Adventures in Helnith: Assault on the Town of Ash (OoC)

[Lord Ruby34]

I'm generally fine with Intimidate working either way, but I do have a few more questions.

1. Does Intimidate work normally when there are multiple intimidate users on one side of the battlefield? (I.E. drop attack X stages, where X is the number of Pokemon with Intimidate?
2. Does the attack drop from Intimidate stick around after the Intimidating Pokemon switches out or faints?

Spoiler: Intimidate Rambles -Big Nerd Alert - Feel Free to Ignore

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Assuming the answers to the above are yes and no respectively I'm going to compare this version of intimidate to the handheld games. Why? Because I'm a massive nerd, that's why! If my guesses as to your answers were wrong then please ignore everything else in the spoiler tag.

First Scenario. One on One Pokemon battle, one Pokemon has intimidate. This has exactly the same result no matter which version of Intimidate is used.

Second Scenario. Team Battle. The Pokemon with Intimidate wins it's first one on one, and does not switch out. This version means that any Pokemon that fights against the intimidating Pokemon is weaker, which makes Intimidate more powerful. In fact, an intimidating Pokemon is a pretty brutal wall against any physical attackers. With this version of Intimidate there is no way to double switch to get rid of the attack reduction. As long as the intimidating Pokemon is present, you're weakened.

Third Scenario. Team Battle. The Pokemon with Intimidate loses it's one on one, or is forced to switch out. If the attack drop does not persist, this weakens the Intimidate ability, as it goes away when the Pokemon does.

Forth Scenario. Team Battle, pivots. The value of intimidate is far lower here than it might otherwise be. For example, let's pretend we have a Torterra out on one side of the field. Pretend we're the other trainer. Our best answer to Torterra is something like a silver wind from a frail Bug Pokemon, but it's not necessarily a one shot. Earthquake, on the other hand, will probably one shot our bug if we switch in. If intimidate works like it does in the handheld games, we can try to get our bug in after a series of defense drops. Right now, we have a water Pokemon out. We can assume a grass attack, and switch into something like Luxio, dropping Torterra's attack and easily taking a razor leaf or giga drain, especially after lowering Torterra's attack. Then, in anticipation of Earthquake on our Electric type, we can switch in Gyarados (pretend it doesn't have any flying type attacks for this example), cutting attack again while dodging earthquake. Now, we're safe to switch our bug in, and silver wind twice, almost certainly surviving the earthquake (as long as it doesn't crit) that we're hit with on the second turn. But if Intimidate doesn't stick around after the intimidating Pokemon is gone, we can't make this play, as the earthquake will likely cleanly knock out our bug, no matter what we do.

Fifth Scenario. Multibattle with two sides, and enough Pokemon that intimidate doesn't hit everything. With this version of intimidate, as long as the intimidating Pokemon is on the field the enemy team is debuffed. That debuff will spread to the stronger Pokemon as their weaker allies fall. This makes good flavorful sense. With the handheld rules, the Pokemon that were intimidated at the beginning of the fight are the Pokemon who are intimidated, full stop.

Sixth Scenario. Multibattle with more than two sides, and enough Pokemon that not all targets are intimidated. (Current situation.) With the current intimidate rule, this can lead to some awkwardness. As the stronger side eliminates the weaker Pokemon without intimidate, then the Pokemon that weren't originally intimidated become scared because of their own success. Awkward flavor. With the Handheld version of the ability, the Pokemon that are intimidated at the beginning stay intimidated, and no additional Pokemon will become intimidated.

Seventh Scenario. Multibattle with many Pokemon with the Intimidate ability on one side. Either way, this sucks if you're trying to attack physically. With the current rule, there's no way to stop this from sucking. Your physical attacks are going to do next to no damage, so you better have some special attacks to clear out some of the intimidaters. With the handheld ability, you can swap twice to clear the debuff, but you'll suffer from not attacking or using any moves for two turns. Or you can clear with special attackers.

Additional note. The RPG format doesn't lend itself to cleanly having Pokemon come out at the same time, every time. That could make applying the handheld ability awkward.

/End Tangent. My opinion is still that I'm basically fine with the ability working either way, though if it doesn't work the same way as in the games it should probably be noted in a tab on the first page.

This rambling has also made me realize that Less should probably get a dedicated special attacker on his team. He's leaning pretty heavily towards the physical side at the moment. Hero will help out after evolution and a lot of SMs, but that'll be a ways away.


EDIT: Question came to me. For actual trainer battles are we playing on switch or set mode?