11-22-2016, 12:01 PM
Personally I've never taken gym leaders (or necessarily E4) to be fighting at full power. In the stories I write, Pokemon Master is an actual title and gives its holder some responsibility to respond to crises, so all of the leaders in the League system assess the trainers who come to challenge them and award badges based on whether they feel the trainer is progressing as they should be (although some GLs do get a little more competitive, but that's their prerogative). This would also be why they don't use six pokemon; they're presenting trainers with specific situations to assess how they respond.
