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Trouble with PCs catching high level pokemon
Topic Started: Jun 1 2014, 03:07 AM (3,079 Views)
Kaede11
Unlucky GM
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
We have been playing for a long time right now and I learned the hard way that unlike other tabletop games, my PCs can catch pretty easily their enemies and then beocome "overleveled" trainers... which takes away a lot of the fun given by leveling up their pokemon gradually...

My group has divided and now I've got two types of PCs.

Type 1: The catcher: They just catch every pokémon found because their objective is to complete the pokedex or something like that (or just for fun).
Type 2: The trainer: They sometimes capture a new pokémon when they like it, but prefer to train their current pokémon.

So I run into a problem, let's see an example:

Let's say that all my PCs have a team of level five pokemon. I create an encounter which has to be a bit difficult for them to overcome, something hard, but not impossible, so they face a group of level 7 - 8 pokemon. They do well and "The catchers" catch some of those pokemon. "The trainers" don't. After a while, the problem is evident: The catchers have higher leveled pokemon because of their captures and "The trainers" feel disappointed because they're working hard to grow their pokemon but cannot keep up. At this point they tell me that's unfair and that I should do something to prevent this from happening.

Am I doing anything wrong? Is catching pokemon too easy or I'm just not creating encounters correctly? I try to recreate a real environment and it makes sense to me that if the PCs go in the wilderness they find high level pokemon every now and then.

What can I do?
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Talow
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Engineer
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One thing I would recommend to try to keep the playing field level, is to balance the amount of wild encounters and trainer battles. I know a specific problem I ran into early on was creating a pokemon that was much higher level than my players, in order to be a boss encounter. A capture specialist threw a pokeball on the first turn and was lucky enough to capture it without any challenge. I've countered this idea by making more of the encounters designed to challenge players based around owned pokemon, rather than always putting them up against wilds.

Although, if you are running a campaign based majorly on wild pokemon, there are a couple ideas you could try putting into practice. For one, you could show your trainers the value in trained pokemon by using more of the disobedience rolls for newly caught pokemon. Just because they catch a pokemon that's outside their current level range doesn't mean they have the skill to command it. Another idea I've heard before is to weigh experience based on loyalty of pokemon. This is a tough one to fine-tune, because you don't want the trainers to get over-leveled either. But, a 10-25% experience buff for loyalty 4 or higher pokemon might give your players exactly what they need to keep up.
Edited by Talow, Jun 1 2014, 04:13 AM.
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BatiroAtrain
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Pyramid King
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Whenever these kinds of questions pop up, I always have two piece of advice to repeat: Every boss mon you create is a potential wrecking ball waiting to be captured, and action economy far outweighs Pokemon level.

That said, creating encounters for diving face-first into wilderness has a lot of potential; it doesn't have to be strictly wild Pokemon. Your players could come across a Ranger camp, maybe find a battle or two there. They could find an injured Pokemon, and maybe have to get it some medical attention. Hell, even finding useful berries or an egg makes it feel worthwhile to say "I went into the woods and came back with this!"

On the subject of already-owned Pokemon... yeah, that is kind of a ditch you dug yourself into. For a quick band-aid on the problem, I recommend just elevating the weaker player's Pokemon to the same tier (or lowering, if they're okay with that). For balanced encounters in the future, I again parrot the advice I put at the top of this post. For example, if your players are using Level 10's to fight, then instead of putting one or two Level 15's in the encounter, put them against a bunch of Level 6-7 Pokemon with a Level 10 pack leader. That way, all players have a chance to rake in some experience, and it can become a fun competition to see who can capture the high-power Pokemon first. Even if the Capspec takes the boss, it won't feel like an innate advantage, since the Pokemon he caught will be on par with what everyone already has.

If you don't want to change up the levels, then roleplay the high-power Pokemon as disobedient. If all else fails, "you don't have enough badges to train me!" is sometimes a good enough excuse, and gives your greedier players a reason to invest in Command if they want to use Pokemon high above their own level. Heck, this could even convince them to give up their overleveled Pokemon to someone with higher Command than them, or encourage them to trade with NPCs.
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Kaede11
Unlucky GM
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And noone has a problem with catching being too easy? Yesterday they found a nest of Chimchar in a volcano and when they approached the eggs five lvl 15 Monfernos tried to defend their babies.

The battle was intense and at the last moment they managed to capture 2 of those wilds. Yeah, they had to be catchable, but I wanted it to be hard to catch them, not just throwing the poke ball and voila!

The first one would have been captured on a roll of 75 or less and the second one on a roll of 95 or less. That's okay for a caterpie, but a monferno should be harder to capture... Or that's what I think.

Now two of my players have a lvl 15 monferno in their team and another one, who has been raising his growlithe from level 5 and now is a level 14 growlithe, just keeps complaining about it being unfair.

What do you think about taking trainer level into account when determining the pokemon's catch rate? Something like calculating the catch ratio normally and, after that, substracting maximum trainer level (50) - actual trainer level.

If that was applied the first monferno's catch ratio would have been: 75 - (50 [Max trainer level]-5[Actual trainer level]) = 30 and the other 95 - 45 = 50. That would represent the character learning how to catch pokemon effectively when getting better. What do you think?

Edited by Kaede11, Jun 1 2014, 06:56 AM.
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zoofman
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So a long time ago in a game Doxy ran, we caught two Giratinas during a boss battle out of sheer luck, and yet we only got to ever USE one of them once due to a mix of circumstances.

There's two things here that you should keep in mind

1. Loyalty. If these guys are just constantly catching new Pokemon in an endless upgrade loop, especially if they are constantly stronger than the previous ones, they are going to have loyalty issues in the long run.

2. They won't be able to as easily invest in TM's and such for their teams because they are constantly shuffling them in this catch happy spree. They -will- be eventually forced to settle down with a stable team in time.

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Zubat
Student GM
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What I do with my group is that I give them several low level foes instead of a few big ones, like BatiroAtrain already suggested. You are level 10 and get attacked by 10 level 7 pokémon. BEWARE OF RANGED ATTACKS! Focus fire is good at killing fast.

Related but unnecessary :
During my last session there was a similar and unexpected problem. They faced 3 rockets and knocked them unconscious. The unexpected part was that they stole all of the Rocket pokémon. Now they have 4 near 0 loyalty pokémon...
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malonkey1
Pokémon Trainer
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Zubat
Jun 1 2014, 09:21 AM
What I do with my group is that I give them several low level foes instead of a few big ones, like BatiroAtrain already suggested. You are level 10 and get attacked by 10 level 7 pokémon. BEWARE OF RANGED ATTACKS! Focus fire is good at killing fast.

Related but unnecessary :
During my last session there was a similar and unexpected problem. They faced 3 rockets and knocked them unconscious. The unexpected part was that they stole all of the Rocket pokémon. Now they have 4 near 0 loyalty pokémon...
Encourage them to turn them in to the authorities/give them to a good home. I think it'd make for a good plot if it turned out they were stolen and your job was to find their original homes.
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GrayGriffin
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"Ah, you unmasked me. Whatever shall I do."
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Kaede11
Jun 1 2014, 06:39 AM
And noone has a problem with catching being too easy? Yesterday they found a nest of Chimchar in a volcano and when they approached the eggs five lvl 15 Monfernos tried to defend their babies.

The battle was intense and at the last moment they managed to capture 2 of those wilds. Yeah, they had to be catchable, but I wanted it to be hard to catch them, not just throwing the poke ball and voila!

The first one would have been captured on a roll of 75 or less and the second one on a roll of 95 or less. That's okay for a caterpie, but a monferno should be harder to capture... Or that's what I think.

Now two of my players have a lvl 15 monferno in their team and another one, who has been raising his growlithe from level 5 and now is a level 14 growlithe, just keeps complaining about it being unfair.

What do you think about taking trainer level into account when determining the pokemon's catch rate? Something like calculating the catch ratio normally and, after that, substracting maximum trainer level (50) - actual trainer level.

If that was applied the first monferno's catch ratio would have been: 75 - (50 [Max trainer level]-5[Actual trainer level]) = 30 and the other 95 - 45 = 50. That would represent the character learning how to catch pokemon effectively when getting better. What do you think?

Um...what? You already subtract your level from a capture roll.
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Kaede11
Unlucky GM
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GrayGriffin
Jun 1 2014, 09:32 AM
Kaede11
Jun 1 2014, 06:39 AM
And noone has a problem with catching being too easy? Yesterday they found a nest of Chimchar in a volcano and when they approached the eggs five lvl 15 Monfernos tried to defend their babies.

The battle was intense and at the last moment they managed to capture 2 of those wilds. Yeah, they had to be catchable, but I wanted it to be hard to catch them, not just throwing the poke ball and voila!

The first one would have been captured on a roll of 75 or less and the second one on a roll of 95 or less. That's okay for a caterpie, but a monferno should be harder to capture... Or that's what I think.

Now two of my players have a lvl 15 monferno in their team and another one, who has been raising his growlithe from level 5 and now is a level 14 growlithe, just keeps complaining about it being unfair.

What do you think about taking trainer level into account when determining the pokemon's catch rate? Something like calculating the catch ratio normally and, after that, substracting maximum trainer level (50) - actual trainer level.

If that was applied the first monferno's catch ratio would have been: 75 - (50 [Max trainer level]-5[Actual trainer level]) = 30 and the other 95 - 45 = 50. That would represent the character learning how to catch pokemon effectively when getting better. What do you think?

Um...what? You already subtract your level from a capture roll.
Mmm.. nope, you do not.

Directly from the handbook, page 192:

A Pokémon’s Capture Rate depends on its Level, Hit Points, Status Afflictions, Evolutionary Stage, and Rarity.

Trainer's level is not used.
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PanoramicPanda
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Kaede11
Jun 1 2014, 09:58 AM
Kaede11
Jun 1 2014, 06:39 AM
Um...what? You already subtract your level from a capture roll.
Mmm.. nope, you do not.

Directly from the handbook, page 192:

A Pokémon’s Capture Rate depends on its Level, Hit Points, Status Afflictions, Evolutionary Stage, and Rarity.

Trainer's level is not used.
Actually you do. What you described is the Capture Rate - on the top of page 192, it describes how a trainer makes their Capture Roll

Once the Poké Ball hits, you must roll the Capture Roll.
Roll 1d100, and subtract the Trainer’s Level, and any
modifiers from equipment or Features.

If you roll under or equal to the Pokémon’s Capture
Rate, the Pokémon is Captured! A natural roll of 100
always captures the target without fail.


This makes things easier to capture as Trainers level up though, whereas you want to make it more difficult.
Edited by PanoramicPanda, Jun 1 2014, 10:10 AM.
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