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Hunter/Commander/Rogue/?; What should ? be eventually?
Topic Started: Jan 27 2016, 04:17 PM (2,464 Views)
BatiroAtrain
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Pyramid King
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moorg
 
They all apply to directly commanding a Pokemon.


You're not understanding. Mechanically speaking, if you don't tell a Pokemon to use a move a Pokemon, it is not going to do anything. This is for balance, speed, and bookkeeping. Simple as that. In battle, there is no leaving a Pokemon to its own devices to run a general battle plan or use whatever move it fancies. Doesn't matter how high your Command skill is or whether or not you have a certain class. By RAW, it doesn't happen. Period.

The Grunts tangent is not one I'm going to pursue, because that's outside the realm of game mechanics, going into fluff and actual situations. Not worth debating when we're talking about the system as it stands.

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Edited by BatiroAtrain, Feb 5 2016, 05:32 PM.
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Anonyman
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Let's have an example.

You, a GM, have foolishly allowed your 3 players to have their pokemon act independently and act logically because your player insists that while he isn't 'commanding' the extras, it would still make sense for them to fight.

Your party gets into a battle with 3 other bad guys.

Everyone then decides to throw out every single pokemon because its only logical right?
Assuming that everyone has some reason to have 6 pokemon, thats a battlefield of 42 independent characters.

Of those, the GM 'controls' 36 of them.

And that is limited to only 6 pokemon. Why not have more?

In the end because it pretty much destroys the combat system.
There's a certain level of suspension of disbelief that needs to be incorporated into the system to make a game where everyone runs around with 7+ 'characters' not grind to a halt every battle. The most straightforward way is just to limit players to one pokemon and one trainer acting per turn.

Pack hunt gets around this a bit, but it self-balances by putting a bunch of pokemon really close together and only letting them do predetermined actions. That way you're trading in weakness to AOE for extra damage without grinding combat to a halt.
Edited by Anonyman, Feb 5 2016, 05:30 PM.
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Grand Silver
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I have to back all this up letting player have more than two pokemon at on time is not a good idea and even then it should only be if they have a feature or it's some kind of special match. Keeping track of just the minions for the opponent can be tricky.

If you let everyone use a bunch of pokemon things are going to get very annoying very fast. And that's not fun, and fun is the whole reason to play.
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moorg
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BatiroAtrain
Feb 5 2016, 05:08 PM
moorg
 
They all apply to directly commanding a Pokemon.


You're not understanding. Mechanically speaking, if you don't tell a Pokemon to use a move a Pokemon, it is not going to do anything. This is for balance, speed, and bookkeeping. Simple as that. In battle, there is no leaving a Pokemon to its own devices to run a general battle plan or use whatever move it fancies. Doesn't matter how high your Command skill is or whether or not you have a certain class. By RAW, it doesn't happen. Period.

The Grunts tangent is not one I'm going to pursue, because that's outside the realm of game mechanics, going into fluff and actual situations. Not worth debating when we're talking about the system as it stands.

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I see nothing in the rules that says that they do nothing.

And you highlighted the wrong section. Try looking at the part that says "Just make sense".

Does it make sense that if you train a Pokemon with high loyalty to act in a certain way, it will.

Yes. Yes it does. They will be under GM control for the time being, but it makes perfect sense. By the RAW, it's right there.

Just make sense.

Is this a viable tactic in proper trainer battles, no. Gym battles, no. There are rules in place that prevent it. And if you try this stuff you will probably be banned from a League, at the very least suspended... Against wild Pokemon, fair game (though if you catch them, expect to have to build their loyalty up). When in an actual threatening situation, hell yes, absolutely fair game. Any Commander worth that title would know when to employ unit tactics, and when not to.

In my experience, most battles are against wild Pokemon, much like the video games. Of course, other people's experiences may vary. And if your game involves more trainer battles, I imagine mobbing your opponents with a highly trained military unit of powerful monsters will earn you a very horrible reputation.

I play in games where sometimes we get entire flocks of bird Pokemon swoop us at once. The thing about having a GM that has studied ecology, he knows how creatures like that would act in real life, and isn't afraid of dishing it out. So you devise tactics to counter that.
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castfromhp
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Yo, the word of god is you get one Pokémon turn and one Trainer turn per round, unless you have Focused Command. It doesn't matter what kind of battle it is (League vs wild vs criminal), how many 'mons you have on the field, or what your fluff justification is - you're picking one and that one is acting, and the GM is in no way obliged to make the others take action. In TTRPGs, action economy is very important, so you'll have to accept this kind of rule for the sake of balance.

The paragraphs with the sections you highlighted, moorg, refer primarily to how to handle non-combat situations and NPC action economy respectively and have no bearing on what PCs are able to do in battle situations.

Edit: Extra note, I don't like the idea of having extra Pokémon out for the purpose of just triggering Pack Hunt either. I would rule that if they don't get a turn that round they don't get to activate triggered effects like Pack Hunt either even if they are Free Actions.
Edited by castfromhp, Feb 5 2016, 06:43 PM.
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moorg
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castfromhp
Feb 5 2016, 06:40 PM
Yo, the word of god is you get one Pokémon turn and one Trainer turn per round, unless you have Focused Command. It doesn't matter what kind of battle it is (League vs wild vs criminal), how many 'mons you have on the field, or what your fluff justification is - you're picking one and that one is acting, and the GM is in no way obliged to make the others take action. In TTRPGs, action economy is very important, so you'll have to accept this kind of rule for the sake of balance.

The paragraphs with the sections you highlighted, moorg, refer primarily to how to handle non-combat situations and NPC action economy respectively and have no bearing on what PCs are able to do in battle situations.

Edit: Extra note, I don't like the idea of having extra Pokémon out for the purpose of just triggering Pack Hunt either. I would rule that if they don't get a turn that round they don't get to activate triggered effects like Pack Hunt either even if they are Free Actions.
Fair enough. I'm well aware GM's aren't obligated to let uncontrolled Pokemon do anything, even if it does make sense from a narrative standpoint.

Perhaps rules for mass combat could be incorporated. We have battles that involve 30ish Pokemon regularly, and it doesn't take as long as you'd think... well it can still easily take an hour.
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GrayGriffin
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castfromhp
Feb 5 2016, 06:40 PM
Edit: Extra note, I don't like the idea of having extra Pokémon out for the purpose of just triggering Pack Hunt either. I would rule that if they don't get a turn that round they don't get to activate triggered effects like Pack Hunt either even if they are Free Actions.
But...isn't that the whole point of Hunter being able to give all their Pokemon Pack Hunt?
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BatiroAtrain
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I get where Cast is coming from. What he's talking about is preventing, say, a Hunter from having a pack 9 of Joltik scurrying on their body to possibly deal 9 ticks of damage against an opponent. As RAW stands right now, something like that is perfectly doable since Pack Hunt is a Free Action. It's legal, but cheesy, and focus fire like that would probably frustrate a fair number of GMs...
Edited by BatiroAtrain, Feb 6 2016, 01:38 PM.
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Grand Silver
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I just realized how far off track this has gotten from the original question which was about what class would fit with a build.
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Sgt. Cookie
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If you don't have that many to spare, Sage or Hex Maniac, they only need Occult Education.
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