BATTLES

How damage is worked out, why a Pokemon picks the move it picks, and what every condition does to it.

How a battle works

Each Pokemon fights using its own real stats: Attack, Defense, Sp. Attack, Sp. Defense, Speed and HP. Level never enters the damage formula, so those six numbers are the whole matchup.

Move damage takes into account the move's type against the target's type, plus a same-type bonus when a Pokemon uses a move matching its own type. There is a bit of random variance on every hit, so the same move will not always deal the same damage. The full matchup grid is on the type chart.

Battles play out on their own, both sides attacking exchange after exchange. Between exchanges you get about a second and a half to use a Potion or a Revive, or to switch. Miss the window and the battle moves on.

Why did my Pokemon use that move?

Both sides pick the same way. It is a weighted roll, not a guaranteed best pick: the strongest option comes up most of the time, but not every time. A Pokemon that always threw the single best move would play the same battle against the same opponent forever.

Every damaging move on the set gets a weight, and the higher the weight the more often it is chosen:

weight = base power × hits × same-type bonus × accuracy × critical bonus × (type effectiveness)³

Type effectiveness is cubed, which is what makes it the loudest part of the decision. A super effective move outweighs a neutral one of the same power 8 to 1, and a resisted move is worth an eighth of a neutral one. A move that would do nothing at all is dropped from the roll entirely, unless the whole moveset is immune, in which case there is no way around it.

An example, a Meowscarada facing an Absol:

So a Meowscarada that opens with Flower Trick and follows it with a resisted Knock Off is not broken, it rolled the 2%. Over a whole battle it will spend most of its turns on U-turn.

Two of those terms only matter to some moves. Hits is how many times the move connects, 1 for almost everything but 5 for a Skill Link holder's Tail Slap, and it is what stopped a move like that from looking like the weakest thing its owner knew. The critical bonus is small, between 1.02 and 1.06, just enough to break a tie in favour of a move with a high critical-hit ratio.

Two things the roll deliberately does not look at: how much HP the target has left, and whether the move is physical or special against that target's defenses. It weighs the move, not the matchup arithmetic.

A few moves sit outside this entirely. Counter and Mirror Coat have no fixed power, they reflect double whatever damage the user just took, so they are weighted by how much of the opponent's moveset they could actually reflect and always resolve last in the exchange. Sleep-inducing moves get an occasional look in ahead of the damage roll, but only against a target with no status condition yet.

Critical hits

A critical hit deals 1.5x damage and can happen to either side. It is not a flat percentage: every move sits on a ladder of stages, and anything that makes criticals likelier adds a stage rather than a percentage.

A move with a high critical-hit ratio (Slash, Stone Edge, Night Slash, Leaf Blade, Psycho Cut, Crabhammer and about twenty more) is worth one stage on its own. Super Luck is worth another. A Farfetch'd or Sirfetch'd is worth two, because its leek really is its weapon. A few moves, Storm Throw and Flower Trick among them, skip the ladder and always land a critical.

The other half of a critical is easy to miss and matters just as much: it ignores whatever is working against it. A raised Defense on the target does nothing to a critical, and a lowered Attack on the attacker is ignored too. A lowered Defense on the target still counts, because that one is helping. A critical is what stops a Pokemon hiding behind a stat it raised.

Moves that hit more than once

The power shown on a card is the power of one hit, and the card marks the count beside it, so Tail Slap reads "25 PWR x2-5". How many land is rolled fresh every turn. Every multi-hit move is on the moves page.

That averages a little over 3.2 hits, so a 25-power move is worth about 79 power across a turn. A few moves have a fixed count instead of a roll: Triple Axel and Surging Strikes always hit 3 times, Dragon Darts and Double Iron Bash always 2, and Population Bomb 10.

The battle log says how many landed, so a turn that rolled 2 and a turn that rolled 5 are not two mysteriously different amounts of damage from the same move.

Status conditions

One at a time, and it clears when the battle ends. Which moves can leave one, and how often, is on the moves page.

Struggle

If both Pokemon land a hit with no effect at all, a pure type immunity such as a Normal move into a Ghost, for 6 exchanges running, both are forced into Struggle on the next one: a typeless 50-power attack that always connects and deals recoil to whoever used it.

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