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Welcome to The Cave of Dragonflies forums, where the smallest bugs live alongside the strongest dragons.
Guests are not able to post messages or even read certain areas of the forums. Now, that's boring, don't you think? Registration, on the other hand, is simple, completely free of charge, and does not require you to give out any personal information at all. As soon as you register, you can take part in some of the happy fun things at the forums such as posting messages, voting in polls, sending private messages to people and being told that this is where we drink tea and eat cod.
Of course I'm not forcing you to do anything if you don't want to, but seriously, what have you got to lose? Five seconds of your life?
The Refs' Lounge and Café is a bustling, talkative place where referees of all skill levels can hang out and talk shop over their beverage of choice. A large glass window offers a beautiful of New Asber Central Square, and a warm light all throughout the dining area. Next to the barista's counter is a cork board where new people post information about themselves, and a dry erase wall where questions are asked and answered by all.
As Crazy Linoone suggested, here is a thread for reffing discussion! Here, refs can share writing tips, ask and answer questions about the grey areas of ASB, and post bios where they describe their style and important ways it differs from other refs. Here are some suggested questions you could answer in yours! Feel free to answer as many or as few as you want, or to answer questions nobody's raised yet.
How do you handle fading statuses?
What are your thoughts on anti-STAB?
How do you approach 'non-actions' such as moving closer to an opponent, or dropping/picking up items?
Do you look down upon choosing Pokémon with STAB type advantages?
How closely does your flavour text match the game mechanics? Do you think this is important for clarity, or do you think trainers are smart enough to tell for themselves?
Are there any areas where you strongly disagree with precedent? For instance, would you ref contact moves as failing under Telekinesis?
What this thread is not is a place to yell at other refs over disagreements of style and edge case handling. Unless it's a blatant contradiction of the ASB Rules, move descriptions, or D&E Guide, take it up in the Questions Thread or in private.
If you have a specific question or one that isn't answered here (e.g. would x combination work?), or you think I've messed up somewhere, post in the battle thread or contact me.
Damage: (current base power * base damage modifiers / 10 * STAB + boosts + experience modifier) * effectiveness + final damage modifiers, rounded down. Situational bonuses or penalties may apply, though usually no more than ±2-3%.
Energy: (current base power * base damage modifiers / 20 * base energy modifiers) + effect cost - STAB + final energy modifiers, rounded up. Situational bonuses or penalties may apply, though usually no more than ±1-2%.
Poison: 4%/round normal, 2+%/round toxic, spread over the actions with bias towards the last.
Burns: 3%/round, -3% final damage severe and -2% final damage moderate. Moderate worsens to severe upon further successful rolls.
Paralysis: Severe: 25% failure chance, 3% more energy for movement, 25% base speed, lightens to moderate after 4 successful actions. Moderate: 15% failure chance, 2% more energy for movement, 50% base speed, lightens to mild after 4 successful actions. Mild: 10% failure chance, 1% more energy for movement, 75% base speed, fades after 3 successful actions.
Sleep: Lasts 5-6 actions. Counter decreases by 1 every time the afflicted Pokemon is hit by Dream Eater, a sound move, and/or a move with 8+% final damage.
Freezing: Varies per case. See below.
Attraction: Starts at most at a 50% failure chance, lower if the Attractor has used emotion-based moves before. Drops by 5%/action, 5% every time an ally of the Attractor does 8+% final damage to the attracted Pokemon, and 10% every time the Attractor deals 6+% final damage to it. May change on a per-action basis depending on circumstances. Fades completely if either Pokemon is switched out.
Confusion: Starts at most at a 50% failure chance, lower if the roll was higher. Drops by 5%/action, 5% every time the Pokemon takes 6-10% final damage, and 10% every time it takes 11+% final damage. May change on a per-action basis depending on circumstances. Fades completely if the Pokemon is switched out.
Damage and Energy:
I use Negrek's scale. If you see a number that doesn't look right, nudge me and I'll show you my math.
Damage spread over n targets is multiplied by 3/(2+n) after all other calculations. Assist, Copycat, Metronome, Mirror Move, Sleep Talk, Snatch, and other copying moves all cost 2% energy in addition to the move they use. Multi-hit moves are calculated as if they were one move whose base damage was equal to the damage per hit times the number of hits. Sandstorm and Hail do 1% damage/action.
Status:
This is my personal scale, not the official one in the D&E guide.
Poison: Normal poison does 4% damage/round, while toxic poison starts at 2% damage a round and increases by 1% after every round. This damage is spread out over the actions starting from the last one. For example, if toxic poison did 7% damage over a round, it would do 2/2/3 for actions 1/2/3. Poison doesn't fade. Ordinary and toxic poison can't coexist or worsen/lighten to and from each other.
Burns: Burns do 1% damage after every action and reduce the final damage of some moves by 3% if severe and 2% if moderate. Severe burns are the default; cases where the roll was within 5 of the bound of not triggering start at moderate and can be worsened to severe. Burns don't fade. Generally, the damage reduction applies to physical moves and/or moves that use a lot of movement - think Aerial Ace, not Natural Gift. Ask me if you're unsure, at least until I get around to writing a list for that.
Paralysis: Huge thanks to Phoenixsong for the scale on Altered Origin, used as a baseline, and to MF for providing feedback on my old scale!
Paralysis has three stages: mild, moderate, and severe. The default is severe, while rolls within 5 of the bound have one of the severe actions shaved off. Any successful paralysis rolls against a paralyzed Pokemon (that is, using an attack that will always paralyze if it hits won't do this) worsen its paralysis by one action. The chance to fail can be increased or reduced (by no more than 5%, capping at 25%, and on a per-action basis) depending on what action the Pokemon is commanded to take and the circumstances of the battle - for example, Water Gun and Quick Attack would probably have different failure chances. To determine a move's probable failure chance, ask me, at least until I get around to writing a list for that.
A severely paralyzed Pokemon has a 25% chance to fail per action, has 25% of its base speed, and needs 3% extra energy for movement; severe paralysis lightens to moderate after 4 actions that the Pokemon succeeds its paralysis roll. A moderately paralyzed Pokemon has a 15% chance to fail per action, has 50% of its base speed, and needs 2% extra energy for movement; moderate paralysis lightens to mild after 4 successful actions. A mildly paralyzed Pokemon has a 10% chance to fail per action, has 75% of its base speed, and needs 1% extra energy for movement; mild paralysis fades completely after 3 successful actions.
Sleep: Sleep starts at either 5 or 6 actions, randomized. Sleep-causing moves used in succession will start the action counter at a lower number. The ratio for this is usually 50/50 but might be higher or lower depending on the sleep cause's accuracy roll. If the sleeping Pokemon is hit by Dream Eater, a sound move, or a move that does 8% or more damage, the action counter decreases by 1. (This only applies once per distinct move, so Dream Eater dealing 10% damage would only reduce the number of actions remaining by 1.)
Sleep caused by Rest will always last for the two actions after Rest is used. When the user is at x% health, Rest heals (100-x)/3% health per action, biased to the end actions - so if Rest were used to heal 71% health, it would heal 23/24/24. (Because energy is rounded up, Rest does not always cost (100-x)/4% energy per action.)
Freezing: Freezing varies a lot depending on what's frozen. I'll detail each Pokemon's case in its condition or in the action notes. It'll probably be something like -4 to ±0 speed, reduced damage to the frozen parts, increased damage but more energy for contact attacks using the frozen parts, and potentially Ice damage every action/round if the Pokemon's frozen severely enough or frozen in multiple places.
Attraction: An attracted Pokemon starts at 50% failure chance, 45% if the attraction-causing roll was within 5 of the bound, or as low as 20-40% if the Attract user has previously used negative emotion-based moves or Attract against the target. The failure chance drops by 5% after every action, 5% every time an ally of the Attract user does 8% or more damage to the attracted Pokemon, and 10% every time the user of Attract deals 6% or more damage to it. If the attracted Pokemon's trainer words commands convincingly or the opposing Pokemon uses something like Captivate, the chance may be increased or reduced by up to 10% on a per-action basis. Attraction also completely fades if the attracted Pokemon or the Attract user is switched out or faints.
Confusion: A confused Pokemon starts at 50% failure chance, or 45% if the confusion-causing roll was within 5 of the bound. This drops by 5% after every action, 5% every time the confused Pokemon takes 6-10% damage, and 10% every time it takes 11% or more. Confusion also completely fades if the confused Pokemon is switched out.
Miscellaneous Other Things:
I don't take base stats other than speed into account at all.
If stat changes are linked with a status, as with Swagger, the changes fade with the status. Otherwise, they don't fade, unless the move's flavor implies they would (e.g. Flash, or mud from a Mud-Slap falling off or being washed from one's face.)
Speed changes are treated as they are in-game: (2+n)/2 for +n, 2/(2+n) for –n. Accuracy/evasion changes give ±10% to moves' accuracy per stage.
Movement order is determined solely by current speed. Pokemon with tied speed move in the order that they received their commands, so ones that were commanded first move first.
The maximum and default number of Double Team clones for a Pokemon with n current speed is 1+floor(n/15): 1 for Shuckle, 5 for Spinda, 9 for Crobat, 13 for speed forme Deoxys.
Minimize multiplies the Pokemon's height by 3/4 and its weight by 27/64 per use as well as raising its evasion by two stages. All physical moves against a Pokemon that used Minimize n times have their base damage multiplied by (4/3)^n, while that Pokemon's physical moves have their base damage multiplied by (3/4)^n or may fail entirely, depending. (heavily based on Phoenixsong's scale)
2015
May 25: Posted this.
June 4: Clarified parts of the Freezing section.
July 23: Changed all stat changes to fade after 8 actions.
July 25: Added a quick reference section. Altered some statuses to fit better with the official ruling provided in the On Statuses meta thread. In particular:
Regular poison now does 4% damage per round.
Mild poison is phased out of the scale.
Clarified parts of the Paralysis section.
All sound moves decrease the sleep counter.
The minimum damage to lower the infatuation failure percentage is decreased from 8% to 6%.
The confusion failure percentage now decreases by 10% if the confused Pokemon is hit with an attack doing 11% or more final damage.
July 29: Added a version history. Heavy damage from allies of the Attract user now lowers the infatuation failure percentage.
August 3: Toxic poison now starts at 2% damage/round. Moderate and mild paralysis require 1 more successful action before lightening/fading.
August 16: Misc. formatting changes.
October 4: Added reffing availability and wait time sections. Fixed typos in the quick reference section. Stat changes don't fade unless linked with a status. (temporary; pending official word on this I guess?)
October 17: Moved thread from WHAT'S YOUR ASTROLOGICAL SIGN to The Refs' Lounge and Café (here), because Eifie was talking about it.
2016
April 5: Removed the reffing ability and wait time sections since I kept forgetting to update them and they're in a weird place anyway.
May 3: Actually implement the toxic poison change from August 3 of last year since apparently I didn't do that.
2018
January 1: Some text fixes. Also, change how I handle speed stages (±15 → multipliers like in the games) and speed ties (random → Pokemon that received their commands first go first). Accuracy/evasion changes are staying the same unless I decide to change those later.
January 8: Fix a mistake in the description of mild paralysis in the quick reference.
2020
May 6: Fix formatting after the move to Xenforo.
I'd like to hear how other refs handle writing repeated moves, or if anyone has tips for just not being repetitive in general? I find it hard to keep my writeups original when the Pokemon are just spamming stuff, but I understand that's pretty common in battles. Does anyone else experience this? Does avoiding repetition just come with experience?
I think literally everyone hates writing stuff like Flamethrower x3, so you're definitely not alone there. It's probably fine with moves that are repeated more than like, twice for you to just write them with one sentence like "such-and-such retaliates with another blast of white-hot flame" or whatever. For more like, mental moves, I like to flavour them differently just to keep them interesting, but I can't think of any examples off the top of my head...
Hm, they wouldn't happen to serve fish here, would they? I'll have a cup of tea, but if you have grilled cod, I'll have some of that too.
I would say that even if the move is the same, the pokémon don't have to be. Things change in between actions, from pokémon's movement around the battlefield to the moves their opponents are using against them. A bad habit of mine is to make it sound like the pokémon themselves are choosing what moves to use rather than their trainers ("Gorouna decided to use...") even in cases where there are no conditionals, but that works well enough, usually, to alleviate the tedium of writing the same move over and over. Perhaps the second time the user was hit by its opponent's attack, and is now angry and wanting to retaliate, so it acts more aggressively when using the same move. Or other types of emotion, those would work too. Or, you could simply spend less time on the repeated-move-user than on their opponent, by just not breaking the paragraph between their actions. Overall, I feel like it helps not only the tedium but also the flow of the battle to have moves flow into each other, each influenced by the next.
And on the topic of flavor, something else I do that I feel is kind of wrong is that sometimes when writing my description I mix up the turn order just a little bit to make the story more interesting - having a slower pokémon moving before a faster pokémon, when the order they use the moves in wouldn't matter. Does anyone else do this?
I'd like to hear how other refs handle writing repeated moves, or if anyone has tips for just not being repetitive in general? I find it hard to keep my writeups original when the Pokemon are just spamming stuff, but I understand that's pretty common in battles. Does anyone else experience this? Does avoiding repetition just come with experience?
I'd go over the attack much more briefly than before; I've already explained what's happening so there's no need to go over it again. I only explain in detail new things that might be happening, otherwise it's much simpler.
And on the topic of flavor, something else I do that I feel is kind of wrong is that sometimes when writing my description I mix up the turn order just a little bit to make the story more interesting - having a slower pokémon moving before a faster pokémon, when the order they use the moves in wouldn't matter. Does anyone else do this?
I do that too, if it helps the flavour and doesn't interfere with anything, I don't think there's an issue with it? If one pokemon /has/ to go first then obviously it should be written that way, but otherwise...
I'd like to hear how other refs handle writing repeated moves, or if anyone has tips for just not being repetitive in general? I find it hard to keep my writeups original when the Pokemon are just spamming stuff, but I understand that's pretty common in battles. Does anyone else experience this? Does avoiding repetition just come with experience?
I often just resort to snipping the description of that attack down to a single sentence ("so-and-so retaliated by sending another jet of flame at whatsername" etc.) and sticking it on the same paragraph as whatever the opponent's using that action, which feels super bad and lazy but... really there comes a point where you can't really describe the same move multiple times in a row with any detail without just quoting yourself from last time, especially if it's in quick succession and nothing in the environment or circumstances has really changed to allow you to change it up from that.
I'd like to hear how other refs handle writing repeated moves, or if anyone has tips for just not being repetitive in general? I find it hard to keep my writeups original when the Pokemon are just spamming stuff, but I understand that's pretty common in battles. Does anyone else experience this? Does avoiding repetition just come with experience?
I try to establish a vague sort of personality for each Pokemon on the field, nothing very definitive but at least as descriptive as an in-game nature. This way I can more easily do what Superbird said, throwing in some action-specific flavor depending on how the battle's going. The repeated-move actions still don't generally amount to a full paragraph on their own, so I end up having couple-sentence descriptions, but I find it better and more exciting to write/read than having "another burst of roaring flame" and that being the end of it.
And on the topic of flavor, something else I do that I feel is kind of wrong is that sometimes when writing my description I mix up the turn order just a little bit to make the story more interesting - having a slower pokémon moving before a faster pokémon, when the order they use the moves in wouldn't matter. Does anyone else do this?
I've done this, someone called me on it once and as long as you clarify that the final tallies were calculated using the proper move order it shouldn't cause a problem.
sup rich people I wanna hear your philosophical thoughts on Chills. I mean, what really ~is~ a Chill? Does a Pokémon spend the entire action relaxing from start to finish? Then how does that work with slower Pokémon? How does that work if you want to wait and then Chill? How can a Taunt the same action somehow stop a slower Pokémon from getting off its Chill at all while a faster Pokémon gets the entire thing done before the Taunt starts? If a Chill doesn't take up an entire action, how does interrupting a Chill work? pls advise, friends
I've always treated Chill as taking up an entire action - it can be disrupted easily by breaking concentration; most sound moves and a few others (throwing moves, for instance) would be able to do this, but it's difficult to completely negate the energy recovery. In your example you say a faster pokémon could get the chill off before the slower pokémon taunts it, and I disagree with that - as soon as the taunt started, they would be too riled up to chill any more, and that's not going to be far enough after the beginning of the action to warrant more than a couple percent of recovery anyway.
Also, if you treat Speed as action time rather than thinking time, it's nearly impossible to hit an opponent before they start a Chill, given that both battlers start the action at the same time.
What Superbird said; actions happen concurrently (unless the commands are specifically to wait), which means any Pokemon commanded to Chill unconditionally would almost definitely have at least a 2% energy gain for me (probably 2% in your example unless the opponent was only slower by a hair)
As referees, I'm curious; would you allow this to work? I already answered the question, and it wouldn't work, but flavorwise it could easily be argued, I think--at least for the Pledge combos, and it wouldn't be the most battle-influential thing that's up to ref discretion. Maybe this is something we could change?
I am always torn when it comes to music. On one hand, I do enjoy listening to it, and writing alone in my room without some kind of distraction feels a bit lonely, but on the other I can find it to be a bit too much of a distraction. Having a word on the tip of my tongue and having to listen to lyrics at the same time feels like absolute hell to me. Sure I can pause or mute what I'm listening to, but that just feels like extra hassle.
The songs I usually listen to while writing are ambient or instrumental, in the vein of soundrown or rainymood, or have vocals in a language I don't know so that distraction from lyrics doesn't become an issue. I can definitely understand that feeling, though.
I've been listening to Lazaretto by Jack White and it gave off some violent reffings, while the ones I belched forth under the influence of AltJ's This is All Yours were a little fucked up.
It serves more as an inspiration than a distraction to me, but the resulting reffing will definitely be affected. When I feel forced to write and no music feels right, the reffing's going to be lazy and half-assed, whereas I tend to be relatively proud of myself after a reffing + music session.
i absolutely cannot focus if i have any sort of distraction while i'm starting on any sort of writing thing, but once i'm rolling i usually just set trntbl to shuffle and make copious use of the skip button when lyrics are a discraction. daft punk, justice, and purity ring are generally good writing music for me.
I usually listen to some nice tango or instrumental hip hop, and then I watch a movie, and then I play some video games, and then I eat some chocolate, and then my reffing is six days late and I'm the worst.
I usually listen to some nice tango or instrumental hip hop, and then I watch a movie, and then I play some video games, and then I eat some chocolate, and then my reffing is six days late and I'm the worst.
