Optional Rules

Baby Template
You may wish to roleplay baby Pokémon has having a small handicap, due to their newborn status. If so, simply subtract 2, 3, or even 4 from each of the Pokémon’s Base Stats, lower each of their Skills one Rank, and lower their Capabilities by 2. Weight and height are lowered accordingly, by up to 50%. Pokémon tend to grow quickly; every 5 levels, they gain +1 to each of their Base Stats, and they grow in size a little. When they have finally regained all of their Base Stats, remove the penalties to skills and capabilities.

This template isn’t necessary for Pokémon that are already quite weak; a baby Sentret probably doesn’t need this applied, for example, and don’t even consider it on a Weedle. If your Trainers somehow gain a baby Pinsir or Tauros early on, you may wish to dampen those Stats however.

You can also use this Template to make Legendary Pokémon usable by PCs! You could even make it permanent or partly permanent, especially on Pokémon with a Base Stat Total of over 60 or so.

Ground Attacks + Flying Types
Did it ever seem odd to anyone that Mud Bomb or Bonemerang can’t hit flying Types? But somehow Venomoth and Beedrill are fully susceptible to earthquakes? Here’s a simple Optional Rule that addresses that:

Instead, Flying-Type Pokémon resist Ground-Type moves. However, Moves with the Groundsource keyword (Earthquake, Magnitude, Dig, Fissure, Earth Power) do not affect Pokémon that are currently Levitating or Flying, regardless of Type.

Narrative Frequency
When the game says “Per day”, it generally refers to one in-game day. But if you play a game where there are often in-character time-skips in between days represented by sessions, or even if you would just like to keep all of those things a bit easier to track, you may want to consider putting your game on Narrative Frequency.

“Per Day” can instead be interpreted as “Per Session”. Depending on how much do in a single session, this may really push your PCs to the limit – which can be both a good and bad thing. If you end the session in the middle of an encounter, you may also want to establish that the session “refreshes” after you finish any encounters that are still unfinished.

Oh, and be mindful of some features or effects – Egg hatching for example would take FOREVER under narrative structure. Consider speeding up Egg Hatching when running a Narrative-Frequency game.

Limited Combat Stage Moves
With the wide range of options in Pokémon mobility such as flight and burrowing, you might run into the problem of having combatants retreat far above or below the battlefield to repeatedly use Combat Stage boosting Moves until they’re maxed out and ready to fight.

One way to overcome this is to not allow effects that only raise Combat Stages, such as Moves like Swords Dance or Abilities like Speed Boost, to take effect unless a combatant is within 6 meters of a foe. Unless they’re engaged in the midst of battle, they can’t pump themselves up for the fight as effectively.