Mai
Banned
So I don't really like how most statuses are handled in ASB. For reference, this is what the current DEG has to say about them:
Burn and poison are ... mostly useless. They only deal 3% a round/1% an action, so takes three rounds deal 9% damage. Most pokemon get a 90 base power neutrally effective STAB move at least, which ends up dealing 11% damage at default, and they can often pull upwards of 12% an action with higher base power, items, super-effective moves... etc. In the four rounds it takes for burn or poison to do 12% damage, making the move worth the action, the pokemon could easily KO their opponent: for 12% damage an action (a STAB dazzling gleam, seed bomb, sludge bomb, or shadow ball would all do 12% with normal stats and a boosting item, and a STAB psychic, ice beam, flamethrower, thunderbolt, bug buzz ... etc. would all do 13%), that would only take nine actions. So three rounds.
Poison, also, is just blatantly a worse burn: burns get to cripple the opponent's attack stat, which does have a use if they're a physical attacker, but poison doesn't do this for special attack or anything. (I realize this is how it works in-game, but.)
Toxic poison is even worse than regular poison. It takes five rounds for toxic poison's damage to even catch up with regular poison. Battles can be easily finished by that point! Most artificially shortened/cut-off battles cap at three or five rounds. The larger cap for the damage sounds appealing, but when you think about about, one-on-one battles just do not last long enough for that cap to hit and be effective. If a battle lasts ten rounds, healing was probably used; and if healing was used and a pokemon is toxic poisoned, they'd want to rest. It just doesn't make sense for a status to stick around that long: if a pokemon survives long enough for it to be a problem, it would be healed off somehow.
I don't have any problems with freeze as written--it's not much of a big deal in ASB, and considering its rareness in-game, I'm fine with that.
Sleep seems fine to me, but I'd like to clarify the necessary amount of damage dealt that decreases sleep severity. I do 10% in an action, but anywhere in the 10%-15% range would be good (or lower, if the ref desires)--it would be a guideline.
Paralysis is majorly broken. It is easily the most powerful status in ASB. Speed is the only base stat that really matters in most battles, and it can determine the outcome of a close match. And in the two most prevalent guides/scales, Negrek's and Kratos's, it will never fade.
This sounds like an exaggeration, but ... it isn't much of one. Starting from severe paralysis at Kratos's scale, it takes nine rounds for paralysis to fade (two from severe to moderate, two from moderate to mild, two from mild to light, and three from light to nonexistent). For those nine rounds, the afflicted pokemon has to suffer from lowered speed /and/ parahax.
From an old Negrek ruling, paralysis "starts at 25% chance of failure (severe) and reduces by 1% per action that the afflicted pokémon is *not* fully paralyzed." Assuming no actions spend being fully paralyzed, that takes about eight rounds.
Attract is one of the most obnoxious moves in the game. It's one of the staple banned moves, along with OHKOs; that should probably say something about how well-liked it is. Severe attraction has a 50% chance to cause a failed action; that, uh, should be enough cause to change the recommended treatment of it somehow. It shouldn't be lasting that long, at the very least.
Confusion is mostly fine, but it should have a short duration, and I think 10% damage in an action should be recommended as dropping the severity.
Also, curse isn't listed here, but it is... kind of a mess, in that (from what I can tell) very few people understand it. I like the fact that it works off current health rather than total, but not everyone knows that, and it is nearly impossible for it to actually be an effective move. The main reason it would be would be if there's a large health differential between the user and the opponent (the opponent having much more health); otherwise, it's near-impossible to recover the amount of health spent. For some numbers, let's look: if both pokemon started at 100% health and one of them immediately cursed, it would take seven rounds for the cursed pokemon to drop to 47.8% health. And that's assuming the curser didn't attack at all in that time! If they did, they would decrease the amount of health lost by the target (because curse takes off 10% of the opponent's current health at the end of each round).
Some proposals:
Burn effectively lowers attack by one stage for each stage in burn, past light. This puts a lot of possible variance in burn damage (I ref attack stat changes as 1.5% applied before type effectiveness), but on the light/mild/moderate/severe/extreme scale, that would make a severe burn at -4.5% physical damage at neutral effectiveness. This would make its primary use be crippling physical attackers.
Poison needs more damage. I'd go as far as saying 6% a round/2% an action.
Toxic could start at 3% a round and increase by 2% each round. It would then match normal poison in the fourth round, and go past it after. It could still be capped at 10%/round (though that'd make for an odd progression - 3%, 5%, 7%, 9%, 10%?), as it is already... it could also be capped at 12%, nicer because then it evenly splits into 4% damage/action, or not be capped at all because damage caps exist. It would be... interesting to see a battle stalled long enough that toxic damage is enough to hit the cap by itself. (Though, again, any reasonable person would just have their pokemon rest off or otherwise heal the status by then.)
Sleep is mostly fine; I'd just like to see 10% damage/action as decreasing sleep severity. That, and Negrek's old rule of sound-based moves with a base power greater than 90.
Paralysis definitely needs a nerf. It should have a 10% chance of failure per stage of paralysis (with light/mild/moderate/severe/extreme, this puts severe at a 40% chance of failure--higher than Negrek's and Kratos's starting points, but it fades more consistently that way) fade at one stage per three actions; that gives severe paralysis a shelf life of four rounds, which is still quite significant. (For example, as long as you have the status, you're going to have to second-guess all your plans other than action-by-action smash heads and implement "push this back and try again if you get paralyzed" conditionals.)
Attract should decrease in severity every other action. At only eight actions, that's pretty short, but ... attract is quite possibly the most hated move in ASB, so. For chances of failure, I'd go with 20% a stage. Severe attraction would be intense, with an 80% chance of failure, but stages could be knocked down if the pokemon of infatuation attacks the attracted pokemon and failure chance could be halved if the trainer makes a good enough effort to make their commands sound like a decent attempt to woo the pokemon of infatuation.
Confusion would be like attract: 20% chance of failure per stage, with the stage dropping every other action. Confusion duration would be shortened if a pokemon takes more than 10% damage or so in an action; shocking a pokemon to its senses, so to speak.
Curse could either only chop off a third or a quarter of the user's current health (breaks even after three rounds, ideally) or make the cursed pokemon lose a tenth of their health each action (hella intense, but the effectiveness of that would decrease rapidly). Per-action curse sounds kind of ... fun and interesting in a way I have no real reason for? But it appeals to me.
Burn: The pokémon is inflicted with a second-degree burn that constantly stings and throbs, dealing it 3% damage per round if it is not further aggravated. Burned pokémon are particularly susceptible to attacks that happen to strike their burn and see reduced effectiveness in the attacks they use that require movement, as swift movement is one thing that will aggravate their burn and cause them further pain. They therefore take such attacks much slower than usual, making them less powerful. As a result, physical attacks and others that require considerably movement have their power reduced by 3% after all other modifiers are applied. Burns do not fade without treatment.
Freeze: The freeze status is usually less dire in ASB than it is in the games. It is rare that the pokémon will be entirely encased in ice and unable to move at all. Usually, a couple of its limbs will be immobilized at most, unless the opponent specifically concentrates on freezing it all the way. Freeze will naturally fade after several actions as the pokémon thaws, but there are a multitude of ways to speed up the process, and being struck by a fire attack will outright eliminate the condition.
Poison: A pokémon steadily loses health as poison slowly degrades the functioning of its body from the inside out. Poisoned pokémon usually take around 3% damage per round as a result of the condition. Poisoning does not fade unless treated.
Severe Poison: Like normal poison, this status causes persistent damage. Unlike regular poison, however, the afflicted pokémon's condition worsens with time and the damage it takes as a result of the status increases with each passing round. Usually, a pokémon will begin by taking 1% in round in which they were poisoned, and the amount of damage dealt by the status increases by 1% per round, to a maximum of 10%. Severe poison will not fade without treatment.
Sleep: The pokémon is sent into a deep and unnatural slumber, which typically lasts for several actions, during which there are very few commands the sleeping pokémon can effectively execute. Loud noises or, especially, damage from attacks will likely bring a sleeping pokémon back to wakefulness earlier than normal. Pokémon will also awaken immediately if their lives are in danger--for example, if the area where they have fallen asleep is flooded and they start to drown. Sleep usually lasts between three and five actions on average, with the duration being shorter if it takes significant damage while slumbering.
Paralysis: The pokémon's muscles are uncomfortably locked up, either from chemical or electrical disruption or from cramping. This makes it difficult for a paralyzed pokémon to control its limbs and move. Not only is the speed of a paralyzed pokémon reduced to a quarter of its original value, but there is a chance that paralysis may grip it so severely that it will be "fully paralyzed" for an action, completely unable to move or perform attacks; for severely paralyzed pokémon, the chance of this happening is 25%, and it decreases as the condition fades. Status moves always inflict severe paralysis outside of extraordinary circumstances. Attacks that don't require movement may be less affected by paralysis, but full paralysis can be distressing and distracting enough to disrupt these attacks. Paralysis fades and eventually vanishes, but does so very slowly.
Minor status effects are eliminated if the pokémon suffering from them are recalled and later returned to battle. The minor status effects are as follows:
Attraction: This status is directly caused by the attack "attract" and indirectly by a variety of other attacks and abilities. The afflicted pokémon is put in a lovesick daze by a pokémon of the opposite gender, such that it will be much more gentler when attacking that pokémon or its allies, or may refuse to attack that pokémon or its allies altogether. Attraction ends when the attracted pokémon realizes that the opponent actually isn't interested in it, at which point it becomes enraged at the deception. Attraction almost always starts at severe, but for this reason attraction by the same subject grows less and less likely to be effective with each successive use. Severe attraction is equivalent to a 50% chance of failing to attack, and it decreases with time, fading more quickly if the object of attraction attacks the attracted pokémon or otherwise appears uninterested in it. An attracted pokémon may be more likely to obey commands rather than daydream if it can be convinced that what it's being asked to do will improve its image in the eyes of the pokémon it's attracted to.
Confusion: A confused pokémon has its perceptions of the world distorted and usually has difficulty coordinating its movements. It becomes a danger to itself, there being the chance, on any given action, that it will end up hurting itself in its attempt to complete an attack against the opponent, for example by tripping and falling while running at the foe. Severe confusion is associated with a 50% chance of damaging oneself, and this chance decreases as the severity of the condition fades over time. Status moves always cause severe confusion outside of extraordinary circumstances. It fades more quickly if the confused pokémon takes significant damage from an opponents' attack.
Freeze: The freeze status is usually less dire in ASB than it is in the games. It is rare that the pokémon will be entirely encased in ice and unable to move at all. Usually, a couple of its limbs will be immobilized at most, unless the opponent specifically concentrates on freezing it all the way. Freeze will naturally fade after several actions as the pokémon thaws, but there are a multitude of ways to speed up the process, and being struck by a fire attack will outright eliminate the condition.
Poison: A pokémon steadily loses health as poison slowly degrades the functioning of its body from the inside out. Poisoned pokémon usually take around 3% damage per round as a result of the condition. Poisoning does not fade unless treated.
Severe Poison: Like normal poison, this status causes persistent damage. Unlike regular poison, however, the afflicted pokémon's condition worsens with time and the damage it takes as a result of the status increases with each passing round. Usually, a pokémon will begin by taking 1% in round in which they were poisoned, and the amount of damage dealt by the status increases by 1% per round, to a maximum of 10%. Severe poison will not fade without treatment.
Sleep: The pokémon is sent into a deep and unnatural slumber, which typically lasts for several actions, during which there are very few commands the sleeping pokémon can effectively execute. Loud noises or, especially, damage from attacks will likely bring a sleeping pokémon back to wakefulness earlier than normal. Pokémon will also awaken immediately if their lives are in danger--for example, if the area where they have fallen asleep is flooded and they start to drown. Sleep usually lasts between three and five actions on average, with the duration being shorter if it takes significant damage while slumbering.
Paralysis: The pokémon's muscles are uncomfortably locked up, either from chemical or electrical disruption or from cramping. This makes it difficult for a paralyzed pokémon to control its limbs and move. Not only is the speed of a paralyzed pokémon reduced to a quarter of its original value, but there is a chance that paralysis may grip it so severely that it will be "fully paralyzed" for an action, completely unable to move or perform attacks; for severely paralyzed pokémon, the chance of this happening is 25%, and it decreases as the condition fades. Status moves always inflict severe paralysis outside of extraordinary circumstances. Attacks that don't require movement may be less affected by paralysis, but full paralysis can be distressing and distracting enough to disrupt these attacks. Paralysis fades and eventually vanishes, but does so very slowly.
Minor status effects are eliminated if the pokémon suffering from them are recalled and later returned to battle. The minor status effects are as follows:
Attraction: This status is directly caused by the attack "attract" and indirectly by a variety of other attacks and abilities. The afflicted pokémon is put in a lovesick daze by a pokémon of the opposite gender, such that it will be much more gentler when attacking that pokémon or its allies, or may refuse to attack that pokémon or its allies altogether. Attraction ends when the attracted pokémon realizes that the opponent actually isn't interested in it, at which point it becomes enraged at the deception. Attraction almost always starts at severe, but for this reason attraction by the same subject grows less and less likely to be effective with each successive use. Severe attraction is equivalent to a 50% chance of failing to attack, and it decreases with time, fading more quickly if the object of attraction attacks the attracted pokémon or otherwise appears uninterested in it. An attracted pokémon may be more likely to obey commands rather than daydream if it can be convinced that what it's being asked to do will improve its image in the eyes of the pokémon it's attracted to.
Confusion: A confused pokémon has its perceptions of the world distorted and usually has difficulty coordinating its movements. It becomes a danger to itself, there being the chance, on any given action, that it will end up hurting itself in its attempt to complete an attack against the opponent, for example by tripping and falling while running at the foe. Severe confusion is associated with a 50% chance of damaging oneself, and this chance decreases as the severity of the condition fades over time. Status moves always cause severe confusion outside of extraordinary circumstances. It fades more quickly if the confused pokémon takes significant damage from an opponents' attack.
Burn and poison are ... mostly useless. They only deal 3% a round/1% an action, so takes three rounds deal 9% damage. Most pokemon get a 90 base power neutrally effective STAB move at least, which ends up dealing 11% damage at default, and they can often pull upwards of 12% an action with higher base power, items, super-effective moves... etc. In the four rounds it takes for burn or poison to do 12% damage, making the move worth the action, the pokemon could easily KO their opponent: for 12% damage an action (a STAB dazzling gleam, seed bomb, sludge bomb, or shadow ball would all do 12% with normal stats and a boosting item, and a STAB psychic, ice beam, flamethrower, thunderbolt, bug buzz ... etc. would all do 13%), that would only take nine actions. So three rounds.
Poison, also, is just blatantly a worse burn: burns get to cripple the opponent's attack stat, which does have a use if they're a physical attacker, but poison doesn't do this for special attack or anything. (I realize this is how it works in-game, but.)
Toxic poison is even worse than regular poison. It takes five rounds for toxic poison's damage to even catch up with regular poison. Battles can be easily finished by that point! Most artificially shortened/cut-off battles cap at three or five rounds. The larger cap for the damage sounds appealing, but when you think about about, one-on-one battles just do not last long enough for that cap to hit and be effective. If a battle lasts ten rounds, healing was probably used; and if healing was used and a pokemon is toxic poisoned, they'd want to rest. It just doesn't make sense for a status to stick around that long: if a pokemon survives long enough for it to be a problem, it would be healed off somehow.
I don't have any problems with freeze as written--it's not much of a big deal in ASB, and considering its rareness in-game, I'm fine with that.
Sleep seems fine to me, but I'd like to clarify the necessary amount of damage dealt that decreases sleep severity. I do 10% in an action, but anywhere in the 10%-15% range would be good (or lower, if the ref desires)--it would be a guideline.
Paralysis is majorly broken. It is easily the most powerful status in ASB. Speed is the only base stat that really matters in most battles, and it can determine the outcome of a close match. And in the two most prevalent guides/scales, Negrek's and Kratos's, it will never fade.
This sounds like an exaggeration, but ... it isn't much of one. Starting from severe paralysis at Kratos's scale, it takes nine rounds for paralysis to fade (two from severe to moderate, two from moderate to mild, two from mild to light, and three from light to nonexistent). For those nine rounds, the afflicted pokemon has to suffer from lowered speed /and/ parahax.
From an old Negrek ruling, paralysis "starts at 25% chance of failure (severe) and reduces by 1% per action that the afflicted pokémon is *not* fully paralyzed." Assuming no actions spend being fully paralyzed, that takes about eight rounds.
Attract is one of the most obnoxious moves in the game. It's one of the staple banned moves, along with OHKOs; that should probably say something about how well-liked it is. Severe attraction has a 50% chance to cause a failed action; that, uh, should be enough cause to change the recommended treatment of it somehow. It shouldn't be lasting that long, at the very least.
Confusion is mostly fine, but it should have a short duration, and I think 10% damage in an action should be recommended as dropping the severity.
Also, curse isn't listed here, but it is... kind of a mess, in that (from what I can tell) very few people understand it. I like the fact that it works off current health rather than total, but not everyone knows that, and it is nearly impossible for it to actually be an effective move. The main reason it would be would be if there's a large health differential between the user and the opponent (the opponent having much more health); otherwise, it's near-impossible to recover the amount of health spent. For some numbers, let's look: if both pokemon started at 100% health and one of them immediately cursed, it would take seven rounds for the cursed pokemon to drop to 47.8% health. And that's assuming the curser didn't attack at all in that time! If they did, they would decrease the amount of health lost by the target (because curse takes off 10% of the opponent's current health at the end of each round).
Some proposals:
Burn effectively lowers attack by one stage for each stage in burn, past light. This puts a lot of possible variance in burn damage (I ref attack stat changes as 1.5% applied before type effectiveness), but on the light/mild/moderate/severe/extreme scale, that would make a severe burn at -4.5% physical damage at neutral effectiveness. This would make its primary use be crippling physical attackers.
Poison needs more damage. I'd go as far as saying 6% a round/2% an action.
Toxic could start at 3% a round and increase by 2% each round. It would then match normal poison in the fourth round, and go past it after. It could still be capped at 10%/round (though that'd make for an odd progression - 3%, 5%, 7%, 9%, 10%?), as it is already... it could also be capped at 12%, nicer because then it evenly splits into 4% damage/action, or not be capped at all because damage caps exist. It would be... interesting to see a battle stalled long enough that toxic damage is enough to hit the cap by itself. (Though, again, any reasonable person would just have their pokemon rest off or otherwise heal the status by then.)
Sleep is mostly fine; I'd just like to see 10% damage/action as decreasing sleep severity. That, and Negrek's old rule of sound-based moves with a base power greater than 90.
Paralysis definitely needs a nerf. It should have a 10% chance of failure per stage of paralysis (with light/mild/moderate/severe/extreme, this puts severe at a 40% chance of failure--higher than Negrek's and Kratos's starting points, but it fades more consistently that way) fade at one stage per three actions; that gives severe paralysis a shelf life of four rounds, which is still quite significant. (For example, as long as you have the status, you're going to have to second-guess all your plans other than action-by-action smash heads and implement "push this back and try again if you get paralyzed" conditionals.)
Attract should decrease in severity every other action. At only eight actions, that's pretty short, but ... attract is quite possibly the most hated move in ASB, so. For chances of failure, I'd go with 20% a stage. Severe attraction would be intense, with an 80% chance of failure, but stages could be knocked down if the pokemon of infatuation attacks the attracted pokemon and failure chance could be halved if the trainer makes a good enough effort to make their commands sound like a decent attempt to woo the pokemon of infatuation.
Confusion would be like attract: 20% chance of failure per stage, with the stage dropping every other action. Confusion duration would be shortened if a pokemon takes more than 10% damage or so in an action; shocking a pokemon to its senses, so to speak.
Curse could either only chop off a third or a quarter of the user's current health (breaks even after three rounds, ideally) or make the cursed pokemon lose a tenth of their health each action (hella intense, but the effectiveness of that would decrease rapidly). Per-action curse sounds kind of ... fun and interesting in a way I have no real reason for? But it appeals to me.
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