Encounter Creation Guide

Encounter Creation Guide
What’s probably the most time consuming part of being a GM is putting together all the combat encounters your players will face off against. This doesn’t have to be a painful process though, and you should have fun coming up with unique and interesting encounters for your players. Here’s a guide for doing just that.

Setting Up the Encounter
The first step to crafting a combat encounter is figuring out why the players will be fighting. A lot of the advice in this particular section won’t necessarily be exclusive to combat encounters, however, and can be helpful in crafting non-combat events and activities for the players to engage with.

It’s easy enough to come up with most League-affiliated or plot-centric encounters. Having to challenge a Gym Leader for a badge or enter a qualifying tournament for the Pokémon League is pretty universal to campaigns with that kind of structure. Pitting your players against Team Rocket or your own custom criminal team is also straightforward.

When your players are traveling between towns, however, it can be boring to always have a pack of wild Pokémon ambush them for no reason simply so you can give the players something to fight and catch. Carnivorous Pokémon may see Trainers as food, but you don’t always have the luxury of building an encounter around those species. Here are some common scenarios where your players might get into a scuffle with the local wildlife.

'''There’s an ongoing fight between Pokémon on the road. '''This can range from Sevipers and Zangoose duking it out to a pack of Mighyenas hunting prey like Buneary. In many cases, Trainers will simply leave such fights alone, but you’d be surprised how many PCs will want to intercede on nature running its course, especially if cute and fluffy Pokémon are in danger. Alternatively, a conflict could be so large that it’s impossible to cross a part of the route without cutting a path through and getting caught in the crossfire. As a twist, you may have a pack of wild Pokémon hunting another wounded Trainer or group of Trainers as prey, even if the local wildlife wouldn’t normally go after healthy Trainers.

'''Pokémon are protecting something valuable. '''Most wild Pokémon will leave Trainers alone, but if they’re guarding eggs, children, or wounded members of their pack, they may act more aggressively. Pokémon can also often be intensely territorial, but this rarely results in a fight unless the PCs don’t know they’re intruding or if they have a compelling reason to willfully go into dangerous territory. So pair this with the territory or valuables being guarded being in the direct path of the PCs, and you have a good formula for getting the players involved in a fight or at least making a difficult choice how to proceed.

If a storm is approaching while the players are hiking up a treacherous mountain, and the only shelter available is a cave system guarded by a Druddigon taking care of her eggs, what do the players do?

'''Pokémon are agitated by an external source. '''A Team Rocket radio broadcast might be riling up the wildlife, or perhaps a group of poachers has set the local Pokémon population on edge. This is a good way to draw the PCs into a larger plot too, if you wish.

Basic Encounter Creation Guidelines
With the ease and simplicity of PTU’s rules for giving out Experience (page 460), one great method for creating encounters is to work backwards from the Experience drop you want to give your players. One good guideline here for an everyday encounter is to multiply the average Pokémon Level of your PCs by 2 (average Trainer Level x 4 works in a pinch too given most games maintain Pokémon Levels at twice average

Trainer Levels) and use that as a projected baseline Experience drop per player for the encounter. This should result in about enough Experience for each player to get a Pokémon half a Level from the encounter. For very low Level parties with few Pokémon, you’ll want to decrease baseline Experience when using this method.

This assumes an encounter with a Significance Multiplier of 1x, or insignificant. A Significance Multiplier of 2x, or the lower end for an everyday encounter, will double your baseline and nets you about enough Experience for a Pokémon to Level Up once. As you create a more important encounter, not only should you increase the Significance Multiplier, but you should also increase the baseline Experience you’re working with, as that will determine the Levels of the enemies you create. From there, simply multiply the Experience drop by your number of Trainers. This is the number of Levels you have to work with to build your encounter.

Example: A GM is designing an encounter for three Level 10 Trainers, each with Pokémon around Level 20. Multiply the average Pokémon Level by 2 for a baseline Experience drop of 40. Multiply this by 3 for the number of Trainers for a total of 120 levels to build an encounter. The GM splits this six ways and stats up an encounter with six Level 20 Pokémon. If the battle has an everyday Significance modifier of 2x, then each player gets 80 Experience and can approximately Level Up their Pokémon once from the battle.

For a bigger, more important, fight, the GM decides on a baseline Experience drop per player of 60 and a Significance Multiplier of 5x for a total of 300 Experience, enough to give several Pokémon a Level or give one or two Pokémon a couple of Levels. Multiplying 60 by 3 for the number of Trainers, the GM has 180 Levels to build an encounter. He splits it into two Level 40 Pokémon and four Level 25 Pokémon. He could also give up two weaker Pokémon to make a Level 25 Trainer.

For normal encounters, don’t sink all of the Levels you have to work with into one or two Pokémon with extremely high Levels! But also, Levels aren’t the only factor that should be affected by the Significance Multiplier. How well the enemies synergize, whether they have Egg, TM, or Tutor Moves, and how powerful the species are should vary as well.

Example: Our GM from the previous example may create an encounter of three Cacnea and three Trapinch for a desert encounter in the case of six Level 20 foes. They might not have much special, but maybe the Cacneas have Magical Leaf or Low Kick in their Inheritance Move list, and the Trapinch have Quick Attack to make up for their abysmal speed.

However, for the more important encounter, he uses Level 40 Cacturne and gives them Thunder Punch and Poison Jab to help cover their Flying and Fairy weaknesses, respectively. He also ensures they have the Twisted Power and Sand Veil Abilities. Three Trapinch support them in the encounter and have Rock Slide and Sandstorm. A Researcher / Cheerleader with the Extreme Weather Feature gives all Pokémon damaged by Sandstorm a penalty to accuracy rolls and uses Orders to boost their attacks.

Of course, you can certainly build an encounter without working backwards this way. Either way, be mindful of what your aim for the encounter is as well. The six Level 20s may not seriously threaten the group of Trainers and might just act as a tax on their resources as they travel, but the more significant encounter poses a real threat of taking them all out.

As a final bit of advice, be wary of action economy!

A large swarm of low Level foes can quickly overwhelm even the strongest of parties. It’s usually better to use a moderate number of foes than go in either extreme, though there are exceptions which will be noted in the more advanced parts of this guide.

Running Faster Combat
Sometimes, not only do you need to stat the encounter quickly, but you want to run the players through it as quickly as possible as well. Here are a few tips for doing just that.

'''1. Don’t use maps. '''Abstract distances instead so you and the players have to spend less time thinking about exactly which square to move to and what’s in range from there.

'''2. Pre-roll Accuracy Rolls for your foes. '''Simply keep a sheet of randomly generated numbers from 1 to 20 (either rolling manually before the session or using an online generator or spreadsheet) and use them in order for Accuracy Rolls for your enemies, crossing them off as you go.

3. Use the set damage chart, not the rolled damage chart. This will save you loads of time finding the right dice and counting them up for damage.

The Types and Roles of Combat Encounters
This section of the encounter creation guide gets a bit theoretical, so if you find it boring, feel free to skip ahead to the next page. It’s mainly for those GMs who really want to think about what their aims are when they create a combat encounter for their players and how to design and execute encounters to meet those aims.

For many veteran GMs, the advice here will seem familiar and broadly applicable to many tabletop roleplaying games, but there’s also going to be discussion of how the particular dynamics of PTU affect encounter creation.

Specifically, unlike most other roleplaying systems, the player controls a team of varied Pokémon in PTU that play many roles and have individual strengths and weaknesses rather than a single character which is rather static in both role and its strengths and weaknesses. Broadly speaking, combat encounters can do two things to the PCs. They can Tax them or Threaten them. An encounter that Taxes the PCs most likely won’t have a high chance of resulting in their defeat and may even seem to be an almost assured victory for them.

However, what it does do is cost them resources. This doesn’t just mean Hit Points or the healing items used to recover them, but those certainly are the most obvious resources that are taxed. Pokémon and Trainer alike can become Injured, which takes a long time to heal.

Knocked out Pokémon may present a conundrum to a party ill-equipped to revive them. Features and Moves with Daily Frequencies are expended. An encounter that Taxes the party makes future encounters more difficult until resources are recovered, and it can set up for an encounter meant to Threaten the PCs.

An encounter that Threatens the PCs does just what it sounds like. It threatens to defeat the PCs and result in their demise, capture, or other form of incapacitation. Usually, this takes the form of a boss encounter and only occurs after the PCs have already been Taxed by other encounters or adventures. Simply put, with a full team of six Pokémon per PC, it’s very unlikely that a single encounter will take them all out from full health unless either 1) the enemies target down PC Trainers quickly while deprioritizing their Pokémon or 2) the encounter stretches out for a very long time. Neither of these situations are particularly fun when used liberally.

So what do you do with these two types of combat encounters in mind? Well, that’s simple, when you sit down to create an encounter, think about which role you want it to play and tailor it accordingly.

When you want to Tax the PCs, widespread damage over time such as Hail and Sandstorm are good ways of bringing down Hit Points over the whole party in a way that doesn’t threaten death but will either weaken them for future encounters or cost them healing resources. Persistent Status Afflictions also play this role well. Injuries are perhaps the most lasting way to Tax a party, and while they can be accrued naturally through the course of battle, throwing in enemies with Cruelty or similar effects can accelerate this.

When you Threaten the PCs, you will usually be in for a longer encounter no matter what, unless you simply create enemies capable of one-shotting them, which is usually no fun. High damage is more important, however, and you may wish to use Moves such as Heal Block to further ramp up the danger.

Encounters meant to Threaten the PCs should typically be designed in concert with those that will Tax them. Part of this is to create interesting choices in your campaign – the PCs know they will almost certainly defeat a caravan of Team Plasma grunts they encounter on the road on the way to the hideout, but they also know it will cost them precious resources to do so that will hinder them in attacking the hideout. If the caravan possibly holding an experimental weapon or perhaps kidnapped prisoners, this may become a tough decision.

Another reason to design these encounters parallel to each other is that you may wish to Tax the PC party in particular ways before an upcoming encounter. For example, grunts under the command of a Fire Ace villain may be instructed to weaken or target down any Water and Rock Type Pokémon that intruders use. In this way, even encounters that the PCs know they will win for sure become dangerous – not because there is some chance they might lose, but because not winning soundly enough could cost them a future victory against more imposing or vital foes.

Spicing Up Encounters
Now that you’ve got the basics down, it’s time to get interesting. Battles don’t happen in a vacuum, or they shouldn’t anyway. If all of your encounters take place against a stock number of opponents and on a flat and empty plane, then your players are liable to get bored from the lack of tactical variety. Here are some ideas for mixing it up!

Use the Environment
Consider the environment the encounter takes place in. A couple of simple rules for a hazardous environment such as traps, poor visibility, or restricted movement can turn what is ordinarily a mundane and easy encounter into a real trial for the players. You can also set up scenarios where the players’ actions and choices leading up to the encounter affect the final environment they fight in. This can be especially handy to make the characters who aren’t built for combat feel more useful if they can put their skills to work making the battle easier before it even starts. Here are some examples.

Dark Caves: These caves are pitch black without light sources available, making fighting nigh impossible without Darkvision or Blindsense. Light sources help, but they can only perfectly illuminate your surroundings for a short distance around you.

A standard lantern or a small or medium sized Pokémon with the Glow Capability creates a Burst 2 of light around it where you can see unimpeded. Every meter between a character and their target imposes a -2 penalty to Accuracy Rolls and Perception Checks regarding that target, but squares illuminated by light do not count toward this total. So for example, if a Trainer is holding a standard lantern, they have no problem making Perception Checks and Accuracy Rolls against anything up to 2 meters away from them because those all fall in illuminated squares, but an Accuracy Roll against something 4 meters away would suffer a -4 penalty, -2 for each unilluminated meter.

The size and quality of the light source affects the usable radius around it. Large Pokémon with Glow and powerful artificial light sources generate a Burst 3, Huge Pokémon generate a Burst 4, and the Illuminate Ability dds 1 to the Burst radius of a light source.

To make penalties easy to calculate, simply draw a line from a character to their target, count the number of meter squares the line passes through, subtract any illuminated squares the line goes through, and multiply that by -2 to calculate the appropriate Perception and Accuracy penalty.

An Arctic Battle: A battle over a frozen lake could pose a unique challenge to even experienced Trainers. The thin ice makes it dangerous to use any Pokémon of significant size – anything with a Weight Class of 5 or higher breaks the ice and falls into the lake. Groundsource attacks and other Moves at the GM’s discretion also make holes in the ice in their area of effect.

You could make the ice slow terrain as well to represent how one must move slowly over it, and you could even call for Acrobatics checks to prevent being Tripped when hit by attacks that cause an Injury.

And finally, to impose an actual danger to falling in the water, you could make everyone in the freezing water suffer Hail damage each turn and also impose a Speed Combat Stage debuff on anyone who falls in.

The Hazard Factory: This abandoned factory still has power thanks to the multitude of Electric Type Pokémon that make it their home. Many of the other species in the factory have even learned to operate the machinery in basic ways and often use it to their advantage in battle. Here, the gadget whiz of the party who otherwise has had trouble contributing to battles can thrive. Suppose the PCs are looking to recover an important hard drive or piece of equipment from deep within the factory, but it is surrounded by hostile wild Pokémon.

Before the battle even begins, the gadget whiz can find where the Electric Types live in the factory and sabotage the wiring system to prevent them from powering the machines the Pokémon use to defend the factory. In the midst of battle, she may even operate the machines herself, using cranes to pick up and move enemies, activating electro-magnets to pin Steel Type opponents in place, or shocking enemies with overloaded circuits.

Collateral Damage: Set your encounter indoors or in an area with many fragile items or innocent bystanders. Players might be more careful to use their powerful area of effect attacks if they have to keep collateral damage to a minimum. Even single target attacks such as Flamethrower can be extremely dangerous to use in a wooden shack. Your players will have to plan their tactics carefully or make hard decisions about what they’re willing to do to win the battle.

Set Unconventional Victory Conditions
Not all battles have to continue until only one side is left standing. Unconventional victory conditions can allow you to turn easy encounters into tougher affairs or pit the PCs against foes they normally couldn’t handle. Remember, running away is always an option too. Even strong foes may back down if a few of them are beaten. Perhaps the PCs are faced with a group of very high Level Pokémon they cannot hope to defeat, but all they have to manage is to get to a boat waiting for them at the beach so they can make their escape. Moves that deal a lot of damage may not be as valuable here compared to Moves that can Slow foes, inflict debilitating Status Afflictions like Sleep, or otherwise impede their foes, such as Barrier.

On the flip side, defeating a pack of weaker foes becomes a much more tense situation when they’re the ones trying to escape and throwing every trick they can against the PCs to slow them down and buy time. Brute rce might not be enough when time isn’t on their side. Other unconventional victory conditions you can use are trying to disable a machine that’s being guarded – the players will have to choose between focusing their attacks on the machine itself and the guards who may be too powerful to completely defeat in a straight up fight, quietly defeating a set of guards without triggering noise sensors or allowing them to trip the alarm system, and retrieving an artifact from underwater ruins and putting it on their boat while assaulted by unending waves of aquatic Pokémon.

Defy Player Expectations
Using the occasional Type Shift or other variants of a Pokémon can take players by surprise and turn their battle tactics upside down. Even when a Type Shift is obvious, it can throw off expectations enough to make it a formidable foe, and some Type Shifts are not obvious at all. A Normal/Psychic Claydol may clearly look like it’s not a Ground Type, but PCs may not realize its Typing until one of them fails to damage it with a Ghost Type attack.

Type Shifts are only the start of the variations you can use to give more variety to your encounters. As a bonus, not only do these help you make more difficult and exciting encounters, but if they’re wild Pokémon, then players will likely be more interested in capturing them for their uniqueness.

Alternate Move Effects: Change up how standard combat mechanics work. Poison doesn’t always have to have the same effect, for example. You may create a breed of Poison Type Swampert with a Toxic venom that’s designed to immobilize and weaken a foe rather than knock them out. Instead of Poison’s normal effect, Poisoned targets are Slowed and suffer -1 to a random Combat Stage each turn, becoming weaker over time. Add in Venom Drench for an even stronger debuffer.

Giant Pokémon: Larger variations of a typically small Pokémon are also great for adding unpredictability to a fight. Take for example the Shiny Giant Caterpie described earlier in this chapter. Few players might expect it to know a powerful Move like Megahorn.

Other great candidates for making giant Pokémon are Trapinch, Magikarp, and Ditto. Imagine a giant Ditto transforming into a super-sized version of the party’s biggest and scariest Pokémon. Aquatic Pokémon and Bug Types in general make natural fits for this treatment.

Give giant Pokémon boosted stats and changes to their Move and Ability lists to account for their size. Body Slam, Thrash, Earthquake, and Bounce are all appropriate Moves, and Abilities such as Thrust and Thick Fat could prove a nasty surprise as well.

Swarm Pokémon: Typically, it isn’t recommended to use large numbers of Pokémon in an encounter, for two main reasons. First of all, it slows down combat tremendously to have many more actions per turn, and players can become bored waiting for their turn to act. Second of all, the action economy of many weaker combatants is incredibly dangerous, and you can very easily overestimate what your players can deal with.

If you encounter a swarm of Joltiks, the zoofbat encourages you to run for your life, as they are the most deadly predators you will ever encounter in the vast world of Pokémon. No, really, they’ll bind you in webs and eat your face.

Sometimes, however, you have to break a few rules to make an interesting encounter. Sometimes it just plain makes sense that the PCs will be assaulted by a huge swarm of bugs or other small Pokémon.

For these cases, you can create a Swarm Template that lets you abstract large numbers of Pokémon into a single entity that roughly emulates how fighting a swarm would work. Note that this still results in a rather nasty encounter! Save it for special occasions.

First, decide on how big the swarm is in your encounter. This may vary from merely being a way to group a dozen or so enemies into one to save time and trouble to representing a fight against a flood of Zubat swooping out of a cave to attack the PCs. You can generalize the sizes of swarms into a Swarm Multiplier according to the following chart.

Swarm Multiplier Size of Swarm
1 Less than a dozen Pokémon

2 15-25 Pokémon

3 25-40 Pokémon

4 40-60 Pokémon

5 60+ Pokémon

These numbers may seem high, but, of course, it’s assumed that each individual Pokémon is trivially weak in this case and is only strong due to their numbers. Here are the mechanics for the Swarm Template. The Swarm is treated as one entity and should be given one stat block for a Pokémon of an appropriate Level. It has a number of “Hit Point bars” to its Swarm Multiplier.

It can’t suffer Injuries, but as it takes damage in battle and loses all the Hit Points in a bar, its Swarm Multiplier decreases by one each time. The Swarm acts multiple times each turn in battle – it has a number of Swarm Points each turn equal to its Swarm Multiplier that it spends on actions. The first Standard Action or attack each turn is free for the Swarm. It then subtracts 5 from its Initiative and can act again on that new value. Even if a Swarm hits Initiative 0, it can still act, even acting multiple times in a row on that Initiative tick. However, these actions have a cost according to their Frequency. At-Will actions cost 1 Swarm Point, EOT costs 2, Scene costs 3, and Daily costs 4. Yes, this means an especially large Swarm may use Daily Moves multiple times in a battle, making it especially dangerous. These costs apply only to Standard Actions. For Swift and Free Actions that are limited to Scene or Daily frequency, a Swarm can use each a number of times a Scene equal to its Swarm Multiplier. Otherwise, a Swarm can take At-Will and EOT Swift and Free Actions each time it acts, frequency allowing.

When a Swarm fails to be able to act due to a Status Affliction such as Sleep, it instead loses 1 Swarm Point for that turn. A Swarm always has at least one action each turn, no matter the result of its Save Rolls. Accuracy Rolls to hit the Swarm gain a bonus equal to its Swarm Multiplier, but all single target damage is resisted one step further. Area of effect attacks and attacks that hit multiple targets are treated as one step more super-effective, however.

Building Recurring Rivals and Villains
Team Rocket would’ve been much less memorable in the Pokémon anime if Ash had fought off nameless grunts around every corner rather than consistently facing off against Jessie and James. Rivals are also a staple of Pokémon media, and it’s a good idea to establish both recurring villains and rivals for your campaign. Honestly, this is a much less daunting task than it might seem at first because many of the guidelines and principles you’d follow for making an interesting PC apply equally to writing recurring NPCs!

Give these important NPCs a theme. This applies both on a fluff level and on a level of mechanics and how they handle battle strategy and approach the PCs. One villain may like to lay ambushes and use sneaky Pokémon while another is all about flashiness and honorable duels. Just as you may wish to focus your characterization of the PCs’ Pokémon on one or two per character, do the same with the rival or villain’s team, creating a recognizable mascot of sorts for them.

It’s important to stat up rivals and villains in a way where they have room to grow alongside the PCs. Absolutely don’t stat out an early rival appearance with more than one or two Classes, because you’ll want to save those Class slots for giving them surprising new tricks in future meetings or for growing their characters in unexpected directions in reaction to the events of the game or how the PCs interact with them.

On that note, you definitely do want to have them learn and change from their interactions with the PCs. A villain whose bumbling and reckless full frontal assaults keep failing will eventually learn more subtle and nuanced ways of attacking the PCs. A rival who sees their PC nemesis begin to focus on Fire Types and walk down the path of a Type Ace might go out of their way to pick up a strong Rock or Water Type Pokémon.

Keep some things the same, of course, or else you risk destroying any sense of identity for these NPCs. Also important is allowing PCs to develop counters to these NPCs the same way the NPCSs do for them.

Encounter Creation for Unbalanced Parties

In a perfect world, all PC parties would be perfectly balanced, well-oiled machines where each componen plays a crucial but balanced role. That’s rarely the case, whether due to honest mistakes, munchkins that aren’t properly reined in, or other reasons.

Your first step to deal with this is to develop a plan for restoring game balance. This tends to begin with talking to any players of PCs that are vastly outshining the others and making your concerns known, possibly arranging for tweaks that will tone down the characters in question. You may also begin planning ways to give weaker characters nifty bonuses for their Pokémon or opportunities to capture strong additions to their team to restore balance over time.

In the meantime though, you’ll have to cope with writing encounters for an unbalanced party. Don’t worry. It’s easier than you think. The most common mistake a GM makes in this situation is to overcompensate and insert many hard counters to the powerful PCs or to focus fire down their Pokémon immediately in encounters. Don’t do this.

A more fun and reasonable way to deal with this issue is to create compartmentalized encounters, where one foe or subset of foes may be acting in a slightly separate area from the others and is clearly meant for the stronger PC and their Pokémon to take on. For example, if the PCs are investigating a criminal laboratory, you might have a large threat like a Metagross bursting in from the outside of the area for the strong PC to hold off while the others delve deeper inside, fighting off more minor scientists and their Magnemites and Voltorbs as they try to get to the heart of the facility and steal its secrets.

This can be combined with the earlier advice on creating non-traditional goals for combat that can enable scenarios like having the combat monster PC hold off enemies while the others set up a crucial piece of equipment. This is especially useful because oftentimes, a character built to be very good at combat is less adept at many non-combat tasks.

While you don’t want to hard counter strong PCs at every corner, using Status Afflictions and some selected counters to their strategies, especially if villains have learned them over time, can help even the playing field.

Teamwork in Battles
The Pokémon video games usually focus on single battles, but that will typically not be the case for a tabletop campaign! A number of Moves and Abilities in the video games make it easy to create teams that have a lot of synergy for double and triple battles, and Pokémon Tabletop United takes this idea and expands upon it.

Your encounters will be more interesting if you play with these parts and show off cool interactions and teamwork between your enemies instead of having them all function as individual units. GMs, show your players this section too! They’ll probably have a lot of fun coming up with teamwork tactics amongst themselves, and it will make battles more exciting for everyone.

First of all, consider which Trainer Classes contribute well to working as a team. In League Battles, the Cheerleader and Mastermind are obvious choices, both able to use Orders that affect a large number of allies at once, or even just their partners in double and triple battles. In the tradition of Bards in tabletop RPGs, the Musician is also capable of providing support to multiple allies with Bardic Flair, War Song, and Lively Beat.

In full contact fights, the Channeler, Dancer, and Hunter are all good at supporting other allies as well. Every Channeled Pokémon can benefit from a variety of buffs depending on other Channeled Pokémon such as gaining Combat Stages when they do or resisting attacks that other Channeled Pokémon resist. The Dancer provides Combat Stage buffs to its allies. And finally, the Hunter takes advantage of positioning and ganging up on single foes. These are only the most obvious examples, and most Classes have some way of helping out their allies if you look for them.

Next, consider Abilities. The most obvious choice for Abilities that help allies are Helper, Teamwork, Pack Hunt, Friend Guard, Bodyguard, Sequence, and the Veil and Boost Abilities (Flower Veil, Ignition Boost, etc). A number of Abilities also let Pokémon use their Standard Actions to support the team – Interference, Confidence, and Rally are just a few. And of course, Plus and Minus work together well. When picking Pokémon for a team or encounter based on teamwork, look for these.

Many Moves are also designed to support teammates. Helping Hand and Blessings are the most obvious choices among these. A number of Moves can heal allies of Status Afflictions or restore their Hit Points – Soft- Boiled, Wish, Heal Pulse, Heal Bell, Aromatherapy. The Pledge Moves, Echoed Voice, and Round also are at their most powerful when used together by a number of allies.

Rototiller, Magnetic Flux, and similar Moves provide buffs to allies in a more situational manner. Weather effects can also be useful to allies by boosting Move damage or ensuring normally inconsistent Moves such as Hurricane always hit; weather can easily be the basis of a themed team.

Psych Up is often used for copying an opponent’s Combat Stages, but it can also be used for a team to copy one self-buffing ally’s Combat Stages. You can also look for places in the system where you can find synergy that isn’t quite as obvious.

For example, when looking at Plusle and Minun, what stands out the most from a teamwork perspective are their Plus and Minus Abilities, as well as Sequence. To make that combination even more potent, however, a Plusle or Minun with an Electric Type Hidden Power can power up the other through the Lightning Rod Ability. A similar tactic can be used with any area of effect Moves of a particular Type and similar Abilities, such as Storm Drain, Flash Fire, or Water Absorb. Anger Point can be triggered by an ally’s Frost Breath or Storm Throw, and if the ally is built so that attack would do minimal damage, this can be an incredibly potent way to boost an ally to maximum Attack Combat Stages.

Finally, there are some basic system mechanics which encourage cooperation and working as a team. Flanking enemies makes them easier to hit, and clever positioning can also make use of the fact that combatants count as Rough Terrain to help protect allies. Pokémon who have achieved a Loyalty Rank of 6 can attempt to Intercept attacks aimed at any of their allies.

Creating Gym Challenges

Gym Challenges should have a special place in any PTU GM’s heart. They’re where you can go all out in giving an NPC nasty and whacky strategies and throw tough challenges at your PCs without worrying that you might kill them all off with too difficult an encounter. In Gym Challenges and other League matches, death tends not to be an issue, and Trainers can always challenge a Gym again at a later date if they fail the first time. This doesn’t mean you should intentionally create impossible Gyms or pay absolutely no heed to balance, but it does mean you can relax a little and be more experimental.

In a standard League-based campaign, Gym Challenges are the one main constant when it comes to significant encounters. You’ll want to do your best to make sure they stay interesting throughout the campaign and don’t become stagnant. Here are some tips and things to consider when crafting your region’s Gyms.

Theme: A region’s Gym Leaders aren’t just a collection of powerful Trainers. Usually, each Gym Leader has a specific theme to his or her Gym Challenge. Most commonly, this is a specialty in a certain elemental Type, but you can certainly deviate from the standard and build Gym Leaders around a particular Combat Stat, a particular kind of battling style, or other factors. Feel free to combine themes as well, such as pairing a Type with a Combat Stat for a Gym.

Unique Mechanics: Gym Leaders should pose a special challenge to the PCs, and a straight up bog standard League match is anything but in most cases. Even adding just a small twist to the standard battling procedure can help, such as using an electrified floor in an Electric Type Gym. You can go further with this and create Gyms built around completely different victory conditions, such as Capture the Flag or obstacle courses.

While many Leagues will require that Gyms adhere to standard League battling regulations – Pokémon battles only with no direct Trainer involvement, it is also interesting and exciting to break from that and create Gyms that challenge the Trainers directly as well.

Here are some examples of Gyms with a strong theme that also works well into the unique mechanics they present for the Gym Challenge.

A Dark Type Gym that also themes itself on the Stealth Skill. The Gym Challenge isn’t about facing off in open field combat, but instead the challengers must work as a team to retrieve a number of artifacts from a dark labyrinth within a time limit while facing assassination style attacks from the Gym Leader’s Pokémon.

A Gym that themes itself off the Cool Contest Stat. It has no particular Type affiliation, but it leans somewhat toward Flying and Electric Types due to the number of Cool Moves of those Types. The battle arena is designed as a series of floating platforms that encourage combatants to make cool and risky acrobatic maneuvers to move around efficiently. An audience judges the combatants’ every Move with Appeal Points much like a Contest, and special bonuses are given for high Appeal such as healing items and buffs.

A Gym that replicates the terror and arduousness of extreme mountain climbing. Set on the peak of a large mountain itself, it takes advantage of the permanent Hail conditions of its locale to wear down opponents. Most of the Gym Leader’s Pokémon are Ground or Ice Type, and she throws in the bite of a Sandstorm into the challenge for added difficulty. Pokémon with push effects are common, replicating the ever-present danger of falling in mountain climbing.

A Grass and Bug Typed Gym that is designed as an obstacle course challenge. Winning is simply a matter of getting to the end. However, the path to the finish line is littered with traps and Bug and Grass Pokémon that will try their best to wear the challengers down with Status Afflictions rather than attacking directly.

That’s not all you should think about when making your region’s Gyms, however! Ideally, your region’s Gyms should fit together in a cohesive whole.

Part of this is simply working to make sure that while each Gym has its special theme, the pattern of themes used throughout the region is predictable or at the least consistent. For example, the previous four example Gyms might seem like they’re all over the place in terms of theme, but if you make a pattern where Gyms always borrow existing facilities or structures for their challenges, it could make sense.

The Dark Gym borrows an old archaeological dig site that’s been fully excavated already, or old mine tunnels perhaps. The Cool Gym uses a sports arena, perhaps one designed for Pokéathlons. The mountain climbing Gym borrows the peak of a ski resort during times of intense winter storms. The obstacle course Gym borrows a forested path through a wildlife preserve.

Part of this is considering what the role of a Gym Leader is in your region, which was covered earlier in the section on Constructing a Pokémon League. You will also want to consider how the Pokémon League expects challengers to approach the Gym circuit.

Do challengers simply need to win once and keep a Badge for life? Or is qualification to an annual League tournament contingent on winning a number of Badges again each year?

Here are some further assorted thoughts and advice on creating Gyms.

'''Don’t enforce a strict Gym order! '''This isn’t the video games, and you have the flexibility of writing the stats for a Gym as you need them rather than setting them all in stone at the beginning of the campaign. Naturally, Gym Leaders keep Pokémon of a wide range of strength, using what’s appropriate for a given challenger based on the number of other Badges they already have.

If you want to give a little more structure to your League, one way to do so without forcing a single right order for Gym Challenges is to create two or three tiers of Gyms, where you need to clear one tier to access to the next but Gyms within the same tier can be challenged in any order otherwise. You could also let Trainers choose from a pool of Gyms. Perhaps there are 12 Gyms, but you only need 8 Badges to qualify for the League.

'''Give Gym Leaders personality! '''Gym Leaders should exist for a reason other than for Gym Challenges. They should have a place in the community and are often well-known figures. Introducing PCs to a Gym Leader before the Gym Challenge, such as helping them defend the town from a criminal Team’s attack, can help get players more invested in the upcoming challenge.

'''Don’t be afraid to go all out! '''Gym Leaders are likely to have great resources at their disposal, not to mention having many connections who can help them out. Except perhaps at the lower tiers of Gym Challenges, there’s no reason for your Gym Leaders not to make full use of TMs, Breeding bonuses, Tutor Moves, Vitamins, Held Items, and other edges and bonuses in battle. Some may even use Shiny Pokémon with special characteristics or make liberal use of Type Shifted Pokémon.

Rewards for Gym Challenges

It’s standard in the video games to hand out a TM and some money as a reward for besting a Gym Challenge, but you may wish to go further with interesting ideas and offer players a choice between different rewards upon their victory. Here are a few to get you started.

Custom Moves: Gym Leaders will often have their own signature Moves they can give out as TMs. This can be as simple as, say, giving the Dark Gym Leader mentioned previously a Dark Type Phantom Force, and it can be as complicated as the Cool Gym Leader developing a physical Electric Typed Move that lets the user bounce like a pinball between nearby targets, hitting them all if they can find a continuous path bouncing off them.

Badges as Held Items: Badges can be for more than show! The Dark Gym Leader’s Badge may grant a Pokémon the Dead Silent Capability or Ambush Ability, for example, or the mountain climbing Gym Leader’s may grant the Snow Cloak Ability.

Pokémon Eggs: Eggs can make great rewards as well, especially when Gym Leaders use Pokémon with special traits. The Cool Gym Leader may offer eggs for Flying/Electric Typed winged Blitzle.

Trainer Equipment: If Trainers are directly involved in the Gym Challenge, it can make sense to give them equipment as part of a reward. The Grass and Bug Gym may hand out Wallclimber Trainer Feet slot equipment, for example.

Sample Gym Challenge

This can be rather a lot to consider at once, so we’re providing you with a sample Pokémon Gym Challenge, based on one of the Gym ideas that was described earlier in this section. The entry has details on the Gym Leader and their Pokémon as well as some fluff on their role in the community.

The sample Gym Challenge is the mountain climbing gym, which is actually a fairly traditional Gym Challenge despite its theme. The aim is still to knock out all the opponent’s Pokémon, and Trainers can only give orders on the sidelines. However, this type of Gym Challenge can be easily modified to accommodate full contact battling, and it can be exciting for the players to have their Trainers take part directly in the challenge to try to climb the mountain alongside their Pokémon.

The other Gym concepts aren’t given stats here, but you can easily use them as a basis to create your own unique and exciting Gym Challenges. There are enough tools and tips in the rest of the Encounter Creation Guide for you to create exciting unconventional Gym Challenges if you so desire.

Nicolette, The Mountain’s Maiden

Name: Nicolette Myra

Age: 27

Gender: Female

Specialty: Ground and Ice Types, Climatology, Battlefield Control

Battle Theme: Cold Wind Flash! – Tales of Graces OST

Cast’s Note: Yes, all Gym Challenges must have their own themes. This is absolutely mandatory, and you are banned from ever GMing PTU again on pain of Mawile bite if you don’t do this. You have been warned!

Trainer Classes: Researcher, Commander, Survivalist, Enduring Soul

Important Features: Researcher: [Climate Control, Extreme Weather], Commander: [Leadership, Battlefield Conductor, Complex Orders, Scheme Twist], Survivalist: [Wilderness Guide, Adapive Geography], Enduring Soul: [Resilience, Awareness, Not Yet!], General: [Focused Training, Inspired Training, Trickster Orders, Precision Orders, Commander’s Voice, Command Versatility]

Background: Nicolette hails from the snowy city of Kale, where a ski resort and other tourist attractions drive the local economy. While the snow falls year round, her Gym accepts challenges only during the winter months when the ski resort closes its highest peaks due to the strong storms in the area. For the rest of the year, Nicolette helps run an orphanage in the city, passing the responsibility entirely to her brother in winter while she runs the Gym.

She is bubbly, incredibly excitable, and very generous, often bringing the children to learn to ski or taking them around the mountain on her snowmobile. She is also known for coordinating the city’s biggest donation drive during the holiday season right before her Gym duties begin. The donations go to the orphanage’s children, of course, along with the other poor and homeless of the cold city.

If Nicolette needs to be given stats for use outside of her Gym duties, she excels in the Mind Category Skills and tends to solve problems through cleverness and ingenuity. Athletics, Survival, Command, and Perception are her best Skills, though she also has training in Acrobatics, Charm, Focus, and General Education.

Map Notes:

Each level of the mountain is 3 meters apart in height,

With the small 3rd level, there’s essentially 6 meters between the larger 2nd and 4th levels.

Using the ladders counts as Overland, but Pokémon can attempt to climb up 3m of cliff directly as a Standard Action with an Acrobatics or Athletics Check with DC 12.

The mounds of snow are deep snow and count as Slow Terrain. The bushes are similar but also count as Rough Terrain. The icy river cracks when anyone of Weight Class 3 or higher falls onto it or when anyone of Weight Class 5 or 6 steps onto it. Each turn spent in frigid water lowers a non-Ice Type’s Speed by 1 CS at the end of their turn.

The players send out their Pokémon near the sign post on the right side, while Nicolette’s Pokémon are spread on the left side near the bridges. The square area next to the tree is where Nicolette stands, but she isn’t part of the battle.

Nicolette’s Pokémon

Donder the Mamoswine (M), Level 40 @ King’s Rock

Hit Points: 131

Stat Base Added Total

HP 11 16 27

ATK 15 15 30

DEF 8 3 11

SPATK 5 0 5

SPDEF 6 4 10

SPEED 8 12 20

Abilities: Snow Cloak, Thick Fat, Ice Body

Moves: Ice Shard, Rock Slide (PP Upped), Stealth Rock, Superpower, Double-Hit, Ice Fang

Poké Edges: Accuracy Training (Rock Slide)

Comet the Hippowdon (F), Level 40 @ Summit Badge

Hit Points: 125

Stat Base Added Total

HP 10 15 25

ATK 11 16 27

DEF 14 16 30

SPATK 5 0 5

SPDEF 7 3 10

SPEED 5 0 5

Abilities: Sand Stream, Arena Trap, Sand Force

Moves: Stealth Rock, Fire Fang, Sand Tomb (PP Upped), Earthquake, Strength, Whirlwind

Poké Edges: Advanced Mobility (Overland)

Blitzen the Sigilyph (M), Level 41 @ Focus Band

Hit Points: 108

Stat Base Added Total

HP 8 11 19

ATK 4 0 4

DEF 8 7 15

SPATK 10 11 21

SPDEF 8 7 15

SPEED 10 15 25

Abilities: Wonder Skin, Magic Guard, Instinct

Moves: Whirlwind, Hypnosis, Toxic, Light Screen, Smack Down, Air Slash (PP Upped)

Poké Edges: Advanced Mobility (Sky)

Vixen the Glaceon (F), Level 40 @ Safety Goggles

Hit Points: 122

Stat Base Added Total

HP 7 17 24

ATK 4 0 4

DEF 11 10 21

SPATK 15 10 25

SPDEF 10 10 20

SPEED 7 3 10

Abilities: Snow Cloak, Ice Body, Frostbite

Moves: Barrier, Heal Bell, Hyper Voice (PP Upped), Signal Beam, Icy Wind, Wish

Poké Edges: Capability Training (High and Long Jump)

Cupid the Aurorus (F), Level 40 @ Leftovers

Hit Points: 140

Stat Base Added Total

HP 12 18 30

ATK 6 0 6

DEF 7 8 15

SPATK 12 13 25

SPDEF 9 11 20

SPEED 6 0 6

Abilities: Ice Shield, Solid Rock, Ice Body

Moves: Freeze-Dry, Haze, Sandstorm, Discharge, Ancient Power, Blizzard (PP-Upped)

Poké Edges: Advanced Mobility (Overland)

Rudolph the Castform (M), Level 40 @ Lum Berry

Hit Points: 101

Stat Base Added Total

HP 7 10 17

ATK 5 0 5

DEF 7 8 15

SPATK 9 16 25

SPDEF 7 8 15

SPEED 7 8 15

Abilities: Forecast, Levitate, Snow Warning

Moves: Weather Ball (PP Upped), Blizzard, Hex, Shock Wave, Energy Ball, Scald

Poké Edges: Advanced Mobility (Sky)

Special: Rudolph is Ice/Ground Type in Hail/Sandstorm combination; Weather Ball may deal Ground Damage

Strategy: Nicolette’s Gym Challenge is appropriate for Trainers with Pokémon in their late 20s and early 30s. She challenges Trainers in groups rather than individually, and she is capable of commanding her entire team each turn regardless of the normal number of Pokémon turns per round. Each PC Trainer commands only one Pokémon at a time, but set up the challenge so that the total number of Pokémon the PCs can use throughout the battle is about one and a half times the number Nicolette uses. Nicolette herself is at least Trainer Level 40, though this should only come into play for determining AP pool. You may also give her bonus AP to make up for the players’ numbers advantage.

Nicolette’s strategy revolves around taking advantage of weather effects and using battlefield control to slowly wear down her opponents. The mountain on which she sets her Gym Challenge is enveloped in a permanent Hailstorm, at least for the winter months, and this results in a special mechanic for the challenge: Effects such as Defog and Cloud Nine only temporarily hold the weather’s effects at bay, lasting for only two rounds.

On top of this, Nicolette uses the Climate Control Feature to add a Sandstorm on top of the Hail, adding additional damage over time to her Gym Challenge. The Extreme Weather Feature ensures that her opponents also do less damage with their attacks and hit less often.

All of Nicolette’s Pokémon have had her special training applied, allowing them to treat deep snow and ice as Normal Terrain. Additionally, they are well-trained in mountain climbing and can run up the cliffs around the map as if they had the Wallclimber Capability. Remember also to apply Training Features!

The other part of her strategy revolves around controlling the battlefield. The map on the previous page is designed to facilitate this, containing choke points and giving opportunity for Push Moves to send opponents down cliffs for falling damage or into the icy river to be further slowed. The map is actually fairly flat for a mountain, and this was deliberately chosen for the sake of making battles run smoother. By all means, feel free to make a map that is more steep if you feel that is an appropriate challenge.

A typical battle against Nicolette will see her set up Stealth Rock and Barrier Hazards near the bridge choke points. Depending on the composition of the PCs’ teams, she may or may not open with a Light Screen for defense.

From there, her tactics center around a battle of attrition for the most part. Several of Nicolette’s Pokémon have the Ice Body Ability, so don’t forget to apply that each turn as the Hail rages on. She will use Moves like Icy Wind and Sand Tomb to lower Speed Combat Stages or slow her enemies directly to keep them struggling to reach her other Pokémon while taking damage each round. Push Moves such as Whirlwind and Strength let her push opponents down cliffs for falling damage and to slow down their approach further. Vixen plays a small cleric role on her team, curing Status Afflictions and restoring Hit Points. Nicolette will often have her Pokémon retreat up the mountain, forcing opponents to take more damage as they try to follow. Haze prevents them from setting up Combat Stages during this time.

On her turns, Nicolette will use Orders and Stratagems such as Focused Training or Capricious Whirl, boosting the number of targets she can affect with her Commander Features. Command Versatility lets her reuse useful Moves, such as using Blitzen’s Smack Down more often or gaining more uses of Vixen’s Heal Bell.

Resilience helps her win the battle of attrition. Flying opponents and other opponents with high mobility are Nicolette’s greatest weakness, of course. She tends to deal with most fliers by hitting them with high damage Ice attacks such as Blizzard, which always hits during Hail. Failing that, Rudolph and Cupid both have Electric Type attacks for dealing with them, and Blitzen may use Smack Down to bring them back to earth, especially if that lets Comet trap them with Sand Tomb.

Pokémon with Magic Guard also give her trouble. It’s recommended that you leave this weakness as part of Nicolette’s challenge because it will give the players an angle to prepare from. Her vision behind the Gym is to test the challengers’ preparedness for extreme environmental conditions after all, so her team is built to reward exploiting that weakness. That said, if you feel the battle may become too easy that way, you can easily give her Mold Breaker Pokémon like Excadrill, more Pokémon with Smack Down, and swifter hard-hitting fliers of her own. You may even create a custom Move that is an Ice-Typed Fire Spin to deal with high mobility.

Rewards: Summit Badge (Pokémon Held Item, grants the Snow Cloak Ability), $6000, and a choice of one of the following: Amaura Egg (Inheritance Moves: Discharge and Haze), Blizzard TM, Overcloak (Held Item/Accessory Item: Grants Overcoat Ability).

Even in a League-based campaign of Pokémon Tabletop United, there are times you need to throw a traditional “boss” encounter at the PCs outside of a Gym Challenge or tournament match. It can be a fight against a criminal Team admin and his experimental superweapon or even a face off against a Legendary Pokémon.

One important bit of advice you should keep in mind in these situations is that merely throwing a single high level enemy at a group of PCs is not going to provide a challenge. A group of 3 or 4 Trainers with average Level 20 Pokémon will often make short work of even a Level 80 opponent. If you want to make a single foe an imposing challenge for a group, you will have to apply some special rules to them in the encounter.

Standard Boss Template
When Do I Use It?

The Boss Template need not be reserved for gargantuan plot-arc-concluding encounters. The nature of action economy and combat in PTU makes it a good idea to use the Boss Template much more frequently, whenever you want a particular enemy to shine in battle. While you shouldn’t be making enemies which have the full number of Hit Point bars and Initiative Counts in battle all the time, you can make lieutenants and enemy commanders in regular encounters more significant by giving them one extra hit point bar and one extra action each turn.

Basic Stats

Begin by statting the enemy for the Boss Template as normal. This is done just like a normal enemy, but you want to keep in mind several considerations:

»» HP is even more important. The Boss Enemy’s final number of Hit Points will be multiplied across several Hit Point bars, so skimping here will have a multiplied effect in making the encounter easier than it should be when you apply all the changes from the template.

»» More than other foes, Bosses need access to reliable high-frequency Moves. With all of their actions per round, stuffing them with Scene and Daily Moves will ensure that they run out of steam quickly.

»» Players typically expect Bosses to be big damage dealers and threats on their own. Of course, you don’t have to abide by these expectations, but keep in mind that a Boss Enemy will often be the very last foe that the players take down in a fight. If you’ve built a Boss that’s purely dedicated to support and relies on its minions for damage output, then you’re going to see a very anticlimactic end to your fight compared to if you build a powerful bruiser.

»» Especially powerful Boss Pokémon can have some of their Combat Stages set above zero as their Default.

Actions and Initiative

Count up the number of Pokémon turns your players typically have each round. Typically, this will be equal to the number of players, but frequent use of Focused Command may increase this number. Then add the number of Trainers who are mostly specialized towards Trainer Combat. Usually, you would only count someone who has built their character to be dedicated to spending their Standard Actions using Moves and other attacks.

This final number is the baseline for how many actions per round a fully fledged Boss Enemy should have when facing your party. When making minor Bosses, or for lieutenants and commanders in more regular fights, you can use a fraction of this final value instead. You should space out these actions throughout the Initiative order to ensure each round is well paced. Start with the Boss Enemy’s base Initiative value. Then subtract 5 and add an additional turn at that new Initiative Count. Subtract 5 again and add another additional turn. Repeat this process until you’ve distributed all of the Boss Enemy’s turns throughout the Initiative order or you reach the point where you can’t subtract 5 anymore without going below 1. If you still have leftover turns to distribute, then start adding 5 from the enemy’s original Initiative.

On each round, your Boss Enemy acts on each of these Initiative Counts. Let’s take for example a Boss Enemy with 20 base Initiative and 5 turns per round. Start with giving it its normal turn at Initiative Count 20. Then distribute turns to Initiative Counts 15, 10, and 5. You still have 2 turns left to distribute, so those go to 25 and 30.

EOT Frequency Moves also work differently for Boss Template enemies. Rather than needing to wait an entire round between using those Moves, they can use EOT Moves multiple times a round as long as they put a turn in between each use. This also applies to the restriction on using Scene x2 Moves multiple times in a row.

Hit Points and Injuries

Just as Boss Template enemies have their actions per round multiplied, so do they have their number of Hit Point bars, making them effectively as powerful as several enemies. For each action a Boss Enemy has each round, give them one Hit Point bar.

When taking percentile damage, such as Poison or Sandstorm, recovering percentile Hit Points, such as Ingrain or Heal Pulse, or using effects that set Hit Points to a certain number, such as Pain Split, use only the current Hit Point bar; these effects do not touch the other ones. You might notice this looks very similar to the Swarm Rules so far. However, do not lower a Boss Template enemy’s number of actions per turn as it loses Hit Point bars. Doing so would make them degrade in power too much to be threatening.

Additionally, Boss Template enemies do not follow normal Injury rules and instead gain an Injury only when:

»» They take Massive Damage. This does not give them an Injury for Hit Point Markers, just for Massive Damage itself.

»» They lose half of their total Hit Point Bars.

»» An effect such as Cruelty specifically mandates giving them an Injury. Keep in mind that Injuries a Boss suffers early in an encounter will affect its later Hit Point bars. Plan accordingly.

Whenever a Boss Enemy loses a Hit Point bar, additional damage or loss of Hit Points carries over to the next. The Boss is considered Staggered when it loses a Hit Point bar. Mechanically, this doesn’t mean anything in the context of the system, but for the sake of pacing your encounter and giving the players a sense of progress when fighting an enemy that has much more health than normal, it can be a good idea to have one or more of the following effects occur whenever a Boss Enemy is Staggered. Both positive and negative effects are included, as there are some Boss encounters you may wish to make easier as they go on and some more difficult.

»» They become Vulnerable until the next time they are hit by a damaging attack.

»» Become Flinched and lose their next turn (not a whole round).

»» Increase a Combat Stage by 1.

»» They regain a use of a Scene Frequency Move.

»» They become cured of a single Volatile Affliction.

Additionally, you may wish for special effects to trigger when a Boss Template enemy is down to its last Hit Point bar. What exactly this is should depend on the Boss itself. A feral Wild Pokémon may become Enraged and set its default Attack Combat Stages to +6. A skilled and disciplined Fighting-Type Pokémon may unlock access to a powerful signature attack. A Boss may simply clear itself of negative Combat Stages and Status Afflictions.

Status Afflictions

Status Afflictions must be modified for Boss Template enemies. If you were have a Boss lose a Tick of Hit Points on every single turn from Poison, for example, it would quickly go down without much of a fight. Here are some suggestions for how to modify Status Afflictions.

»» Burn, Poison, Curse, Sandstorm, Hail, and other effects that cause a target to lose Hit Points over time occur only once at the beginning of each round, rather than on each turn.

»» Similarly, effects that cause action denial, such as Confuse and Paralyze only affect one turn each round. When a Move or effect is used which causes one of these Status Afflictions, it affects the immediate next turn the Boss has and is assigned to that Initiative Count until it is cured.

»» Sleep and Frozen instead become Drowsy and Chilled respectively. These are identical effects that affect all of a Boss Enemy’s turns each round but do not cause them to lose their actions. Instead, they cause a Boss to lose half of their Evasion, and upon failing a Save Check, they suffer a -10 penalty to their next Damage Roll. Otherwise, they may recover from these Status Afflictions as normal, though taking damage does not automatically cure Drowsy as it would cure Sleep.

»» Disable can affect only one of a Boss Enemy’s Moves at a time, to prevent a party from completely locking down their actions.

»» Boss Enemies cannot lose multiple turns each round from Flinch.

Environment and Minions

Even with a boss template applied, a single boss enemy should not be the entirety of the encounter. Giving minions to supply support or adding extra effects from the environment (such as giving a turn for a volcanic environment to “act” by spreading Fire Hazards and splashing molten lava out of pools at combatants) is still a good move to prevent type advantage from completely trivializing a boss as well as to allow the players to split up instead of all mobbing around one Boss Enemy.

Experience and Rewards

When awarding Experience for a Boss encounter, do not divide the Experience from the Boss Enemy itself by the number of players. Looking back to the Basic Encounter Creation section, the GM there had 180 Levels to build an important encounter. A similar boss encounter with a single Pokémon may only be Level 60, which would be far less Experience despite a similar level of difficulty!

While rare, there may be times when you have a Boss Enemy or other high level encounter be caught by the players. First of all, you should make the Boss Enemy immune to Poké Balls until it is on its last Hit Point bar, but you should make it very clear and obvious when that immunity is broken.

In the case of a successful capture, there’s no shame in ratcheting down their Level to be a more reasonable catch for the players, rather than trying to deal with them having a new Pokémon far above their average party level. You can use a variety of in-universe explanations to justify this, such as a Pokémon suffering grievous Injuries that make it require a long period of training and rehabilitation to reach its former strength.

Many Boss Enemies are also often artificially boosted in power, such as a Pokémon corrupted by dark magic or twisted science experiments. Defeating them and cleansing them of these factors can weaken them and make them more on par with a normal Pokémon.

Obviously, you would never allow a player to use a caught Pokémon as if it had the Boss Template, even if it had it before as an encounter.

Sample Boss: Mewtwo

Mewtwo

Level 70

Modest Nature (-Attack / +Special Attack)

Hit Points: 167 (x4 bars)

Stat Base Added Total

HP 11 18 29

ATK 9 0 9

DEF 9 6 15

SPATK 17 33 50

SPDEF 9 6 15

SPEED 13 17 30

Acts on Initiative 30, 25, 20, and 15.

Abilities: Pressure, Frighten, Memory Wipe

Moves: Psychic (PP Upped to At-Will), Swift, Shadow Ball, Energy Ball, Hidden Power (Fairy), Guard Swap

Zoofbat: For Legendary Pokémon in particular, you might find it useful to take a look at The Blessed and the Damned splat! In fact, many of these ideas are similar to how Legendary Pokémon battles are handled there.

Multi-Part Enemies

Another method for making boss encounters involves splitting up the boss into multiple parts, each with their own Initiative, bar of Hit Points, and often their own set of Moves and Abilities as well.

Think about classic video game bosses such as the Dragon Tank in Chrono Trigger with Head, Body, and Wheel parts. The tactical choice of which area of the enemy to target adds depth to an encounter and can make it more exciting.

In particular, this method is useful for creating giant Pokémon as bosses. You may create a giant Hydreigon boss encounter where the dragon perches each of its three heads over the top edge of a cliff to face the PCs, each of those heads armed with different attacks.

Simply give each part of the Pokémon stats as if they were an individual of the whole species. You can make modifications to Base Stats here and use different Abilities, but that can add complexity to your statting process. Do it if you have the time, but it isn’t necessary.

When it comes to Movement and turns, this can be a little trickier. Typically, however, if you’re using this method for a giant Pokémon, each individual part will be big enough to occupy a sizable part of the battlefield and have some freedom of movement itself, for example a giant Charizard’s claws or the tail of a giant Steelix.

Sample Boss: Hydreigon

Each of the three heads takes up a 4x1 area, and they can stretch to move 7 meters from their starting position. Occasionally, the Hydreigon may reposition itself entirely to allow itself better access to the battlefield.

Hydreigon’s Left Head

Level 50

Adamant Nature (-Special Attack / +Attack)

Poké Edges: Attack Conflict (Special Attack)

Hit Points: 117

Stat Base Added Total

HP 9 10 19

ATK 13 28 41

DEF 9 6 15

SPATK 11 0 11

SPDEF 9 6 15

SPEED 10 10 20

Abilities: Levitate, Polycephaly, Cruelty

Moves: Crunch, Body Slam, Ice Fang, Thunder Fang, Outrage, Fire Fang

Hydreigon’s Right Head

Level 50

Modest Nature (-Attack / +Special Attack)

Hit Points: 117

Stat Base Added Total

HP 9 10 19

ATK 9 0 9

DEF 9 6 15

SPATK 15 28 43

SPDEF 9 6 15

SPEED 10 10 20

Abilities: Levitate, Cruelty, Pride

Moves: Tri-Attack, Dragon Pulse (PP Upped to At-Will), Signal Beam, Earth Power, Flamethrower, Roar

Hydreigon’s Center Head

Level 70

Brave Nature (-Speed / +Attack)

Poké Edges: Mixed Sweeper 1, 2, 3

Hit Points: 158

Stat Base Added Total

HP 9 17 26

ATK 13 30 43

DEF 9 6 15

SPATK 13 30 43

SPDEF 9 6 15

SPEED 8 0 8

Abilities: Levitate, Cruelty, Twisted Power

Moves: Hyper Voice, Superpower, Draco Meteor, Stone Edge, Crunch, Dragon Pulse (PP Upped to At-Will)

Truly Colossal Foes

Sometimes, simply making a multi-part enemy isn’t enough for the scale of your encounter. Sometimes, an enemy is so large it doesn’t really make sense how you would attack them from the ground or with another traditional approach.In this case, you may turn the entire enemy into a “dungeon” or “level”, turning the encounter into a matter of climbing all over them and striking at weak spots. Think Shadow of the Colossus.

Of course, in such a challenge, the boss itself isn’t likely to directly attack the PCs. More likely, you will want to turn back a few pages and take a look at the advice for using the environment to spice up an encounter. In addition, such colossal Pokémon are likely to be ecosystems unto themselves, and you would create the encounter much like any other, using the Pokémon who would live there.

The big addition comes in adding the vulnerable parts of the colossal Pokémon. A colossal Torterra may have certain ancient trees on its back that supply it with much of its energy and life force. An Avalugg large enough to carry a frozen lake on its back may have support structures in that lake which can be broken.

An ancient Regigigas may have been animated from inorganic material, and ancient seals adorn its surface which must be broken to shut it down. Give each weak spot its own set of stats, or just Hit Points. It’s unlikely these can attack directly, but you may have the trees on the Torterra’s back use Powder moves, for example.

Special Boss Powers

If you really want to take a boss battle to the next level, it can be a good idea to give them special powers in battle that further distinguish them from normal foes. A powerful boss may have some or all of their default Combat Stages set to a higher value, for example. Boss creatures may also be enhanced in some way – maybe a gigantic Claydol is also encrusted with Unown that give it additional mysterious powers, a Nidoking could be strapped into a mechanical power frame, or a Delphox could be empowered by eldritch magic. This could serve as a convenient in-universe explanation for additional Hit Point bars and actions – all of these enhancements could account for a boss Pokémon’s increased durability and offensive capability in combat.

These special boss powers can be as complicated or as simple as you want. Here are write-ups based on the above examples in ascending complexity.

Mechanical Power Frame: This Pokémon or Trainer’s Attack Combat Stages default to +3, and they add the following Moves to their Move List: Metal Claw, Iron Head, Meteor Mash.

Eldritch Magic: This Pokémon or Trainer is empowered by powerful magic. Their damaging attacks inflict Dementia on 16+. Dementia is identical to Confusion except with these additional effects:

»» The target suffers a -2 penalty to all Save Checks.

»» On a roll of 1-8, the target also loses a Combat Stage in a Stat chosen at random.

»» If a target affected by Dementia would be afflicted with Dementia again, they are instead Cursed.

Unown Imbuement: This Pokémon or Trainer has one to five Clusters of Unown grafted onto their body. Each active Cluster of Unown gives them a passive +1 bonus to both Accuracy and Evasion. Clusters of Unown can also be burned away and deactivated for the rest of the Scene to produce the following effects, depending on how many Clusters are burned at once:

»» One Cluster – Use the Move Hidden Power as a Swift Action as either a Physical or Special Attack. The user picks Hidden Power’s Type for each use.

»» Two Clusters – Add a +5 bonus to the Accuracy Roll of one attack as a Swift Action.

»» Three Clusters – Use the Move Detect as a Free Action.

Other Assorted Boss Tips

Even with strong bosses with multiple Hit Point bars and actions per turn, it’s usually a good idea to create some smaller minions to fight alongside the boss, since defeating them gives a concrete measurement of progress for the players.

Injuries are usually applied meaningfully only to the PCs. Except in cases where enemies use an inordinate amount of healing, the PCs will typically knock out their foes before they accrue enough Injuries to make a difference. Bosses are one place where you can buck this trend and make strategies based on inflicting or taking advantage of Injuries more useful.

One way to do this is to have a boss or other important enemy try to escape during an encounter. It’s not realistic to have all enemies fight until the last man standing, after all. If the PCs manage to track down the villain again within a day or so, it’s probable he will still have Injuries from their previous encounter, making it easier to defeat them.

Another way to use Injuries is to throw an already Injured villain at the PCs. This can weaken a foe that might otherwise be too difficult for the PCs to handle, and it can make a lot of sense in situations such as when a villain emerges from the ancient temple full of traps having found the artifact he was searching for.

Bosses are also a great place to use unconventional strategies and combinations that might take your players by surprise. Having a series of weaker foes launch Guard and Power Split attacks against a party’s strongest Pokémon can really put a spanner in the works for the players and give them a memorable encounter.

Trick Room is another rarely seen strategy that can be put to good use in a boss encounter if a boss has many slow minions in the battle. It’s a good idea to consider the various different roles Pokémon can play in battle and make them work together in a boss encounter. A strong multi-action boss will usually be a bulky or speedy damage dealer, but you can throw a pair of disablers like Spiritomb or Whimsicott alongside them or a pair of clerics like Blissey or Meganium to support them and act as force multipliers. Think about supporting Trainers for boss encounters too. They may even act as direct participants in battle using combat-oriented Classes.