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| Burrowing | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 24 2016, 12:55 PM (475 Views) | |
| Coldzero | Feb 24 2016, 12:55 PM Post #1 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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Got a question for GMs or even players out there, how do you deal with burrowing? I just ran an encounter pitting my players against their rival team. One of the players has a sandslash and realized a great strategy would be to burrow underground 2 meters and use magnitude. I looked through the options I have on the team and I couldn't find anything that could deal with this. It didn't just give him a huge advantage but it basically meant they could 100% win the fight. There were no pokemon with burrow speeds on the team or any ground-penetrating attacks and even if there were, without the addition of tremorsense, which the sandslash has, there would be no way to find where it was without metagaming. I dont want to crush out of the box strategies but this is just a 100% win. I have thought of one possible solution for this but I'm curious what everyone else does. This has not come up yet, but do you also have any limiting factors for sky speeds? This is obviously not as big of a problem because ranged attacks are much more common than ground piercing attacks but a flying pokemon could get a 10 range attack and the chance and opponent has matching range is rare. |
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| Dark Shadow | Feb 24 2016, 01:09 PM Post #2 |
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Reploid
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Well, remember, burrowing generally means leaving a hole. That Sandslash isn't going to enjoy a hydro pump shot down the tunnel, or another, smaller, Pokémon following it. For flying, in Trainer battles, there's usually a gentleman's agreement to limit height. For facing Wilds, if the Trainer's Pokémon is flying high, the trainer is going to be much more vulnerable, and open to direct attack. |
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| Professor Scamander | Feb 24 2016, 01:19 PM Post #3 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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Ah yes, the burrow speed conundrum. Be thankful that he hasn't started using stat boosting moves alongside of it. There are a couple of different ways to address this problem, but remember that you don't want to completely nullify the benefits of Sandslash (the last thing you want to do is take away his toys when he finds them) and there's always some fun in a player curbstomping a battle. The key isn't necessarily nullifying the burrowing, but making sure that it isn't an auto-win for the player. That said, you have sever tools at your disposal to make sure that not every battle is a curbstomp battle. Here are a few thoughts. 1. The most obvious is including mons that have ground piercing moves and tremorsense themselves, making it an 'eye for an eye' kind of thing 2. Magnitude won't hit flying type opponents and can't reach pokemon with sky or levitate speeds meaning the Sandslash is going to have to come up for air at some point. 3. Battles inside, on top of bedrock, or in the road will have un-burrowable surfaces, meaning the sandslash won't be able to get underground in the first place. A variant on this would be to include potentially negative side effects of being in the soil (heat or cold damage, polluted ground, in a minefield, etc) 4. Throw status conditions like poison or burn on it that will whittle away its health while it attacks 5. Have trainers agree on rules before a friendly battle (no burrowing, no flying above 3 meters, etc). Most of all remember that if your player only sets up underground every once in a while these counters may not need to be used all that often. And if you do need to rely on them, try to work them in naturally and vary them so your player doesn't always pick up on your counters to the strategy. EDIT: Actually you may not even need a counter. Check out page 223 of the core book:
Hence, it can't use a move (standard action) and use its standard action to stay underground. Thus, it using Magnitude will bring it up to the surface as it can't spend its standard action to remain underground. Edited by Professor Scamander, Feb 24 2016, 01:23 PM.
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| The Sneaky Prinny | Feb 24 2016, 01:38 PM Post #4 |
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Optional Bonus Boss
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Burrowing is annoying to deal with if caught unprepared for, but a bit of creativity goes a long way. Firstly, burrowing leaves a hole, which is a way to gain access to the pokemon, if a convoluted way. Another note of Burrowing (that might be awkward to introduce after it has already been done another way) is that it is reasonable that a burrowed pokemon might not be able to respond properly to orders, given that it can't "see" without Tremorsense, and even Tremorsense will fail it if the enemy does not move, and that it might also have trouble hearing commands. Granted, "Burrow underground then spam Magnitude" is an easy enough command series that it should be easily trained. Additionally, you could rule that most pokemon need to surface for air periodically. Flooding the hole (mentioned above) with either water or poison, employing thermodynamic asphyxiation, collapsing the tunnel with a large, heavy pokemon's weight, utilizing attacks that don't need line of sight, combined with pokemon with either Tremorsense, or some kind of psychic/aura ability to locate them. Another way to handle it, is make moves like Magnitude or Earthquake potentially dangerous to use underground (which they totally would be). Don't forget that in standard battles, these moves not only damage burrowed Pokemon, but actually deal increased damage to them! Perhaps give them Recoil, or eat a tick of HP when used underground to compensate? (The tunnel suffers a partial collapse!) This might also be awkward to introduce after the fact, but if you inform the player of your reasoning from a balance perspective, they shouldn't get too upset, especially since you aren't actually removing the tactic, just applying a drawback with a basis in logic to it. Lastly, you could rule that most pokemon have a burrow speed of 1. If needed, something like a bulbasaur could work its way underground without too much trouble, right? If all else fails, a suspiciously high number of important battles can take place on paved areas, swamps, or catwalks from now on, I guess. Or that there rule counter up above looks like it will solve your problems just fine. Edited by The Sneaky Prinny, Feb 24 2016, 01:41 PM.
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