Designing a Pokemon TTRPG

[Username17]

So let's do a deep dive on the Karate Kid. Recall for the moment that the character class is intended to do the following:

• Ensure that the character is able to contribute to team goals in a level appropriate way at each level the game is intended to be played at.
• Ensure that he character is able to contribute to team goals in the manner the player expected when they chose the class.
• Clearly inform the other players what the character is bringing to the table.

Now I would say that Karate Kid has little problem hitting all of those design goals unless you expect the game to expand in power up to Kaiju Fights and Time Travel that the Karate Kid having a black belt is not especially meaningful for.

But assuming that we keep our plans to the level of exploring dungeons, fighting evil wizards, the occasional dragon hunt, and a big battle with mad scientists on top of a fortress in a storm - the Karate Kid has clear means to carry his weight. He can like punch stuff and shit. And in addition to his own kung fu, he also has a Pokémon that also has kung fu. Maybe a couple of Pokémon with kung fu.

But in order to make that character a thing, you have to simply give the Karate Kid his fucking kung fu Pokémon. If he doesn't have the kung fu Pokémon, whether it's because he has a Bellossum instead or because he hasn't run into a Makuhita to challenge during the on-screen adventures, the character class has failed utterly. It's failed to give the player what they asked for, and it's failed to give the other players what they thought they could rely upon.

Whatever explanation you give for the Karate Kid having a Machop companion at level 1 and a Lucario companion at level 20, or indeed whether you have an explanation at all, the simple fact of the matter is that the Karate Kid needs to be an Elothar Warrior of Bladereach who actually has a Lucario companion at level 20 written into their progression.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Jesus, Frank, I said the Karate Kid gets fucking Aura powers and shit. Didn't you write the Tome Monk? I thought you knew the power of kung fu? The Karate Kid is his own fucking Lucario, except even better.

I'm honestly starting to think that nearly every class should make you start off with a Pokemon that's appropriate for the class. Maybe you pick from a list, or there are some guidelines you follow, but that seems like an obvious solution.

It's also important to keep in mind that I don't watch, nor give a shit about the anime. Almost everything I know about it is shit I remember from being a kid or shit I looked up on Bulbapedia. You'll have to inform me about the Pokemon zeitgeist because that shit is stupid and I intentionally avoided it for years (and still do).

I'm curious, though: Do you think Detective and Cop should be different classes?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

How about we look at a basic adventure?

Because most people are uncreative hacks, we can assume that at some point, our group of trainers will stumble upon some bad guys doing bad shit. Let's use an example that isn't too inconceivable: They're holed up in the most important or defensible building in town and don't want to come out. Plus they've got hostages. The hostages may or may not be overly threatened by the bad guys, but either way, they aren't allowed to leave. The cops are beaten, bribed, or just taking forever to do anything about it, so it's up to our heroes to save the day. And maybe loot the place, too.

How do they handle it?

Let's assume it's obvious where the bad guys are and they can just ask around town and find out, since there's an ongoing hostage situation. The first problem is getting inside, which the Karate Kid, Psychic, and Burglar seem the most adept at, followed by the Pokemaniac, Ranger, and Super Nerd depending on their loadouts. Once inside, they need to find out where the hostages and bad guys are, which everyone except the Ranger and Karate Kid should be able to do easily - possibly the Ranger as well, if he's stealthy. Of course, when and/or if things go loud, everyone can hold their own. If things go REALLY loud, the Ranger can just start breaking down walls with their Pokemon, which could help the hostages get away. Otherwise, they probably wind up fighting or threatening the bad dudes unless they SOMEHOW get the hostages out undetected, and they probably barely win after getting swarmed by goons and Ekans and shit. They find out that a few of the group got away and the hostages are safe, and you've got the end of your adventure.

The Pokemaniac and Ranger seem most dependent on what Pokemon they have for this scenario. At least the Ranger is better at manipulating (and destroying) terrain and could possibly 'borrow' any wild Pokemon in the area - the Pokemaniac is at the mercy of his party. The Psychic and Burglar seem to handle every situation, and possibly the Karate Kid, depending on how advanced his aura powers are. The Super Nerd is hard to gauge without actually nailing down what they can craft, but I assumed they could at least make a radar and some combat bombs or something. Overall, everybody seems able to contribute, but our two Pokemon-dependent classes seem... weak? Or at least it's difficult for them to contribute on their own merits.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, though.

[Username17]

Jesus, Frank, I said the Karate Kid gets fucking Aura powers and shit. Didn't you write the Tome Monk? I thought you knew the power of kung fu? The Karate Kid is his own fucking Lucario, except even better.

He's better in the sense that he also has a Lucario. The point isn't that being a master of kung fu isn't enough to let you pull your weight. It is enough to pull your weight in most scenarios. Lucario is a fucking Dragonball character. He has a battle aura that blows shit up and he can shoot energy blasts like he was in Street Fighter.

The issue is that being a Dragonball character doesn't scale up as high as some things in the setting go. To give a concrete example: Celebi has gone backwards in time and destroyed the town that you would eventually be born in. Which means that you have to solve problems in the past or you'll retroactively cease to have ever existed. That's a real adventure that actually happened and there is obviously no means of the Karate Kid's core ability set to interact with that whether they are powerful enough to shoot Aura Spheres or not.

As long as we confine ourselves to basic dungeon delve adventures where we go through ruins and Team Skull bases to fight monsters and rival Pokémasters, then making various Elothar classes is just a math problem. Some classes can be more or less competent as a character and compensate by having a less or more competent Pokémon squad. Once we get out of that comfort zone, we get scenarios where the required ability sets are more specific and characters won't necessarily be balanceable by getting a bigger attack or having a better Pokémon.

And that doesn't just have to be Deoxys style universe shifting or Celebi style time travel. It could also just be social adventures. If you need to do ballroom dancing or some fucking thing, it's not going to matter whether you have Wailord or whatever, you need to be able to wear a sequined dress and fucking dance. The fact that a lot of the character concepts are like fourteen years old means that they simply aren't allowed into some adventuring locations whether they can create Hyperbeams or not.

I'm honestly starting to think that nearly every class should make you start off with a Pokemon that's appropriate for the class. Maybe you pick from a list, or there are some guidelines you follow, but that seems like an obvious solution.

Well yes. If you're a Bird Keeper, you have Flying Pokémon. You have to or it's a violation of your character concept. If someone asks to play a Bird Keeper they not only need to have a starting Pidgey, but you also enter a social contract that they will have a Mandibuzz or Braviary at some time in the future. Because if they were to end up with a Croconaw or something instead they wouldn't be a Bird Keeper anymore.

I'm curious, though: Do you think Detective and Cop should be different classes?

That's a complex question, and the answer depends on how many classes you end up with. The fact that Detective Tim and Officer Jenny are major characters from major properties seen by millions of people means that you're going to want to support both characters. You could make a single class that does both things.

Personally, I'd probably do them as separate characters, because that gives you a place to rant about the Detective games and movie separately from the Officer Jenny rant. And some of the Officer Jenny stuff is remarkably specific and weird. Did you know that one of the available advancement options is "Penal Legion Fire Captain?" That's when an Officer Jenny gets the services of a small army of ex-con Water Type Pokémon who form a paramilitary unit that fights fires. That has happened at least three times for different Officer Jennies, so it's not a weird one-off, it's a normal Officer Jenny advancement option.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

The issue is that being a Dragonball character doesn't scale up as high as some things in the setting go. To give a concrete example: Celebi has gone backwards in time and destroyed the town that you would eventually be born in. Which means that you have to solve problems in the past or you'll retroactively cease to have ever existed. That's a real adventure that actually happened and there is obviously no means of the Karate Kid's core ability set to interact with that whether they are powerful enough to shoot Aura Spheres or not.

I dunno what the fuck any of our hypothetical party could do about that. Maybe the Super Nerd could invent a fucking time machine? We start punching portals across space and time? I struggle to think of almost any concept that can actually contend with at-will time travel. My mind reels whenever time travel gets used in TTRPGs, because in my experience it always feels like the GM just fucking with me and it raises a billion questions. I'm not saying Celebi shouldn't be able to do it, I just seriously don't know how to handle it. Officer Jenny becomes the Time Police?

And that doesn't just have to be Deoxys style universe shifting or Celebi style time travel. It could also just be social adventures. If you need to do ballroom dancing or some fucking thing, it's not going to matter whether you have Wailord or whatever, you need to be able to wear a sequined dress and fucking dance. The fact that a lot of the character concepts are like fourteen years old means that they simply aren't allowed into some adventuring locations whether they can create Hyperbeams or not.

In the absence of detailed social mechanics, wouldn't that stuff just involve skill checks, and possibly class features?

Personally, I'd probably do them as separate characters, because that gives you a place to rant about the Detective games and movie separately from the Officer Jenny rant. And some of the Officer Jenny stuff is remarkably specific and weird. Did you know that one of the available advancement options is "Penal Legion Fire Captain?" That's when an Officer Jenny gets the services of a small army of ex-con Water Type Pokémon who form a paramilitary unit that fights fires. That has happened at least three times for different Officer Jennies, so it's not a weird one-off, it's a normal Officer Jenny advancement option.

I still don't actually know anything about the Detective games or movies that makes them worth emulating. Wikipedia has not helped me in this endeavor, it sounds fairly generic. Also, your knowledge regarding the anime is impressively baffling. Did you actually watch the whole fucking anime or something? If so, why?
Wait, wait a minute... are you talking about the Squirtle Squad?

[John Magnum]

I haven't actually seen DBZ, what was the mechanism by which Trunks travelled through time?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Time machine.

[DrPraetor]

To be clear, because I think this might have gotten lost in the mix:
The Karate Kid has a full loaf of kung fu and also a machop, mienfoo or whatever that then evolves.

If you're doing a full pokemon RPG (instead of just adding pokemasters to an existing setting), the "how many pokemon do you have?" slider shouldn't go down to 0 for any of the playable classes. You could certainly restrict classes to only one type of pokemon even if they aren't pokemon specialists.

That is, there is room for both a Martial Artist who has fewer/less-well-trained pokemon that are all fighting, and a Warlord who has lots of higher-grade pokemon that are all or mostly fighting.

In fact, you might define all the classes in that way, instead of worrying about hikers and nerds, and then let people choose their type as an additional splat?

So your secondary skill could be Nerd or Hiker or Detective, and then you pick a type (Water, Fighting, Dragon, whatever), and you either have stronger pokemon but no personal powers, or more limited/weaker pokemon but personal powers.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Yes, you're right. The question isn't whether or not you're a Blue Mage, the question is how much of a Blue Mage are you? Since I'm still playing around with the idea of mandatory multiclassing, if you HAVE to pick two classes, then we could just go the extra step and explicitly score classes on their personal combat and pokemon combat. If you really want to, you can get 2 classes that focus on YOU beating ass, or get 2 classes and rely entirely on your Pokemon to do shit for you. I really don't like the idea of forcing people to take 1 trainer combat class and 1 pokemon combat class if they don't want to, but that's definitely something I would talk about in the class section. Another idea I had was that you start off with only 1 Pokemon slot available (for your starter), and your classes increase that limit. For example, picking the Officer Jenny class would give you +0 Pokemon slots, while picking the Pokemaniac or Type Ace would give you +4 or something. The number of pokemon people are allowed to have is a fairly arbitrary number that I am okay fucking with for game purposes.

Oh, one last idea that I will drop and offer no explanation for: How about a Harvest Moon minigame?

I guess a Musician could just sing the song of time or something.

[Dean]

If you can design a decent Harvest Moon minigame you're leaps and bounds ahead of the entire industry. A Harvest Moon game is part of the "Domain Game" element of rpg's that literally no one has cracked.

The closest to a Harvest Moon minigame in any RPG I know of would be the town creation minigames that Free League puts in a bunch of their games like Forbidden Lands and Mutant: Year Zero.

This isn't to say you should consider it an unsolvable problem, it's not at all. But just know you won't be able to just crib somebody else's work. Domain stuff is hard. That said if you relegate yourself to a concept as small as "make a good functioning agricultural business!" then that itself might give you a huge edge that all the other domain minigame designers haven't had.

[jadagul]

There are a couple of worldbuilding decisions that are important but you're sort of circling around. (Not that no one has talked about them, but I don't think people are on the same page.)

The big one is, is catching pokemon tech? Like, in the video games, it's very heavily implied that it is. You can go to the supermarket and buy a pokeball for two dollars. Your catching-pokemon tutorial is when a random old dude walks into the grass and catches the first thing he sees. Clearly, catching pokemon is something that people can just do.

On the other hand, if you want the world to make any goddamn sense, this doesn't really work. There are trainers with two pokemon. There are trainers with one pokemon. Why wouldn't they just buy half a dozen balls and fill out their team?

And you as the player are one of literally two characters with decent coverage. Most trainers have, as Frank has pointed out, like three Machops and a Machoke or something dumb like that. Why don't they go catch a Hypno and an Electrode or something to round out the team?

(You can ask these same questions about the anime: why doesn't Jenny have six Pokemon, and use them all at once? But I only actually know the games, so I'm talking about those.)

If I read people correctly: Frank is arguing that for game design reasons, you really can't have pokeballs be tech. And TAA is arguing, but like, what happens if someone throws a pokeball at a wild pokemon? Obviously you can buy the fucking things. So what happens if a Black Belt tries to catch a Ponyta?

But the interesting thing is that even nominal lore-wise, that's a good question that demands answers, because most Black Belts actually don't have Ponytas for coverage. Why not?

---

There are a couple answers you could go with (including "basically everyone you duel is basically LARPing at you"), but one plausible one is that people are genuinely limited in how many and one kind of pokemon they can connect to. The hiker has two Geodudes and an Onix because he can only connect with Rock-types and only with two or three of those.

You and your rival keep having people rhapsodizing at them about what amazing trainers they are because you're two of like five people in the entire continent who can actually keep teams of six pokemon, and the only two who can also have them be different types. The pokeballs can go ahead and be cheap, because the actual constraint on pokemon ownership is what you personally can support.

Under that model, then your class would be "which pokemon can you actually connect to". If you're a hiker, you can throw as many pokeballs at a Pikachu as you want; you're never going to catch it, because you don't have the right connection-energy. (Or maybe it's possible, but only if they're way underleveled; so a level 20 Hiker can have a level 5 Pikachu and who cares).

And maybe you take the class that gets four high-level pokemon and few personal skills, or maybe you take the class that gets two mid-level pokemon and lots of personal skills. (The world contains people who get like two low-level pokemon and few personal skills, but they're definitely NPCs.)

And then you can talk about the extent to which these characters are guaranteed to get level appropriate Pokemon of the correct flavor, and how we guarantee that we see that.

---

Now for me personally, this would bother me a lot. To me, the central feature of Pokemon is that you Gotta Catch 'Em All. A game in which you cannot Catch 'Em All is fundamentally unsatisfying. (One reason I don't really have any interest in playing the newer Pokemon games is that the idea of trying to fill a Pokedex with eight hundred seven entries is just exhausting.)

But I'm not designing this game and also not playing it, so it doesn't matter what would satisfy me. It only matters if my opinions are pretty common. Which I think they are not.

[Grek]

A slightly different place to draw the line would be that while you can certainly catch any pokemon you throw a pokeball at, most people can only train the specific types of pokemon they get along with best. And only a limited number of those at once, because training a pokemon takes effort. So while the Hiker can catch a Pikachu if he wants to, whenever he lets it out of the pokeball it behaves pretty much like Ash's Pikachu does whenever Team Rocket almost manages to steal him - the pokemon refuses to obey any of the Hiker's commands and is very likely to shock him a bunch.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

That said if you relegate yourself to a concept as small as "make a good functioning agricultural business!" then that itself might give you a huge edge that all the other domain minigame designers haven't had.

To actually explain myself, the concept I had in mind was basically a Pokemon ranch with some land you can farm on. It's something my players have really been enjoying, using Digletts to tunnel to freshwater springs and setting dragons to guard it and all that shit.

There are a couple of worldbuilding decisions that are important but you're sort of circling around.

To be honest, answering some of those important questions is one thing I have a problem with. Obviously, the franchise doesn't bother to answer all sorts of shit, and that's assuming it isn't contradicting itself. In order to have a more cohesive game, it's important to pin down that shit so you can make mechanics that more accurately model what you want. The part where I have questions is how far is too far? It's sort of like D&D where you have all these stupid legacy mechanics that the game would be better off without, but alignment just feels like D&D, man. People are willing to accept change, but it's a slow process that doesn't always work. Pokemon has all this stupid shit and unanswered questions that people all have their own answers to, and definitively answering that makes me feel uncomfortable. I'll do it, but I'll feel weird about it.

But the interesting thing is that even nominal lore-wise, that's a good question that demands answers, because most Black Belts actually don't have Ponytas for coverage. Why not?

Even most gym leaders have little in the way of coverage. The actual answer to that question is that Pokemon is a franchise for children and it's easier to grok single-type teams. This dude fights, so he has fighting Pokemon! This dude is a ninja, so he has poison Pokemon! Clearly that shit doesn't fly in tabletop, because that isn't really a fucking answer.
We can boil this down to two simplistic answers: Either the Black Belt cannot catch a Ponyta, or he chooses not to. Of these, the latter makes more sense to me from an in-universe perspective. He trains all day to kick people in the face, so he catches Pokemon that also like to do that, because it's easier to train them to kick people in the face, too. The problem is that this isn't terribly satisfying from a game design perspective unless he can go out and secure his own face-kicking Pokemon.

Grek's idea is mildly offensive to me. What's the point of catching a Pokemon if you can't use it? The same thing applies when you have something that's 10 levels beneath you. The odds that it can really contribute to level-appropriate adventures at that point seem low. You're basically cockblocking the player at that point, no?

[jadagul]

See, I feel like "he chooses not to" makes way less sense from an in-universe perspective. Unless you give him some specific skills that make it easier to train fighting pokemon. In which case we've replaced "he can't use a Ponyta" with "he can't use a Ponyta well", which isn't all that different in terms of real options.

Like, one possibility is that your Black Belt just can't catch a Rattata no matter how much he wants one. Another is that he can catch it but can't use it, which is Grek's idea. A slightly weaker version of that is that he can catch it, but can't use it even vaguely competently: my idea was that maybe he has a penalty to command non-Fighting pokemon, or something, and so realistically he can only use a Rattata if it's wildly underleveled. And then at the weakest end, maybe he just gets a bonus to using Fighting pokemon so he could use other things but doesn't bother.

The fourth one seems really weak to me, though, because coverage is _super valuable_. If you're a psychic trainer and have a team full of psychic types, it's probably worth it to have one Machoke to clear out those Dark-types that you're totally helpless against, even if your Machoke is much weaker in general than another Kadabra would be.

(And in lore we see that high-level trainers do get some coverage: Lorelei dabbles in Water so she can get a Slowbro; Bruno splashes Rock or Ground so he can get two Onixes; Agatha splashes Poison for a Golbat and an Arbok; and Lance splashes Flying for a Gyarados and an Aerodactyl. Except for Bruno, these are all spash-types that a lot of their main-types share, but they clearly get two distinct types. But only two, as basically the highest-level trainers in the setting.

(Actually a lot of Fighting specialists get to splash Rock-types, I think; probably because in Gen 1 there's only two "common" evolutionary lines of Fighting-types, plus the Poliwrath. But also because flying is too common to be a total hose, and Rock is good coverage there.)

So if we want to justify teams like the ones we see in-game, we would have to make the off-type penalty harsh enough to make the coverage not worth it. My suggestion was that you completely or nearly completely disallow the use of secondary types.

But of course you don't actually need to support game-style teams. If your Black Belt has a bonus to training Fighting-types, and is guaranteed at least one level-appropriate Fighting-type in one way or another, maybe it's fine if his party is actually two Fighting types, and then a Houndour and Pikachu or something. Even though you wouldn't see that in Gold.

[Grek]

Grek's idea is mildly offensive to me. What's the point of catching a Pokemon if you can't use it?

To send to a Pokemon Professor for research purposes. To give to people who WOULD be able to get a Pikachu to listen to them. To sell to whatever place Officer Jenny gets her Growliths from. Because you're sure it's just ornery and will come around with some love and friendship (and you taking Extra Type Affinity next level). To eat because it also happens to be a fish.

You're basically cockblocking the player at that point, no?

Is telling the Cleric that Fireball isn't on his class list cockblocking? Or instituting Essence so that cyborgs can't be good mages in Shadowrun? Making people put points in Feelings OR Lasers but not being allowed to have max ranks in both?

If you want a diverse cast of characters, you've got to set up some role protection somehow, and divvying things up according (at least in part) to what kind(s) of pokemon you can befriend is both the obvious way to do it and one that is supported by the characters we see in the franchise. I mean yes, you could have a character who gets Extra Type Affinity at level one in place of knowing karate or having psychic powers or being a police officer or knowing how to pick locks. And when the Hiker levels up to Ranger, the Trainer can level up to Ace Trainer and get a third Type Affinity.

[pragma]

The fourth one seems really weak to me, though, because coverage is _super valuable_. If you're a psychic trainer and have a team full of psychic types, it's probably worth it to have one Machoke to clear out those Dark-types that you're totally helpless against, even if your Machoke is much weaker in general than another Kadabra would be.

Alternatively, this seems like a great opportunity for justifying why characters are playing as an ensemble. If most classes won't have coverage to fight arbitrary pokemon on their own, then characters need to team up to have a chance in fights where the types are stacked against them.

[Username17]

A game in which everyone can catch anything has no role protection and no roles to protect. No one has any player-declared abilities worth noting because everyone is a 2nd edition AD&D Fighter wholly dependent on the whims and mercy of the MC. If that's your design, you have failed and need to go back and rethink your life.

A game where the Bug Catcher has Bug Pokémon and only Bug Pokémon while the Ninja has Poison Pokémon and only Poison Pokémon is a game where choices made in character generation matter and where different characters are able to contribute to the team goals in distinct and explicable ways. It's a game that has roles that can be protected and players can choose which roles their character are going to have.

The question of whether the Bird Keeper should be able to find and capture a Braviary before they would be expected to get one passively through level-up is an open one. Getting Pokémon upgrades as "treasure" is of course not balanced. It is however fun to have access to overleveled Pokémon, and the MC can use these found Pokémon to give larger boosts to players that are falling behind. Like, if for whatever reason the Fisher has been fairly inadequate the MC would be able to throw a powerful Poliwrath in for the Fisher to catch and do better in the future. But of course, this can also be an outlet for gross favoritism like having the MC give his girlfriend a Tsareena when her Gardener was already the most powerful character.

Anyway, the point is that you can make good arguments for a Ninja to be able to capture a Toxapex to get ahead, and good arguments that they should not be able to do that. There is no argument that a Ninja should be able to catch and use a Poliwrath at any point. If you find yourself writing rules that do that you have failed to write a Pokémon table top RPG. Full fucking stop.

As for the existence of a Pokémon vs Trainer slider, you could do that. I think it would be very hard, and that you should keep that as an informal class design guide rather than making it a player-facing choice during character creation. I suspect that you'll end up finding that some of the Pokémon categories gain more from having a deeper roster and others gain less. So like, I suspect that a lot of Fighting type Pokémon are pretty similar and our Karate Kid would benefit more from being personally able to punch harder than to have another option of which Pokémon to have out. And equally, I suspect that the abilities of Ghost Pokémon are going to be a bit more eclectic and that Hex Maniacs might well gain more from having the option to throw out a different Pokémon. So I think you'd have a much easier time balancing things if you set the slider for the different classes where you thought it should go rather than leave it to the players to try to break it.

-Username17

[Username17]

It's very dangerous to introduce "choices" into an RPG that players are not supposed to select. The fail states are obvious: you create the fake option and people take it anyway and then their character sucks; or you create the fake option but it turns out that there's a way to exploit it you didn't think about because it wasn't supposed to be real. In fact, it's hard to imagine deliberately fake options ending up any other way.


It's over there. But it sucks.

A strong argument for fake options is the creation of NPC space. That is, it's OK if half spears are not as good as longswords if some of the NPC opponents can use half spears and make the opposition slightly more interesting. But even that argument fails when it comes to characters having crappy out-of-theme Pokémon, because they are out of theme! Even if you had a reason for the Player Character Ninjas to have Sandslash or Azumarill, you wouldn't want to the NPC Ninjas to do so.

Which means that you're literally just asking yourself if there's some way that a player character Bug Catcher can have a Machamp without shitting on the role protection of the Karate Kid and without that being a violation of their own character concept as a Bug Catcher and without that being either a Trap Option that's just significantly worse than having a Scizor or Orbeetle and without that being an obvious power move that fucking every Bug Catcher is going to take by swapping out their Beedrill at the first opportunity. I would submit that considering how close the fail states are in so many opposed directions, that your ability to thread that needle is probably not as good as you think it is.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

What about taking a leaf from PTU's playbook and let high-level Bug Catchers mutate Machamps into... Bugchamps? It gets some Bug moves and capabilities that they usually have, the trainer still gets to feel like they have a cool four-armed muscle man except now it has a carapace and doesn't have the same coverage as a regular Machamp?
Personally, I fucking love type-shifted Pokemon. They can get really dumb and bonkers, like the aformentioned four-armed bugman.

Actually, let me actually detail what the fuck I'm talking about so it hopefully makes more sense.

Let's say we take a page from Frank's book and we have a list of all 18 types - a list that would probably be hiding in the back of the book in the GM's section. This list would tell you what moves and capabilities and whatnot would be appropriate for each type at various tiers. For example, in the Fire list, Flamethrower (even though I'd change how that works, just bear with me) would show up at Tier 2. Also at Tier 2 most Fire-types should be able to manifest flames outside their body and be immune to environmental Fire damage and shit like that. A Tier 2 Fighting-type might instead have Wake-Up Slap and super-strength beyond even most Pokemon. In our hypothetical situation here, you'd take the Machamp and convert its Fighting-type abilities and shit into Fire-type, so it loses its super strength (but still has a high Power stat) and becomes immune to lava or something. Most of his Fighting moves would become Fire-type instead - possibly literally just swapping out the Type of his moves, I'm not really sure.

My idea here is that, sure, a Bug Catcher can catch a Machoke or something and be mildly disappointed that it isn't as good as the Karate Kid's. There's basically no reason to use it in comparison, but if he can turn that Machoke into a Bug and then start using his class features on it to make it a better Bug, I think we might have threaded the needle?
This, as with most shit I've posted, is a rough idea, so tear into it.

[Omegonthesane]

Given the difficulty in explaining in-world why Bruno can't have a Gyarados in his library when Ash can at age 10, I'd be linclined to assume it's probably better to allow off-brand captures for classes that blatantly have a brand and explicitly receive on-brand pokemon as class features.

If nothing else, because it means you are not totally fucked if e.g. your adventure path demands Water pokemon to solve a utility puzzle like putting out a fire and literally everyone in the party is a specialist in a non-Water type. I'll take weaker role protection over "all parties must have a Cleric" thanks.

[Dean]

It's very dangerous to introduce "choices" into an RPG that players are not supposed to select. The fail states are obvious: you create the fake option and people take it anyway and then their character sucks; or you create the fake option but it turns out that there's a way to exploit it you didn't think about because it wasn't supposed to be real. In fact, it's hard to imagine deliberately fake options ending up any other way.

I don't quite follow what you are objecting to or proposing. Is your position that you are against pokemon capturing or team forming from captured pokemon entirely? Because that position is a complete non starter. If you aren't allowed to capture pokemon you fight then no amount of conversation about Officer Jenny is relevant because you have abandoned the fundamental concept about the game and doing so to pursue tertiary conceptual space within it makes no sense.

I like the idea of using bonuses to types as a way to incentivize people to use types if that is on brand for the character type they are choosing. If they don't use them that's fine too and even if it's less objectively powerful that's still fine because the goal is to create an in-game reason why people might look like gym leaders. The premise that people won't choose optimal pokemon lineups is also not a worry because the games premise is that your options are to some degree limited by what you interact with so suboptimal choices are also a fundamental genre assumption. The optimal party choice might be a Mewtwo, Snorlax, Exeggutor, Arceus, Zapdos, Charizard team but your team is composed of a combination of the shit you meet and the stuff you choose from your class list when you get to choose because a couple free in-class theme pokemon every few levels.

I also think adults in an RPG can handle a slightly higher degree of narrative complexity than a childrens cartoon. So if the Rock leaders have 3 rock types, a ground type, a steel type, and a Venusaur as well as some rock themed abilities they'll still feel very on brand as a "rock guy" when you get in many fights with that person and see Rock pokemon and rock abilities get used by them all the time.

[Username17]

What about taking a leaf from PTU's playbook and let high-level Bug Catchers mutate Machamps into... Bugchamps? It gets some Bug moves and capabilities that they usually have, the trainer still gets to feel like they have a cool four-armed muscle man except now it has a carapace and doesn't have the same coverage as a regular Machamp?

Well, that sounds like one of those terrible cautionary tales where you try to make everyone happy and end up making no one happy.

So first of all, in my Pokémon D&D system, I did go down a similar route where players can use D&D template evolutions and turn their giant spiders into giant flaming spiders. This is because in that system the Pokémaster slots into a normal D&D party, gets whatever jank monsters the party happens to run into, and the directionality of their Pokémon evolutions is the only meaningful input the players have into what their character can do once the players have gone up a few levels.

If you posit multiple characters who all have Pokémon, they need to be differentiated in a different way. Once we have established that the Bug Catcher is a character class who has Bug Pokémon, the differentiation is clear. And in that context, giving the Bug Catcher a bullshit made up Pokémon that's kind of like a Machamp is shitting all over the player's agency in announcing that they were going to play a Pokémaster who had Bug Pokémon.

But beyond that, if the players are essentially crafting their Pokémon out of captured parts like they were assembling mechs in MechWarrior, you're basically just giving out points that players are buying their Pokémon with. Which is not different than just giving the players XP points and having them Elothar up some level and idiom appropriate Pokémon, except that you're literally and specifically declaring your intention to distribute those advancement points in a totally uneven and unfair fashion like you were playing an RPG from the late 1970s.

In the system I wrote, players did in fact use templates and make new Pokémon using the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. And you've rejected all the things that made that work and you can't do it without having that be an unmitigated disaster.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

If you posit multiple characters who all have Pokémon, they need to be differentiated in a different way. Once we have established that the Bug Catcher is a character class who has Bug Pokémon, the differentiation is clear. And in that context, giving the Bug Catcher a bullshit made up Pokémon that's kind of like a Machamp is shitting all over the player's agency in announcing that they were going to play a Pokémaster who had Bug Pokémon.

But beyond that, if the players are essentially crafting their Pokémon out of captured parts like they were assembling mechs in MechWarrior, you're basically just giving out points that players are buying their Pokémon with. Which is not different than just giving the players XP points and having them Elothar up some level and idiom appropriate Pokémon, except that you're literally and specifically declaring your intention to distribute those advancement points in a totally uneven and unfair fashion like you were playing an RPG from the late 1970s.

I don't actually understand what this means or why having a four-armed bugman is somehow not awesome.

[pragma]

I don't actually understand what this means or why having a four-armed bugman is somehow not awesome.

I have two takes:
1. Four armed bug-men are awesome for Bug-Catchers, but it cheapens the Karate Kid's experience of having a four-armed Karate Man.
2. The translation process where you have to pick substitute powers sounds fiddly and full of potentially abusable pitfalls. If you're doing a fighting->fire substitution that results in tier appropriate fire powers, why not just do a tier appropriate fire pokemon instead?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

If you're doing a fighting->fire substitution that results in tier appropriate fire powers, why not just do a tier appropriate fire pokemon instead?

Because a Bug-type Machamp is different from a Scyther or a Heracross.