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

[Iron]

@Iron, Fake Out its a priority move. In theory, it should be a move who would be go first and Flinch P-Bulbasaur.

That will save Gallade and Hypno some HP!

[Dragonstrike]

@Iron, FLASH was Disabled, so FLASH 2 has to be a different move/fail if it's Foe P-Bulba's.

[PhantomUnderYourDesk]

Huh, indeed - That probably means no blindness and accuracy loss for my two Pokemon, hooray! I'll edit the orders I have in mind a little then.

[Dragonstrike]

Soooo...here's another question, @Iron: why does Gallade have 9 Max HP when he (to my knowledge) has a base HP of 5 and 3 Vit?  Is Calm Mind somehow giving him +1 Vit instead of +1 Defense or something? I'm a little confused...

[Iron]

Soooo...here's another question, @Iron: why does Gallade have 9 Max HP when he (to my knowledge) has a base HP of 5 and 3 Vit?  Is Calm Mind somehow giving him +1 Vit instead of +1 Defense or something?  I'm a little confused...

I'm just bad at math.

[Lord Windos]

Soooo...here's another question, @Iron: why does Gallade have 9 Max HP when he (to my knowledge) has a base HP of 5 and 3 Vit?  Is Calm Mind somehow giving him +1 Vit instead of +1 Defense or something?  I'm a little confused...

I'm just bad at math.

Everyone makes mistakes, most of all DMs who have to do all the rolling and stat crunching themselves, so I don't think you are bad at math just for that mistake!

[Lord Windos]

Soooo...here's another question, @Iron: why does Gallade have 9 Max HP when he (to my knowledge) has a base HP of 5 and 3 Vit?  Is Calm Mind somehow giving him +1 Vit instead of +1 Defense or something?  I'm a little confused...

I'm just bad at math.

Everyone makes mistakes, most of all DMs who have to do all the rolling and stat crunching themselves, so I don't think you are bad at math just for that mistake!

[Dragonstrike]

Guess Iron's so used to everyone having 4+ Vit at this point that it's easy to forget Nathan doesn't?

Honestly, though, it's refreshing to not have to be super reliant on bulk. Particularly since I have a few pokemon capable of bolstering their defenses to make up for that.

[Lord Windos]

Guess Iron's so used to everyone having 4+ Vit at this point that it's easy to forget Nathan doesn't?

Honestly, though, it's refreshing to not have to be super reliant on bulk.  Particularly since I have a few pokemon capable of bolstering their defenses to make up for that.

As the saying goes: To each their own! High DEX is just dandy for you mate, but I personally went the route of high VIT because more HP AND Defense on EVERYTHING fits my preferences and playstyle of simply wading into combat and tearing stuff up (Or slowly grind away at others, as was often the case with Ventus). Having either high STR or a suit of tactics to back up such bulk is what really seals the deal, as you either outlast the opponent in wars of attrition or simply focus on attacking without worrying too much about returnfire. It also makes certain Items like Rocky Helmet or Life Orb more useful, and reduces the need to use/equip HP restoring Items on a given Pokémon.


Not to say that alt playstyles are bad, of course! In fact, I consider high DEX to be equal to having high VIT, if not BETTER, as DEX covers both Initative and almost every Move Roll in the gave + Evasion, all of which are vital in Combat or simply moving about. Coupled with high Fight and/or Survival you can still have high burst damage with Crits and avoiding damage entirely with a cool dodge. If you have enough points in Evasion and/or Fight + DEX, and know how many attacks an opponent can reliably make, you could simply just focus on Evading those attacks and then hammer home when they are wide open!


Its the main reason I didn't want to fight Nathan all that much after facing him twice, unless I resorted to underhanded/chea[ tactics or do something completely different (Which was Terra!) to face them. Fact is, fighting against a speedy character just plan SUCKS if they can either endlessly pepper you with attacks (that will more often than not Crit), Evade all of your attacks and then get some sly damage in, or both, as often the case will be. If you don't have High VIT and/or High DEX/Hit Dice to match off again them, or the right Moves for the occasion, and a player might as well either forfeit to save time, or start praying to the Dice Gods for them to get LUCKY!, and for them to get lucky. 

Similar things can be said for Hight VIT, however. If a character can shrug off enough damage that you need to rely on cherry tapping or wall breaking tactics, its not going to be such a rad time for the given player. The fact that High HP + even only Decent Defense = A Tank that can take on the World make it hard to fight against those 'mons without resorting to buffs, crippling them severely, or using unorthodox strats/Moves. If a given bulky mon has some form of reliably recovering their HP mid fight, then things just become an grind without high Burst damage, or making things more grindy for them than you and win an attrition war.

Of course, with the right kind of Moves and/or clever use of them, even High DEX/VIR builds can be upended, and designing the right team core(s) can overcome or face just about any challenge. Heck, going for an entirely/mostly non-Combat oriented build and just avoiding fighting in general is an swell idea, if you don't mind being left behind when Combat starts up doing your own thing, and picking up the slack elsewhere. Works out great for Phantom, since outside of battles she's mainly into Crafting nice and valuable Items, Tutoring good Moves for the rest of us in exchange for Favors, and is pretty much guaranteed to win over just about anyone/thing that is not adamantly predisposed to dislike her chara.


Point I'm trying to make is that in a game like our Pokerole, while their are obviously powerful Builds to go down, if you are clever or focused enough to create a character/team that works for what you want to accomplish with it, then everything is aces far as you and I are concerned! Everyone has to lean on something or prop themselves up with their own style in order to do their own thing, so their ain't any need to be judging!

[Dragonstrike]

And again, that's kinda something I'd like to address in my campaign in the future if at all possible.  As things stand right now, increasing Dex and/or Vit is possibly the best possible thing you could do to make your character much more able to hold their own in battle.  Arguably, I think fast tanks are quite possibly the worst possible thing you could face in our system (discounting fast, powerful tanks and plot deviced stuff), since they can tank/dodge your hits easily and fire back just as many hard to avoid hits as you can, if not more.  It makes pokemon with extremely high HP like Arbok and Gyarados infinitely scarier since they lose some of their major drawbacks that make them (somewhat) manageable (well, a super well trained one is probably still going to be super duper scary even in the base rules, so the point can be rendered rather moot, I guess...).

That's kinda why I want to try out using all the original accuracy rolls instead of using Dex and Fgt for everything, split the offensive and defensive stats into physical and special again, and try to separate HP from Defense.  Being good at (almost) everything is probably going to be a lot more difficult (definitely will be doable, but will require loooaaads of exp. Not that generalization in a game like this is a bad thing, per se, but...well, there's certainly a little less individuality in a way).  Gonna have to also probably scale exp earned accordingly since there'll be a bunch of extra things to pour exp into...including other things like Surprises and some stuff I can't talk about yet (and those will cost boatloads of exp by comparison to the basic stuff)

Just that alone is going to make my campaign very different from the current ones, even disregarding my other plans for the setting, basic plot, etc.  I think it could be a nice change of pace, tbh.

Does that all make sense?