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| Non-Element Gym Idea | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 3 2016, 12:28 AM (2,124 Views) | |
| Goliathus | Mar 3 2016, 12:28 AM Post #1 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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I am brainstorming ideas for non-element gyms and I get nothing but storm in my brain. Anyone mind sharing some gym ideas? I think some information of my region might help so, I am running a custom region that have some arena influence. Trainers are ranked E to S and the only way to advancement is to win in a promotion tournament. Before you can participate in one, you will have to accumulate some points for your rank by either acquiring gym badges or have good performance in other various tournaments of your rank. So, I am thinking more than 8 gyms and I can definitely go all 18 elements if I want but I am trying to see if I can find something different for gym design. Oh yeah, one concern of mine. Since I am running a sandbox, the players are free to challenge gyms in any order. Should I be worried about someone catching 6 Fire Pokemon and then hit the Grass gym, and then pick up 6 Water Pokemon for the Rock gym and vice versa, assuming I ended up with elemental gym? |
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| Slytherclaw | Mar 3 2016, 09:00 AM Post #2 |
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Storyteller
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Type weaknesses can be handled with features, secondary typings, etc. I wouldn't be worried about that last thing, particularly considering the effort that goes into raising a team. Other themes: Robot uses senses, I know, and you could also theme around contest types or other game mechanics. Maybe a gym leader is based around mobility and uses pokemon with a minimum x movement instead of a type, or all with a certain type of ability (maybe something like a flash fire/water absorb/etc theme?). Maybe a gadgeteer gym leader uses any with the gadgeteer capability requirements, etc? Maybe one gym leader is a breeder who specializes in unusual mon and uses all type shift, fakemon, shiny mon, etc? |
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| reterpay08 | Mar 3 2016, 09:26 AM Post #3 |
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¿Trainer? ¡Totes not!
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Its up to you what you do. You could even throw the standard league rules out the window. You can make the gyms as hard or as easy as you want. In the games, I personally always had more fun when the gym had a puzzle and not so much 3 or 4 trainers and then the Gym leader. Some Ideas: -Gyms based around the 6 stats (could be too annoying for the defensive stats) -Gyms with non-standard rules: *Battle Royals *Dungeon Crawls *Mazes *Bond-style death traps *Pokemon on Motorbikes -The gym leader could add a rule that must be met before they will even think about battling the Trainer: *Must have different types of pokemon(a simple rule) *Must prove that you are High Fashion(Something that would be harder to deal with) *All fight must take place on the third day after the full moon -It could easily be a quirk about the gym leader that makes the gym harder *The gym leader could wander off and needs to be found before accepting the battle *The leader trains his pokemon with crazy moves that one would not expect on the pokemon *A dual gym where both the leaders don't want to work together, and will need to be convinced before they will battle you. Remember, DMing isn't just about what is fun for your players, but also what is fun for you. One last idea, you could not tell the players the gym element-type until they get into the gym or they gossip around town. |
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| Birdy51 | Mar 3 2016, 09:36 AM Post #4 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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Stat Gyms might be one idea. People whose teams base themselves around the old ATK, DEF, SP. ATK, SP. DEF, SPD strategies. Throw in Style Expert on all five, and they could theoretically be a Gym in itself with power shared between the five Gym Leaders. Alternatively, simply have a glorified Ace Trainer be a leader. Rather than stick to one type, have them be the type of trainer to manipulate the weaknesses of your PCs through calculation and cunning. To achieve victory, the players have to face their own weaknesses against a team tailor fit to beat them down! |
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| Professor Scamander | Mar 3 2016, 11:05 AM Post #5 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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I love nontraditional gyms! I actually have a plan to include a nontraditional circus gym in my next post of Fantastic Pokemon and Where to Find Them where it basically travels around from city to city, going even further away from the basic premise of a gym. As for nontraditional gym themes, here are a few more ideas - Critmonger - Focus on effect role activation - Sound! - Baby Pokemon (breeders for the win!) - Status Conditions - Weather - Mobility - Disable/Suppression - ie taking away ability to use moves - Darkvision Pokemon (in a blackout gym) - Mountable Pokemon - Risky Tactics (high AC moves like Dynamic Punch, Trick Shot feature, Metronome, etc) - Held Items (Mega Stones, Delibird, etc) - Food Team (mons with Lunchbox/gluttony/berry juice, etc) Hopefully that gave you a few ideas! Also, keep in mind that gym leaders will likely have strategies established to counter common weaknesses, so don't worry about throwing an grass type into a fire gym to help counter ground and water types (and also take advantage of sunny day synergy with fire mons) |
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| Articuno is a beast | Mar 3 2016, 11:42 AM Post #6 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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Hey I'm sorry showed up a little late but, This is how you can solve your riddle of fire vs. grass types. Option 1: It's a grass type gym! Make it favored towards grass types! it's always a good idea to throw mechanics for your gym that benefit your grass types. Like let's say everytime a fire attack move is used because the enviroment is so green with obviously flora and other flamable material. They have stronger fire extinguisher/sprinkles. Not the gyms fault but because they have to be extra precautious. When the sprinklers are used it dampens fire type moves by -10 or something to that affect. It allows you to discourage fire types in the gym without completely oppressing them because they still can use non-fire type moves and not get the penalty. It's a grass type gym for grass type make it mean something. Option 2: Shinys! Seriously... the easiest laziest way to combat is to have grass type pokemon just have a different typing. Even though they are classicaly known for being grass doesnt mean you can't use them (because F U i'm the DM). Option 3: Just don't allow fire types to enter the gym because X, Y and Z... Super freaking lame but whatever its your game. |
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| BeCeejed | Mar 3 2016, 01:33 PM Post #7 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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Additional Info on Gyms Gyms apparently exist to test the mettle of the region's trainers, but we see that they also exist as educational centers for experienced trainers to distribute information, and we know that many leaders in the Games, Comic, and Anime are frequently called upon to defend their local area or they hold some sort of sacred duty like defending the Dragon Holy Land or some such. Badges can be awarded in comic and anime for meritorious behaviour to trainers that prove they've got The Stuff that a particular Gym leader is looking for, regardless of direct success in battle. Therefore, in designing my current campaign, I'm looking at multiple ways to achieve Gym Badges. 1) Direct Challenge. Trainers often want to prove their worth by simply defeating a Gym Leader in a League Legal battle. Gym Leaders maintain a wide roster of battle ready pokemon in order to take on any challengers. To help with your Sandbox design, it is generally my established canon that gym leaders have teams at various levels of strength and present a team they believe to be an appropriate difficulty level to whoever challenges them. The goal of the gym isn't to weed out people who can't reach level X, but to ensure trainers can think and strategize around particular tactics. Can you deal with Rock Types and their wicked Defense? Since your setting already has an established progression system I would develop probably 8 or 9 pokemon for each Gym Leader, and scale their levels up or down depending on when your party challenges them. Four or so make up the primary roster the Leader faces most challengers with, and then you have a couple with Type Shifts or unique movesets that the Leader has developed to counter trainers who try to sweep their gym on Type Advantage alone. Battles will be limited on the number of pokemon each trainer has in their party when the Gym is challenged, etc etc. 2) Regulatory Assistance. Gym Leaders often serve to help Law Enforcement or are sometimes Law Enforcement themselves. As such, they probably have a string of quests they need to look into. They may frequently ask assistance from passing trainers because hey, backup is a good thing to have. Have a couple Quest Hooks in the area and have the Gym Leader lead the PCs into one of them. You can throw some seriously tough stuff their way cause you've got a leader with them who can deal probably more damage than the party; convenient Deus Ex Gym Leader to save their collective bacon. Because they 'perform admirably in the face of danger' and 'prove an interest in the stability of the region' or somewhat like that, they are awarded a badge after completion of the quest. I like this because it works really well for trainers that commonly don't use League Legal class builds (If you are imposing standard League rules here) and gives you a chance to flesh out a zone or the Gym Leader NPC a lot. 3) Understudy. It seems like your trainers are probably gonna want to challenge their Gyms based on the campaign you are setting up, but if challenging the League is secondary to another plot they are running into, trainers may elect to obtain their badge through education, where the badge serves as certificate of completion on a program. This can be resolved in a number of ways. As part of certain Feats or Classes trainers need to state that they are spending, say, one hour a day training their pokemon. In a similar manner you can have them 'spend' a requisite number of hours training at the Gym, under tutelage of the Leader. In this case they are fulfilling a role similar to the Gym Trainers in the game, wherein they are spending time at the Gym mastering the skills the Gym Leader possesses. It could be something like 40 hours, so that its not easily obtainable this way, but if the party is lingering in an area for a while, or bouncing around between 3 or four cities chasing a particular plot, the trainers can work on their Gym Badges as part of their stated training efforts, maybe even working on more than one gym badge at once. When they complete it, you could give them an extra rank up in an Education, or a Move to one of their pokemon that they learned at the Gym. This is good for dropping plot hooks (Maybe the trainer overhears some other trainers talking about a rumor in the locker room at the Gym that gives them the next clue they need to chase the Pokemon Thief they're hunting). Its also good if you have trainers with a variety of goals. The main plot may be taking attention, but Trainer B does intend to challenge the League, while A and C have other concerns. When they each split up to occasionally work on their separate goals, Trainer B goes to the local Gym to learn from the masters. 4) Indirect Challenge. Probably one of the favorite of the PTU developers based on the Gym Leader example in the Core rulebook, the Indirect Challenge is something Gym Leaders offer that is different from the Direct Challenge's straight up League Legal brawl. Leaders probably prefer this sort of challenge as it more directly gets to the heart of whatever skills they are trying to test. The Gym leader provides a unique puzzle or field of battle with different win conditions than "Faint all Opponent's Pokemon." Challengers have to solve the puzzle and use pokemon in other non-battling ways, in addition to facing the Gym Leader's pokemon who will hinder their progress or use the field to their advantage in battle. To spice things up and avoid Type Advantage teams sweeping the gym, you might make certain leaders simply refuse to take Direct Challenges, and only to accept Indirect Challenges. As for non-type specific challenges, what about the Classes? Can you conceive of the League allowing Riders or Channelers or other such classes where trainers are more involved in combat to own a Gym and expect Trainers to participate in battle? Can you think of a really interesting Indirect Challenge and then build a Leader's pokemon selection around supporting that challenge, so even if Directly challenged they're gym's don't have a specific type advantage? Here are a couple ideas from the setting I'm working on: What about a Leader that's heavily involved in his city's law enforcement? They would have a team of typically Enforcement-related pokemon, like the Growlithe line, Poochyena Line, Hoot Hoot line for surveillance, and they would make use of moves that paralyze and confuse, Stick and Trap, or use Smokescreen and the like to their advantage, as well as things like False Swipe that deal non-fainting damage initially. They would almost always prefer to test trainers in battle while following up on their many leads and investigations, so they would lean more towards Regulatory Assistance challenges. Indirect Challenges would feature a Lazer-tag like mockup of narrow city streets and alleys, and a Cops and Robbers Scenario where the challenger picks the role they want to play. Robbers are given the location of a treasure somewhere in the field and need to get in, get the treasure, and get out. Cops are let in shortly after and can search the city and are clued in to Robber locations by alarms and traps. The Leader would make use of skills like Mean Look to help corner foes. Both trainers are isolated in a surveillance-van style box and have to issue commands to their team through earbud radio using the information the 'city' cameras feed them and whatever surveillance they can set up with their own pokemon teams. What about a leader that's a Ninja? They almost always prefer Indirect Challenges. They inform the player that they will wait for them in the middle of a fenced-in section of a forest, with a little village set piece inside. The player needs only navigate the forest and find them. The Leader waits in an obvious location, but little known to the player their team of Stealthy pokemon like the Sneazel line, Froakie Line, Ninjask line, etc is laying in wait to trap them, fight them, or delay them in a series of guerrilla warfare battles and Perception vs Stealth Capability Checks. Can they get to the Gym leader before the time runs out? |
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| surge jr | Mar 3 2016, 01:43 PM Post #8 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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All Underdog gym All Smeargle gym |
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| Ealon | Mar 3 2016, 04:09 PM Post #9 |
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"Lover of the Law"
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Kind of a TL;DR for BeCeejed, not all gyms need to be 'Gym Leader V. Player' battle. One of my favorite gyms was a gauntlet style challenge where each trainer could only bring 2 Pokemon and the goal was to just get to the other side of he map. There where mines, obstacles, too many Cacturnes to count, and a fog-of-war mechanic. It was great. |
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| Mudbucket | Mar 3 2016, 06:41 PM Post #10 |
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Pokémon Trainer
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I have made 3 Gyms for my campaign so far. Their themes are: - Aura. He has a single very strong Lucario and he believes a Pokémon trainer and his pokémon grow stronger by just being the two of them and their auras becoming one. - Iron Fist. He has Punching Pokémon. Mostly with the Iron Fist ability. - Trick Room. She has some really slow Pokémon and have a constant effect of Trick room in her gym. |
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