No.380664
I am fairly sure people will want to redirect me to the QTDDTOT thread but I think this deserves its own, since it is pretty alien and it isn't just a random question about a specific system.
Regardless, here's my issue: my group decided to play pokémon in a tabletop setting, we found PTA and decided to try it out.
When we were "testing" our pokémon however (A Vanillite and a Litwick) we found out that the damage was kind of too much, especially since the Vanillite managed to kill the Litwick violently everytime.
We then tested with higher and more varied pokémon and still found out that damage was out of control.
A doubt then emerged, what if the WHOLE system is unbalanced in this way?
Sure, damage can be homebrewed but what about other skills?
What about optimization?
And all that sort of junk.
So before we went into this system, we looked into PTU, however the sheet gave me PTSD from when I was first introduced to 5e.
I looked online and many people seem to prefer PTU... but then I realized, many people prefer 5e instead of AD&D.
Left without many choices, I decide to come here to my turf and ask you this question.
Which one is better?
PTA or PTU?
Is there any better system for a pokémon game?
____________________________
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.380669
Are they still releasing new versions of those games? Last time I saw them was years ago, at least six, so I figured they'd died by now.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.380675
>>380669
I am not entirely sure myself.
We got some PDFs online but for PTA I go to this site here.
http://pokemontabletop.wikidot.com/
Though... the last update was in 2013 so I wouldn't hold my breath.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.380681
>>380664
PTU 1.05 is the more up to date version and is a lot less janky. I'm running a game in it rn and none of my players have brought up the 5e comparison. In my opinion it is the best pokemon system out of the limited choices.
>>380669
There is a new edition the PTU devs are working on with the objective of making Pokemon Tabletop into more of its own thing rather than a carbon copy of the vidya games. I'm out of the loop with how that is going though.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.380738
>>380664
I remember trying PTA with friends years ago. What a fucking nightmare that was. Wild imbalance was just another topping on that shit sundae.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.380749
I've been running a couple PTU games for two years now and it's been enjoyable for everyone involved. There's a fair amount of bookkeeping to take care of on both sides of the GM's screen, but it's something you can adapt to after a while. I never played PTA, but PTU is relatively balanced when compared to D&D, not that it means much- there are ways to powergame, but it usually doesn't happen until late-game when you're starting to pile all your bonuses together into a laser-precision focus.
Damage can be pretty crazy, especially if you aren't following the formula right when types are involved, and it's usually better to try and kill something rather than set up, but not every fight will be an open 1:1 affair, and it's in "unfair" fights that the system shines most. You can really pound the shit out of your players and they'll still survive, so you should make sure you put them in their place every now and again.
Character creation is a motherfucker, though, I warn you now. It's quite fun and one of my favorite things to do now, but the initial barrier can seem quite high. I recommend picking a class or two and working backwards from there.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.380750
>>380681
At least PTU rebalanced the Ninja Class...remember the earlier versions of the Ninja class?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.380752
>>380681
>I'm out of the loop with how that is going though.
I ran a session of that with a couple of my players a few months ago, and it was rough, but interesting. The most important change about it I liked was making trainers and their pokemon share a single turn, which is supplemented by more moves having expanded effects and be usable with more actions. For example, Tail Swipe is just a minor action, but you smack someone for a bit of damage, push them away, and make them deal -5 damage. Combined with the simplified damage base formula that let us do away with needing a table, everything ran a lot smoother than 1.05. It was a rough playtest and a lot of aspects of character creation and skills needed to be worked on, but my players and I liked most of the skeleton.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.380781
>>380664
>Is there any better system for a pokémon game?
I have no idea if it's better or not, but there is at least a third option called Pokerole. It uses a d6 dicepool-based system, and is fairly similar to WoD, mechanically. It should be worth testing out, at least.
http://pokeroleproject.wixsite.com/pokerole
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.381290
The issue with both PTA and PTU is combat eventually becomes rocket tag. PTU's a bit better about it, but it's got problems like the evasion system.
Journeys doesn't seem to be fixing those issues very much, either. Then again, it's also Cast's pet project and I just hate that fucker's attitude, so maybe I'm biased.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.381327
>>381290
Even in the video games it's all about hitting your opponent's weak spot to try and one-shot them. Sure, there are other strategies, and lots of them work well, but they all pale in comparison to just blowing the other guy apart. I can't think of a way to reconcile this with the type system without making weaknesses less effective, which is one of the allures of Pokemon, anyway. Isn't evasion fucked in the video games, anyway? Just spam Minimize or Double Team and you're nearly unhittable.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.381382
>>381327
>I can't think of a way to reconcile this with the type system without making weaknesses less effective, which is one of the allures of Pokemon, anyway.
They already did that, weaknesses deal 1.5x damage and double weaknesses do 2x.
Evasion's broken in the games too, yes, but in the games you can't hit 30 Speed and increase the AC of any moves trying to hit you by 6.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.381845
>>381382
>They already did that, weaknesses deal 1.5x damage and double weaknesses do 2x.
I always fucking forget about that. Ran a game for months before I realized I was doing it wrong, and I still hadn't actually figured out the complete damage formula. The rocket tag wasn't so bad once I realized that, though. Plus, stacking DR has been highly effective for one of my players.
>Evasion's broken in the games too, yes, but in the games you can't hit 30 Speed and increase the AC of any moves trying to hit you by 6.
+6 AC isn't that bad, especially since you can bump it up to +9, the absolute maximum. This means that accurate moves like Tackle need an 11 to hit you, which is still an improvement over the video games, where you'd only have a 33% chance to hit instead of 50%. When we examine a highly inaccurate move such as Dynamic Punch, it has an AC of 9 and an Accuracy of 50%. In the video games, you'd have a 16.5% chance to hit someone with maximum evasion, but in the tabletop it's only a 15% chance to hit, since you need an 18+. However, you can count the number of moves that are this inaccurate on two hands, so if we look at something more reasonable like Blizzard which has an AC of 7 and 70% accuracy, you have a 23% chance of landing it in the games and a 20% chance in the tabletop. For the sake of thoroughness, let's look at Hydro Pump, with an AC of 4 and 80% accuracy. A 13+ means we hit 35% of time, while the games has a pitiful 26.4%.
At extreme levels of evasion while using highly inaccurate moves, you are more likely to miss in PTU than in the video games. However, once you reach a low threshold, you are far more likely to hit your target in PTU. For the record, there are less than 30 moves that fall underneath this threshold.
The math does not support your claim that the games are less broken than the tabletop in this regard.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.381846
>>381845
Side note: Can we mention how goddamn bonkers the gen 1 evasion was?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.381856
>>381845
Oh, one thing I overlooked: While the games unified accuracy and evasion when calculating the hit chance, the tabletop does not. Theoretically, you could wind up with a -6 to your Accuracy while your opponent has 9 Evasion. Then you're totally fucked. But honestly, if things have gotten that bad, you probably fucked up several rounds ago.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.383378
>>381845
You can just start every fight with 6 evasion, though, and you can't do that in the games, unless there's an ability I don't know about. Evasion might be worse in the games, but it's not ever-present like it is in PTU, especially at higher levels.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.383432
>>381856
This was a fix I was thinking about for the video game, but it might work here.
Why not have it so evasion only increases how likely a Pokemon is to dodge while it is actively attempting to dodge or has been ordered to?
If you're shooting off flamethrowers or trying to punch something, you're not gonna dodge as well compared to just focused on dodging.
Accuracy can affect regular attacks, but primarily make it more like an out-maneuver stat (how quick the poke reacts to opponents that dodge).
Of course, I'd also say don't have encounters where the Pokes spam double team and the like. Or re-work accuracy and evasion moves to be more like their anime counterparts (sand attack/mud slap is true blindness for a much shorter time, double team is Mirror Image, etc).
The other idea I had for the Pokemon games was that stat boosts "decay". If a stat is above/below what it should be, it changes at the end of each turn except the turn you got that boost. I.e. Belly Drum raises your attack 5 stages. Then the end of next turn it goes down to 4, then 3, etc. Prevents buffs and debuffs being godly. I know >>381845 says the game has buffs/debuffs being even greater. Not sure if that'll help or if that needs reworking as a whole to be more reasonable.
>>381290
I think you don't get this issue in other games like D&D is because the campaigns throw stuff at you that is better. Players take a big leap forward in power, and they can still fight shit they need to be smart about. You end up fighting gods and demons because that's how god damn strong you are.
The games are a little limited with the base stats of Pokemon, but if the moves are too powerful, why not just have the players fight stronger opponents? Nerf the damage a little and you have enemies that live longer.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.383710
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.384152
>>383378
That's a good point. In my experience (a little over 2 years of playing 1-2 times a month), evasion was rarely a big factor in a fight except for the ones where I specifically wanted someone to dodge as many attacks as possible.
>>383432
Double Team really isn't that useful, since it only gives a +3 against a couple of attacks, and calculating combat stages changing every round would be a headache for people who actually play it on a tabletop.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.384176
>>384152
>Double Team really isn't that useful, since it only gives a +3 against a couple of attacks, and calculating combat stages changing every round would be a headache for people who actually play it on a tabletop.
Ah shit, my bad. Even if you scribble down what one "stage" of boost should be, you have to re-calc when you level up/get other stat boosts.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.385157
>>384176
I actually use some mathematic shorthand to make combat stages not such a huge pain in the ass - Most of the time, a stat will be boosted by X when a combat stage is increased by one, and X is equal to the stat divided by 5. 22 Attack, for example, is boosted to 26 after 1 CS, 30 after 2, 35 after 3, 39 after 4, 44 after 5, and 48 after 6. It's not perfect, as you can see, but it gets the job done close enough on the fly.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.392245
PTU felt like its own thing, and journey just feels like a sad attempt at a D20 ripoff. I feel like tabletop creators feel too much of a need to overhaul a system with every new release (keep it fresh, I guess?) without just polishing what they have (and I'm not trying to imply "just add more sourcebooks!"). PTU is more flexible in creation/progression, and there are a lot of ways to reconcile players that minmax, especially since encounters don't have to be as straightforward as the games. It's not perfect, but I can enjoy it as is without needing excuses.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.392272
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.392293
>>392245
Thank god it's easy to homebrew for.
>>392272
Some guy who worked on the PTU team. From what I understand, most people were burned out on working on PTU more until Cast pushed it in the direction that Journey is going now.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.392301
>>380750
You mean where the Ninja can just say "I don't need Pokemon"
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.392401
>>392293
>Easy to homebrew for
It really is. My GM homebrews a lot of well balanced content and I even made a trainer class myself.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.392403
>>392401
I've made 3 dozen classes, 4 dozen pokemon edges, 16 weapon moves, 6 weather types, 5 pokemon, 4 edges, four sub-systems, and one setting.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.392422
>>392403
Care to share some of it?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.392697
>>392422
Maybe. Is there anything you're particularly interested in?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395638
Use Pokémon Showdown for the actual battles and the leveling up, the traveling and all that stuff be done in-person, so to say. It will let you edit your pokémanz all you want. Think about it.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395679
>>395638
You're gonna need to elaborate before this even begins to make sense.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395713
>>392697
More weapon moves would be nice.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395741
I'm OP.
We're currently playing on PTA, so far is working nicely.
Here is a bit of greentext for you all if you care
>Five players
>Lilly, Kagetaka (Me), Noboru, Leon and Samara
>In order we start with Litwick, Budew, Magnemite, Poliwag and Togepi
>we start, travel, joke around, do classic introduction stuff (even though by background we know each other)
>meet a ranger, he won't allow us to explore the outskirts unless we prove ourselves to him
>releases a fucking heracross, we get steamrolled
>retcon
>we fight, my poor budew steamrolled by a slowpoke because I forgot to apply Special Defense but I accept the defeat for character development
>then it's togepi vs spinarack
>togepi uses Sacred Fire, which is an AoE that deals absurd damage
>forest on fire our characters and pokemon are dead (we didn't know at the time that pokemon lower than level 20 cannot deal lethal blows)
>retcon that as well
>we continue on
>see a sunkern and a pidgey
>my character ambushes the sunkern, scares the ever living shit out of it and capture it at the first go without even weakning it (30% chance)
>Noboru capture the pidgey and then pretty much regrets wasting a pokeball
>since Lilly (ghost obsessed) has no pokeballs I suggest as a joke for the DM to make a Gengar appear that was willing to be captured by Lilly
>a Gengar actually appears
>and wants to be captured by Lilly
>she begs me to give her a poke ball
My character, by the way, is a deadpan serious type who previously went "If you don't end up hurting yourself you will never learn".
>so what do I say to Lilly?
>"I can't, otherwise you'll never learn"
>Gengar is bored of waiting and fucks off
>Lilly goes back to the closest shop and buy pokeballs, getting the hint
>meet bug trainers
>a caterpie has been taken
>my character wants to be a ranger, he goes in a beeline to the HQ of this "Giant Gang"
>meet the guys
>they use stun guns against use
>we steamroll them with pokemons and sheer beatings
>get inside
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395742
>>395741
>meet more
>as we kick their asses three onyxes appear
>we kill one, everyone is shocked and mood is down
>afterwards we learn that bit about pokemon not being lethal until level 20
>everyone still fairly shocked and mood only slightly down
>meet even more of this gang
>they release the caterpie
>only the caterpie is now the size of two onyxes stacked together
>we fight the bug kaju
>then give a sheer beating to the two gang members
>we meet bug trainers and they tell us about how bugs are cool
>my character is convinced and stays perfectly still in the grass with his budew and sunkern
>the others fuck off
>a small sickly (literally its nature) level 1 weedle crawls with several tiny crutches to me
>decide it will become my main companion and call it Emperor
>DM gives me the sheet after it allows itself to be captured (there was cuddling and feeding involved)
>turns out its female
>fuck
>hear an explosion
>towards the direction the rest of the group went
>fuck
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395744
>>395742
>apparently while I was waiting and taming the weedle the group meet a gang called "Explosion Gang"
>guess what move their pokemon knew
>7x7 AoE 100+ damage move
>god damn it
>I go to find them in a crater in a yamcha position
>bring them to a pokemon center
>bill is 40 grand
>thankfully a ranger payed for the bill
>we go out
>find out the nearby mall was occupied by people threatening to blow up the building and the hostages
>gee I wonder who the fuck could be
>we head there, or rather I head there heroically and the others follow less so
>ranger outside says everything is under control
>ranger inside screams for help
>he rush inside
>find two gang members, beat them up, I punch a geodude in the jaw to no effect
>get up the floors
>find more gang members, they all seem hypnotized and are acting like zombies, murmuring their orders around
>we beat them up slightly
>they order explosion
>nearby voltorb is about to explode
>I ask "Can I throw myself on it to defend the rest of the group?"
And that's pretty much where we've been cut off.
I must say though, PTA is pretty nifty, though it could have had more details regarding things like breaking bones, damage severity etc.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395858
>>395741
>>395742
>>395744
Ah, just another day playing Pokemon, getting the shit beaten out of you constantly.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395863
>>395713
Alright, here you go. It's a bit longer than I expected, so I put it into a pastebin instead of just posting it here.
https://pastebin.com/kd2t8irV
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395865
>>395744
Let me share a story from my PTU session last week, since mine is so far away from what people usually consider Pokemon.
>the party (A rogue, a knight, a samurai, and a cook) were away from the starting town for several weeks doing adventure
>in one of the dungeons, they discover a map of the villain's plans
>he's been going around sacking villages and the town is next
>they fuck around and take a week getting back
>there's a fucking bandit horde outside the walls
>they fly over on Gyarados and into town and guess that there are around 3000 bandits
<fuck dude this town has 2000 people
<200 of them are strong enough to actually fight
>while the party is telling the town's mayor about this, the bandits are chopping down trees in the forest and setting up tents
>the rogue is pretty sure she spotted a couple of cannons out there too
>fuck
>okay
>she spends and entire day messing around with chemistry and makes a bunch of explosive alchemist's fire out of some poison gunk she looted from some mages a few weeks ago
>they spend half an hour deliberating on what to do
>most of it about whether to throw the vials individually or tie them together for one big bomb
>decide to go with the bomb since it does stupid (6d12+35+15) damage in a 3x3 meter range
>they hop on Gyarados and fly away
>flying low on the approach, they decide to get just shy of throwing range just so they're barely within the range of the archers in the horde
>they get volleyed
>this is actually a Fossil Gyarados that's more machine than animal, so it's Rock/Flying
>lol 1 damage
>they get above the cannon
>the knight has the best throwing arm, but the samurai directs him on exactly when to throw so he gets a bonus
>doesn't matter because he rolls a 1
>they blow up 4 or 5 goons guarding the cannon and I describe their agonizing deaths as they get melted to the bone
>then the mages come out of their tents and start firing lasers at Gyarados
>all this constant damage is actually making some rocks start to crumble off
>just as they're about to leave, the last mage crits Gyarados and KO's it
<except the samurai intercepted the attack by running alongside it and slashing the giant laser away with his Doublade
>they fly straight up and GTFO back to town
>the next day a 40-foot tall Grimer shows up in the river, poisoning it and fucking up a few dozen people before the party put it down
>I pull out the worst video game bullshit and make the Grimer pop out smaller Grimers as they kept hurting it
>mfw this whole time
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395939
>>395863
Looks nice.
Take Aim's stealth effect seems a bit ridiculous, though. "The next attack cannot miss" would probably be better.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395947
>>395741
How the fuck did Togepi use Sacred Fire? Metronome?
Also with ISIS and dying Pokemon it sounds surprisingly edgy. Is that just how it was run, or are there actual rules for "maturing" Pokemon with death and what not?
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395955
>>395939
It would be more balanced, I think I'll do that. Thanks for the idea.
>>395947
>surprisingly edgy
You are like a little baby, one of my players (the samurai) just hit level 9, so he's at the point where he's beheading multiple people every encounter and chopping bandits in half. I like to draw the blood splatters on the map, we giggle every time and it's fun to look at when the battle's over.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.395985
>>392403
yeah well I made an entire system, you should try it out; It's called PTE. Pokemon Tabletop Evolution.
After getting some emails from people who apparently liked my system over PTA and PTU I decided to work on it again and bring it up to date. It's got a long story going with it and originally started as me trying to fix the clunkiness of PTA, my campaign with it lasted 3 years before I finally had something I wanted to release.
This is the only version I have posted to the internet so far.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/d8tnm9m9h9w8mmh/PTE_Players_Handbook_1.0.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/download/a67n39z9nrlu3av/PTE_Pokedex_1.0.zip
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.404644
>>395985
Speaking of shilling, I've been wanting some feedback about my setting that I use PTU in. I want more of its essence to come across to my party in-game and the best way for me to do that is to flesh it out and know it so I can speak from the heart. It's also supposed to be something my players can read, but they tend to not do that. Arguably, their input is the most important, but I trust you guys, too.
I'd like to hear about anything I've posted, whether it's from the setting or homebrew sections.
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/zamzara-the-hollow-earth-the-adventurers-almanac
I had to bump this thread somehow.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.419028
bump. Threads about non 40k/dnd/mtg/smegmar shit deserve to be kept around.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.419312
Reposting here, didn't realize there was a Pokémon thread up already.
Anyone here play it before? Experiences? How did you or your GM handle shinies? Legendaries?
Getting ready to run a campaign of it and just want some more ideas/inspiration/tips and tricks/ etc.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.419313
>>419312
I've been playing this game semi-regularly for almost 3 years at this point, and I'll let you know now that you have your work cut out for you. The game's old enough by this point to where most of the issues have been recognized and commented on, if not fixed.
First thing's first - I couldn't imagine playing this game without combat trainers. Some people do, and all the PCs are just pokemon support classes going on gym crawls, but I hate the pokemon setting, and the concept of beating a flaming monkey halfway to death with a club, then making it your slave greatly appeals to me. The problem is that once a trainer decides to stop being a bitch and join the fight, the paradigm of the game invisibly shifts. Anyone who decides to keep being stupid and only use their pokemon will quickly be outclassed by the simple fact that they unless they get a specific training feature will have one turn, while the combat trainers get two. My players started off with a single combat trainer, and over the course of the campaign everybody slowly picked up more fighting classes so they could keep up. Keep that in mind.
Secondly, and this is important - most of the knowledge you have of the games is less applicable on a battle grid. Pokemon that are great in the games are not necessarily as good in PTU, and the game salvages what would otherwise be considered shitmon. Don't be afraid of using something you wouldn't normally.
Third, it's worth using the errata, since PTU will never be officially updated again. It was marked as playtest materials, but you should be able to find a compilation on the forums. Additionally, you'll find a pokedex that has all of the newer ones, plus the changes that USUM brought to them. Much of these make the game less clunky to play in practice, and I recommend using them before you get used to the base game's bullshit. I mostly use it for the new status effects and classes, but you should pick and choose as you please.
Fourth, if you use Base Stat Relations, at least talk your GM into letting you put as much HP into the stat as you like, because pokemon with HP as their dump stat will go down like a wet bag of dicks. I use it, but plenty of people don't.
As for shinies and legendaries, I haven't used the latter, but I do like to throw in special pokemon every now and again. A pokemon that's just a different color, to me, is boring. I prefer type shifting or using fakemon.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.419455
>>419313
Thanks for the reply! I'll be checking it all out, anon.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.419461
>>419455
Yeah, sure. Just remember the most important rule of all: don't be a bitch
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.419537
>>419312
>>419313
It's worth noting that a well-built support trainer can outclass combat trainers even with the action economy in mind, and when said specific feature gets factored in, they can get even worse.
At the same time, combat trainers can be really good early on, and they never really stop being good. They're also way easier to build.
Another tip is to ignore any advice the developers try to give you on what classes to use or how to run your game, they get butthurt and ban classes on a whim because they couldn't deal with them.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.419540
>>419537
I like the cut of your jib, kid. If you ever ask them for any advice, just keep in mind that they play games on baby mode. Anything that is inconvenient, opaque, or difficult is "unfun".
Also, mentor is an NPC class.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.
No.420503
Remember: The devs are huge faggots who get mad at you for playing the game "wrong" and ban you for dissent. Take anything they say with a pile of salt.
Disclaimer: this post and the subject matter and contents thereof - text, media, or otherwise - do not necessarily reflect the views of the 8kun administration.