As with the other campaigns on this forum, all dice will be rolled by the GM in the interest of fairness.  If I'm unable to roll physical dice, I'll roll digital ones online.

If you're new to Pokerole, here's how rolling the dice works:

- Most significant actions will require a pool of six sided dice to be rolled.  How many dice are in that pool is 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.

- Dice can be subtracted from your pool by move effects, statuses, or even just taking too much damage.  If your dice pool for an action would become 0 or less, then the action will either fail automatically or a Luck Die will be rolled instead at the GM's discretion.

- 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.

Generally, when I post the results of dice rolls, they'll look something like this:

Strength Check
(5)(2)(3) 1 success


These are dice from one of the official Pokemon TCG Elite Trainer Boxes.  I'll probably be rolling a lot of these.

These stats are the core of the game, and are what make each pokemon unique compared to other species.  These stats define what the character is good (or even excellent) at doing.

The Six Attributes
Health, Strength, Special, Dexterity, Defense, and Insight

There's six Attributes in my game, just like how there's six stats in the actual Pokemon games themselves.  This differs a little from the base rules, so I'll be detailing the differences here.
- Strength, Special, and Dexterity work exactly like the book says they do.  Strength corresponds to Attack, Special to Special Attack, and Dexterity to Speed.

- Health (HP) and Defense (Defense, obviously) both correspond to Vitality in the book, but are two separate stats instead of one in this game.  Both of them have minimum and maximum values equal to the pokemon's listed Vitality stat in the corebook.  There are cases where I may make special exceptions, however.  Blissey is one of those possible exceptions, given their gargantuan HP stat is not represented very well in Pokerole's base rules at all.

- Insight corresponds to Special Defense, and is also partially related to your character's observational skills.  In this game, if a character is hit by a Special Attack, the maximum damage of the move will be reduced by this stat instead of Defense.  This is another departure from the base rules, but it should be easy enough to understand for anyone who's played the Pokemon games before.

As such, each pokemon species should be decent at performing well in the areas they usually do in the games.  However, Attributes aren't the only stats that determine how well a character performs and what they excel at doing...

Every character has the same potential for leveling these various stats, and the maximum and minimum values are identical for everyone.  These are the things that can be learned, rather than them being someone's innate potential, and that can be used to help shore up certain weak points, make strengths more effective, or even do things that are entirely unexpected!  This is where most of the game's stat customization happens.

The Four Skills
Fight, Survival, Knowledge, and Contest

Each Skill covers a different area, and as such are used in different kinds of rolls.  Each one also determines how skilled you are in each particular field.

The Countless Specialties
Specialties are extensions of Skills, and cover a wide range of categories.  They're the cheapest stat to level up with the exp you've earned, but they cannot exceed the value of their corresponding Skill.  If you aren't very good at Fighting, then you're probably not very good at Brawling or using Weapons either.

Social Attributes are used for a fair few Accuracy rolls (such as for Growl, which can use Tough or Cute), but they also play a large role in various social interactions.  Whether you're trying to fit in with or leave a lasting impression on the townsfolk, persuade someone your idea is good or strike a bargain with Kecleon Wares to get a lower price on an item, how well that works out for you will usually be dependent on a roll involving a Social Attribute, the Contest Skill, and a Specialty related to the Contest Skill.

Generally, Social Rolls will show up when you're attempting to do a significant social interaction of some sort with one or more NPCs, but it's something to keep in mind since previous games on this forum didn't use the Social Attributes at all.

Accuracy Rolls involving a Social Attribute also have a special rule: due to the Social nature of the moves using them, they cannot be Evaded.  This makes them particularly useful for weakening tough opponents!


Everyone is different, and how they interact with others and react to their surroundings will vary wildly.  This classroom is in absolute chaos, no?

Pokedex (Page 83 of the corebook)
Every Pokemon from Gen 1-7 has stats in the corebook.  If you need information on a pokemon not in the corebook, ask the GM.

Move Listings (Page 298 of the corebook)
Information on every move from Gen 1-7, not including Plot Deviced moves.  Make sure to read the beginning of this section so you have an idea of what all the icons in the book mean.  If you need information on a move not in the corebook, ask the GM.

Ability Listings (Page 371 of the corebook)
Information on every Ability from Gen 1-7, not including Plot Deviced Abilities.  If you need information on an ability not in the corebook, ask the GM.

Recruiting Pokemon
After your characters have settled into living life as a pokemon, they may be presented with opportunities to convince NPC pokemon to join their group.  Generally, this is resolved with a skill check opposing the NPC's Will score.  The skill check that your character has to make depends on how they're trying to recruit the pokemon, though.  Regardless of the method, it will usually involve one of the character's Social Attributes, the Contest stat, and one of the Contest Specialties.  Whether you're friendly and inviting or tough and demanding, there's many different ways to recruit pokemon when the opportunity presents itself.

If an NPC is successfully recruited, the GM will keep track of their stats and any experience and items they gain.  And on that note, depending on how you persuade the NPC to join your group, they may not lose any happiness or loyalty upon joining, either!

NPC pokemon will grow stronger on their own, but players can potantially influence an NPC's growth a little by interacting with them (such as by helping them train or giving them advice).


So many friends, so little time!

Surprises
The Surprise system used in the other games will be present.  However, it is not replacing the Overtraining mechanic (Page 71 of the corebook).

A Surprise can be anything from a Shiny pokemon to a simple increase in a stat's maximum value.  Later in the game, you'll be able to spend large amounts of exp to give your player characters Surprises as well and make them truly unique.

Three stats define how pokemon-like and human-like your character is in this game: Logic, Instinct, and Primal.

These stats are a big, big deal for your human character turned pokemon.  Logic is related to your human memories, Instinct is related to your abilities as a pokemon, and Primal is the true beast within. 

- High Logic scores allow your character to recall more of their human life and craft more and more complex tools.  Simply put, you become more and more human-like the higher this score gets!  However, if this stat ever becomes 0, you may have to create a new character since they won't be able to remember that they were human in the first place.  It may be possible to help someone who's forgotten they were human remember who they are if they haven't completely become a feral pokemon, but it'll likely be a long, difficult process...

- High Instinct allows your character to use more of their pokemon species's move without having to spend exp to learn them.  You can still spend exp to permanently learn a move regardless of what your current Instinct stat value is.  In general, though, the better this stat is, the stronger you've become as a pokemon.

- And high Primal...well, the higher your primal is, the closer you are to becoming a feral pokemon, and the larger the penalties become for fainting.  It goes without saying, but try not to faint too often.

- Humans turned into pokemon have to balance their Logic and Instinct and avoid losing themselves to the call of their Primal instincts.  If they faint while their Primal score is 5, then the feral pokemon within takes over completely.  In the event that happens, you'll likely have to create a new character.

- Increasing Logic decreases Instinct, and whenever Primal increases, Logic decreases.  It's possible to be both Logical and Instinctual, but you have to work really hard at it!

- You might receive or lose points in any of the 3 stats at GM discretion depending on your role playing, and points awarded or taken away in this manner might not affect the other stats at GM discretion.  You can also spend experience if you want to manually increase or decrease the three stats (though it costs 50 exp per point added/removed).

If there are currently available spots for new players (see the above Current Players list or talk to me, the GM), then this is how you'll go about creating a character to play as so you can join us!

As this is a Mystery Dungeon campaign, Character Creation is VERY different from a standard campaign by virtue of your character being a pokemon.  As a result, a couple changes to what information needs to be filled out are required.  Here's a few steps to follow for character creation:

Step 0: Ask the GM if you can join the game in a Private Message.  This is a very important step.  Please don't skip it. 

Step 1: Create your character's human personality and backstory.  Refer to Page 18 of the 1.2.5 Corebook for the relevant questions for creating a human character's personality and backstory for this PMD style game.

Step 2: Pick a pokemon with 3 base HP that is able to evolve and fits the character's personality.  Your character will become that pokemon in the game.  You can check a pokemon's base HP in the corebook's pokedex on Page 83.  You can also choose to play as pokemon that fit the general criteria that aren't in the corebook (such as ones from Gen 8 or Delta Species), but you'll have to discuss that with the GM if you wish to do so.

Step 3: Discuss the character's backstory and pokemon choice with the GM.  This is an important step since elements from the character's backstory may appear in the game, and the GM may have additional information regarding the pokemon they're becoming (such as additional level up moves or the creation of a custom pokemon).  The GM will also give you a list of Level Up moves to refer to later in the character creation process and during the game itself (this particular step is also very important).

Step 4: Make a copy of the character sheet, which you can find here, and send the GM (me) a link with edit permissions in a PM via the Forums or Discord.  Once you've made a copy of it and sent me that link, then you can start editing it.

Step 5: Determine what your starting Attribute values are and fill them in on the character sheet.  Your starting Attributes and the initial limits on them are determined by what Pokemon Species your character starts as.  Check the corebook's pokedex (which starts on Page 83) to determine what they are.  If the pokemon is not in the corebook (due to being from Uranium, Gen 8, etc.) discuss it with the GM.

Step 6: Determine what your character's Social Attribute values are.  They should all start out equal to their equivalent Attributes' values, with the exception of one Social Attribute of your choosing that fits your character's personality.  That SA you choose gets a permanent +1 bonus.

Step 7: You get 3 free points to distribute to your Skills how you see fit at the start of the game.  Dump all three into one Skill, or spread them between 2 or 3 Skills instead.  The choice is yours.

Step 8: Adjust your character's Level according to how you distributed your free Skill Points.  One Point each in three different Skills is a starting level of 4 (1+1+1+1=4), 2 Points in one Skill and 1 in a second starts you at Level 5 (1+1+2+1=5), and all three points in one Skill starts your character at Level 7 (1+1+2+3=7).

Step 9: Add 1 point to either Logic OR Instinct so that it has a starting value of 2 instead of 1.  Pick only one.  Higher Logic means you remember more of your human life, higher Instinct means you're able to use more Pokemon Moves without having to spend exp to learn them.

Step 10: Determine which moves your character is able to use, find them in the book (or ask the GM for details on the move if it isn't in the book), and write them down on the character sheet in the relevant tabs.  If you have 1 Instinct, you can initially only use moves that cost 0 exp.  If you have 2 Instinct, you can use moves that cost 10 exp or less for the pokemon species your character is.

Step 11: Follow any additional instructions the GM gives you.  The prior 10 steps are just for creating the base stats for the character.  If I have other information for you to add to the character sheet, it's likely so that you're character will be comparable to the existing players'.

And once that's finished, you should be ready to play!  The GM will tag you in a post in the Game Thread when it's time to introduce your character in game!


Welcome to the world of pokemon!  ...literally!

This being the world of Mystery Dungeon, there's a whole boatload of new items, most of which aren't in the world of pokemon trainers.  You can find a list of some commonly used healing and food items in the character sheet's Storage tab (which will be important in the game later on), but here's a few examples of some of them:

- You'll be using Oran Berries instead of Potions, Tiny Reviver Seeds instead of Revives, all sorts of strange and wondrous orbs and apparel that would normally be mundane objects with no special powers...the list is rather large.  Expect items to be a big part of your adventures, and for me to detail what new items that aren't listed in the book do when you discover them!  Good note taking is highly advised!

- Your inventory space when going on adventures is also limited, unlike in the prior campaigns run on these forums.  You'll need to find, earn, create, or purchase larger bags and other storage containers if you wish to carry more stuff.


A Wonder Orb, an item that holds one of a great many strange and powerful effects.



Food Items

It isn't a Mystery Dungeon game without a Hunger system of some sort!  Well, it can happen, but Gates to Infinity ended up being a lot easier without that mechanic.  Regardless, there will be a need to eat in this game!

- Apples are a food source, not a currency.  Expect to go hungry if you don't bring food on your adventures.  And if that happens, expect that to negatively affect your performance in battle, too!  Fortunately, standard apples are sufficient for short trips, but you'll need either a lot of them or more filling foods if you're expecting to go on longer adventures!

- Every pokemon can eat Apples, but not all food is fruit!  There's more food than you might expect in the PMD universe, including some that might seem a little out of place at first glance.  Apples just happen to be the most common food source.

The namesake of the series, Mystery Dungeons are filled with twists and turns and all sorts of surprises.  Not even I know what you'll find in them 100% of the time!

There are two types of Mystery Dungeons in this campaign: pre-generated and random.

- Pre-generated dungeons are created beforehand by me.  Usually, these dungeons are going to be very important whenever they pop up.  They could be made of preset tiles, or they might be a flowchart styled dungeon!

- Random dungeons, however, are another beast entirely.  I have a physical deck of cards with basic dungeon layouts printed on them (courtesy of the MD Module), and I'll draw from it to determine what the next room is, and roll some dice to determine if you encounter anything in rooms as you enter them.  It wouldn't be a Mystery Dungeon game without an element of random map generation, right?

- Generally, when you're exploring dungeons made from the tiles, I'll be providing and editing a Google Sheets doc that you can check to see a basic map of the dungeon at any time.

- To speed up the pace of the game, every room in a random dungeon will have a roll for a potential event.  This differs from the base rules in the MD Module, but I feel it's a necessary change for the game to flow better on the forums.  An event every other tile would feel too slow and drag the game out unnecessarily.  There's still a chance for nothing to happen on any given tile, of course, but the increased event frequency should help keep things more exciting!


It's not a Pokerole Mystery Dungeon, but it's just as filled with random layouts, traps, wild encounters, and other miscellaneous events.  Be prepared for anything.

Encounters are not as large of an issue in a Mystery Dungeon based system as they are in a standard Pokemon Trainer styled one.  Everyone should be working together as a team, ideally, so there won't be a large need to determine who gets dibs on what besides the item loot (which is similar to what happens in Dungeons and Dragons and the like).

However, for some portions of this game, I'll still be using the encounter system we've set up.  There may be times when there are many things that can be investigated or dealt with simultaneously and separately, and those are the kinds of situations that would warrant the use of the encounter system that Iron devised.

As an example, maybe you need to search a house for clues or evidence.  I could list various points of interest as separate 'encounters' that can be resolved simultaneously, like so:

1. Bedroom
A straw bed, a nightstand, and a large rug are this room's most notable features.

2. Storeroom 
No telling what might be in here unless you go open the door and look!

3. Garden
Is made up of flowers of many different colors.

4. Downstairs
Stairs that lead to the basement.  It's pitch black down there.

By contrast, if the whole group gets attacked by a swarm of pokemon while traveling through a Mystery Dungeon, everyone's likely going to be involved, alleviating the need for separate encounters until the battle is finished.

When and where the Encounter system will be used is up to GM discretion, but the aim is for it to be utilized whenever it would make sense to mostly/entirely separate individual encounters from each other mechanically.

This does, however, mean that there won't be a static three encounters per day like there are in prior games on this forum.  That doesn't change the fact that the GM will notify everyone when a new day has dawned, though!

Please read this whole section in the book if you aren't familiar with how Pokerole's combat works already.

Battles are much the same as in the previous campaigns.  You give a set of orders for a round, accounting for any pain penalties and effects your character is experiencing, maybe set some conditional orders, and then see how everything plays out.  

For those who are familiar with the games we've played on this forum already, however, there's one major change in this campaign: since we're using all the stats listed in the book, we're using all the accuracy pools for moves listed in the core book as is.  Dexterity is no longer going to be the be-all end-all stat for both accuracy and initiative, and Fight isn't going to replace unusable stats.  You'll have to be a little more diverse in how you spread out exp to buff your accuracy pools, but you won't have to pour most of your exp into two very specific stats if you want half-decent accuracy.

Oh, and since you're actually directly participating in the combat regularly this time around, getting KOed is a rather large danger for obvious reasons.  There's a dearth of ways to avoid it, but they either have a monetary cost, are rarely found, or have some sort of drawback due to their ease of accessibility...


There's also going to be special battle mechanics later down the line, such as Mega Evolution.  Yes, there's no pokemon trainers, but there are other ways to access that power and others like it...

Pain Penalties reduce your dice pools, and how much Pain you're in is determined by how much HP you've lost.  Only the largest Pain Penalty is applied at any given time.

No Pain: At full HP or missing only 1 HP
-1 Pain: lost 2 or more HP
-2 Pain: at half HP or less
-3 Pain: have exactly 1 HP remaining

If you're in a great deal of pain, it's also usually difficult to escape from battle.  Fortunately, healing items exist to make your life easier!  Since this is a Mystery Dungeon style game, there's three primary healing items, and they're all rather effective:

Oran Berries: Restore 4 HP
Sitrus Berries: Restore 8 HP
Energy Seeds: Restore All HP

However, some wounds are too severe to heal them very easily.  It takes 2 HP of healing to heal 1 point of Lethal damage.  There are potential exceptions to this rule, but they're few and far between.

There's a wide range of status healing items, too.

Cheri Berry: Cures Paralysis
Pecha Berry: Cures Poison
Rawst Berry: Heals Burns
Chesto Berry: Cures Sleep
Aspear Berry: Defrosts Pokemon
Persim Berry: Cures Confusion
Lum Berry: Cures all of the above Status conditions
Heal Seed: Cures all Status Conditions, including ones a Lum Berry cannot cure


Make sure you have a healthy supply of Pecha Berries when you're expecting to face Poison types, as Poison can become deadly very, very quickly.

Generally, Seeds are going to have more powerful effects than Berries, but Berries will be more common.  Speaking of Seeds, an adventurer's best friend in Mystery Dungeons is these two:

Tiny Reviver Seed: Revives a fainted pokemon with half HP.  Does so automatically if it's in the pokemon's inventory when they faint, and becomes a Plain Seed when used in this manner.
Reviver Seed: Revives a fainted pokemon with full HP.  Does so automatically if it's in the pokemon's inventory when they faint, and becomes a Plain Seed when used in this manner.

This is where I'll list anything that doesn't fit in the above categories, such as some houserules and important clarifications on rules.  You may want to write at least a few of these down in your own notes.

This list is subject to change in the future, and I'll make a post in this Meta Thread detailing any changes that are made when they happen.

Houserules
- Assurance Move: changed its effect to '+3 damage dice if the target is at half HP or less' to better reflect the move's original purpose.  It also just so happens that Assurance works a lot like Brine in the PMD games.
- Razor Shell Move: Effect changed to 'Roll 5 Chance Dice to reduce the foe's Defense by 1' to better reflect the move's original effect in the main series pokemon games.
- Illuminate Ability: Added the effect 'the user becomes a decoy (as if they had used Follow Me) whenever they use a light based attack (such as Confuse Ray)'.  This is an effect the Ability has in the PMD games, and I think it'll work well in Pokerole!
- Reviver Seed Effectiveness: Changed both types of Reviver Seeds' so they function more like Revives in the main series Pokemon games with some of the automatic functionality they have in the PMD games.
- Healing Item Effectiveness: Oran Berries and Sitrus Berries heal more HP than what's stated in the corebook, as they are the common healing items in the PMD universe.
- Currency Shift: Poke is the currency this game is using, not Apples.  The GM will determine what every item's cost is as appropriate.
- Encounter Frequency: To better fit the pacing of a forum based play-by-post game, a chance for encounters to appear will be rolled for every tile in a tile based dungeon, not every other tile.
- Critical Hits Mechanic, Defense, and Screens: When your attacks score Critical Hits, they ignore the damage reduction of the moves Light Screen, Reflect, Aurora Veil, and similar.  The additional dice from Critical Hits are added after the target's (Special) Defense is applied.
- Knock Off Move: Added the effect 'If the target of this move is holding an item, add 2 dice to this move's damage pool.'  (Accessories do not count for this effect)
- Howl Move: This move affects all allies.
- Rapid Spin Move: Added the effect 'The user gets +1 Dexterity.'  This move is also 2 Power now.
- Defog Move: This move also clears Terrains in addition to its other effects.
- Huge/Pure Power Ability: Changed to 'the user gets +1 Strength'
- Natural HP Healing: You recover 1 HP every time you move to a new tile in a mystery dungeon
- Luck Dice and Accuracy Pools: if a move's Accuracy Pool would be reduced to exactly 0, the move will simply fail.  If the accuracy pool would be reduced to a negative number, a Luck Die will be rolled instead.  Players may also request Luck Dice to be rolled instead of the move failing if an Accuracy Pool would be reduced to exactly 0 when they are giving their orders for the Round.
- Bug Bite/Pluck Move: The move can consume any consumable item that the target is holding or that is in their bag (selected at random if there are multiple viable targets.  This includes but is not limited to Apples, Seeds, Berries, Elixirs, Gummis, etc.
- Life Dew Move: Acc: Dexterity + Survival + Nature, Targets: Spread move that targets allies, Eff: Restores 1 HP at the end of the round for 4 rounds.

Rules Clarifications
- Item Usage: Healing Items (HP, status, etc) are usable at the end of each set of Turns in a Round, and can be used up to twice per Round as a free action.  Items with other kinds of effects (Violent Seed, Orbs, etc.) typically take an action to use.  Healing Items can also be used in exchange for one of your actions for the Round.  Held Item Swapping is also allowed if the item is readily available, and takes an action.  Action costs for the Round are calculated as normal, but only affect items that require a roll.  If there are items on the ground that you wish to pick up during combat, you may spend an action to do so.


Other
- Natures exist in this game (Page 40 of the corebook), but are optional to use.  You don't have to assign your character a Nature if you do not wish to.

3/29/2020: Posted the Meta Thread for Primal Shadows and started character creation!
4/6/2020: Posted the Game and Jukebox Threads.  Added Knock Off, Howl, Rapid Spin, Defog, and additional Crit rules to the houserules section.
4/7/2020: Started the game!  First post is here!
4/18/2020: Added Natural HP Healing and Pure/Huge Power to the houserules section.  Also added a clarification on Item Usage to the Rules Clarifications section.
1/13/2021: Formally added a new rule regarding Luck Dice and Accuracy Pools.  Also added an additional rule for Bug Bite and Pluck, formally added Life Dew to the house rules, and added the clarification on picking up items from the ground during combat to the Item Usage section of Rules Clarifications.

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.

- 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.

- 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.

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.

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.