likely have 40+ HP. If they can take more hits than a Steelix, a pokemon that has 35-40 HP in the wild (30 base, 5-10 Vit), then we can reasonably expect those things to take just as much of a beating.

Note on Arete: humane practices are probably different as far as a Genesect is concerned, given the species's tendency to adapt and change due to natural means.