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I'll be honest with you, I have no idea how combos work. Do you combine the damage of each move, as well as the energy? I don't really know, and the section about combos doesn't really go into any detail.

@Noctowl: Combos usually deal combined damage plus a bit more, as well as combined energy plus a bit more. The "plus a bit more" is a mostly a ref's discretion sort of thing.

Take, for example, this Agility + Flame Charge combo. Or the energy calculations from this Quick Attack + Fly (up) .

Combos haven't really been hammered down, but it's really mostly up to ref interpretation.

Negrek's method was adding the damage of both attacks +3% damage at the end (bonus varies, if the combo works well), and the energy cost was a few points more than both would have cost separately, depending on logic. It's simple and convenient and I dislike it. I think that's more for gameplay purposes than logic, really.

To me, combining two attacks should be less effective than both separately, but would be more powerful than either one individually, so I make the base damage in between the strongest attack and the combined totals, with the exact power varying depending on how well the two combine together. Generally (with a being the base power of the stronger attack) (also assuming the combo is 100% successful), I do something like [a + 0.5b] to [a + 0.75b]. If type effectiveness/STAB works differently on the types of both moves, I take the ratios of the base powers of the moves to calculate effectiveness separately (so if the ratio of a to b is 3:1, three quarters of the base damage goes by STAB/effectiveness rules for a and one quarter for b). My energy cost would just be the two individual costs combined, since the damage is less, but I might add or subtract a couple of points depending on how well the moves fit together.

I also disliked Negrek's method of doing combos, both flavour-wise and mechanics-wise. Flavour-wise, let's consider something like uh Quick Attack + Body Slam? You only hit the target once with a combo, and though the extra speed would make the combo more powerful than Body Slam by itself, I really can't imagine it doing as much damage as two separate impacts, let alone more damage.

Mechanics-wise, if a combo will always be more powerful than the two separate attacks, why would you /not/ use a combo? Combos already have a great advantage in that you can combine properties of moves (e.g. Quick Attack + Body Slam would have priority and good damage; Fire Punch + Mega Punch would have the fire-typing and much higher damage) and that you can squeeze two moves into one action (again, Quick Attack + Body Slam is a good example, if you need to deal more damage with priority in one action). Those are the advantages they should be noted and used for, and I think the added advantage of extra damage would lead to the overuse of combos.

Why not just have combos do added damage of both attacks, with a bit of extra energy? Then it's not better than doing the attacks individually all the time, except for whatever bonus you'd get by combining them at that opportunity.

They shouldn't be as good as just flatly adding both attacks together either. It's situational when it matters but then it's overly powerful that you can do the full damage of two actions in the time it takes to do one. The whole "doesn't make sense" thing blazhy was talking about applies to doing the damage of both moves together as much as it does having a bonus on top.

The advantages of combos should be adding the properties of the moves other than damage, otherwise you may as well do them on two separate actions.

How much more energy does Copycat + Copycatted move take to use than the Copycatted move would have used on its own?

From what I've seen, refs usually smack on an extra 1-2% energy. Since Copycat doesn't really have any effect other than copying a move, I'd probably go with 1%.

allitersonance said:

They shouldn't be as good as just flatly adding both attacks together either. It's situational when it matters but then it's overly powerful that you can do the full damage of two actions in the time it takes to do one. The whole "doesn't make sense" thing blazhy was talking about applies to doing the damage of both moves together as much as it does having a bonus on top.

The advantages of combos should be adding the properties of the moves other than damage, otherwise you may as well do them on two separate actions.

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I don't see why it should have to be weaker? It's not like you're gaining an action afterwards, you're still using up both actions. So making it weaker is kinda unfair.

Because if you're comboing two attacks chances are you're doing so because you gain some advantage you wouldn't get from using them separately, I guess. Or from a flavour perspective a Pokémon that has to execute two attacks simultaneously probably won't be able to give either its full attention, so each one comes out a little less potent than if it has channeled all its energies into one attack at a time.

What happens if a burned Pokémon obtains Flash Fire? Does it continue to take damage, is the status removed, or does the burn remain but without doing anything?

Music Dragon said:

What happens if a burned Pokémon obtains Flash Fire? Does it continue to take damage, is the status removed, or does the burn remain but without doing anything?

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As far as I can tell Flash Fire doesn't interact with burns (so a non-Fire Pokemon can get burned by Tri Attack, for example). So as long as the burned Pokemon obtaining Flash Fire remains a non-Fire type, the status should persist and it should continue taking damage.

Does Flying Gem + Acrobatics give the flying gem boost as well as the increased acrobatics damage like it does in-game?

Vipera Magnifica said:

Does Flying Gem + Acrobatics give the flying gem boost as well as the increased acrobatics damage like it does in-game?

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Yep.

Music Dragon said:

What happens if a burned Pokémon obtains Flash Fire? Does it continue to take damage, is the status removed, or does the burn remain but without doing anything?

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Flash Fire does indeed not affect burns, and further no changes to type affect pre-existing status conditions in-game as far as I'm aware; ie. Poison-typed Kecleon stay poisoned.

EDIT: On another note, if someone forfeits their first battle, does the ref still get the $15 bonus for completion?

Meursault said:

Flash Fire does indeed not affect burns, and further no changes to type affect pre-existing status conditions in-game as far as I'm aware; ie. Poison-typed Kecleon stay poisoned.

EDIT: On another note, if someone forfeits their first battle, does the ref still get the $15 bonus for completion?

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Ahh, I suppose I was misled by the arena description of this battle, but yeah, you're right.

Uhh. To be honest I don't even know if we were actually still giving out that bonus and/or keeping track of it, but I'll say you can go ahead and have it.

Okay, like, I keep wondering about this. Does it really make sense for never-miss moves where the reason for the never-missing is like, the user taking the opponent by surprise in some way (e.g. Aerial Ace, Feint Attack) to always hit the right thing when the opponent has clones? For moves that are spread-out or hone on to their opponent in some way it makes sense, but it's always kind of bothered me that for some reason Aerial Ace always happens to pick the right thing to fly at at unavoidable speed, or whatever.

Eifie said:

Okay, like, I keep wondering about this. Does it really make sense for never-miss moves where the reason for the never-missing is like, the user taking the opponent by surprise in some way (e.g. Aerial Ace, Feint Attack) to always hit the right thing when the opponent has clones? For moves that are spread-out or hone on to their opponent in some way it makes sense, but it's always kind of bothered me that for some reason Aerial Ace always happens to pick the right thing to fly at at unavoidable speed, or whatever.

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For Aerial Ace, I recall the reason for it being never-miss is that the user just runs around really fast and slashes through all the Pokemon, dispelling the clones and wounding the real one as well (I wouldn't object to slightly decreased damage in this scenario).

As for Feint Attack, it was flavoured as the user going into a parallel dark realm or something where living creatures are much more obvious so the user could discern the real Pokemon easily. With the spelling change, though, I was thinking we might want to overhaul the flavour, so what I just said might be moot.

blazheirio889 said:

For Aerial Ace, I recall the reason for it being never-miss is that the user just runs around really fast and slashes through all the Pokemon, dispelling the clones and wounding the real one as well (I wouldn't object to slightly decreased damage in this scenario).

As for Feint Attack, it was flavoured as the user going into a parallel dark realm or something where living creatures are much more obvious so the user could discern the real Pokemon easily. With the spelling change, though, I was thinking we might want to overhaul the flavour, so what I just said might be moot.

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Cool, is there a flavour justification for Magnet Bomb (against non-Steel-types, I guess), too? (Actually, what's even with the ASB effects for Magnet Bomb...?)

I'd be down for overhauling the flavor on Feint Attack but I'm suspect because I've always hated it with the entire extent of my digestive track. It's got Sneak Attack for a jp name, it rather obviously doesn't involve literally disappearing.

(If we roll with that for updated flavor, I'd hazard mentioning that the clone-making Pokémon has no direct way to perceive it when a clone is gone... You could theorically go around popping each of them if you did it without the clomemaker noticing.)

ETA: The in-game description on Magnet Bomb makes it semi-clear ("The user launches steel bombs that stick to the target. This attack never misses." -- there's a cluster of them and they can most likely home in on the target if they can stick to it. And yes, the ASB flavor mentions a single bomb rather than a cluster, but this is probably because of a typo on the Gen IV description).