Skinderella's Pokemon Customs

[Skinderella]

3 more mons, this time a set of starters!

Empoleon and Cinderace each have a way to bond with an allied Pokemon, allowing some teams to be built around them, with different mons benefitting more from them then others. Cinderace focuses on ranged attacks and weakening enemies with burns, while Empoleon can march with a small group of Pokemon, protecting anyone that goes near them.

Meanwhile Serperior can turn enemy debuffs that affect it against the them, boost itself up thanks to Leaf Storm, and create a small "no-go" zone that can threaten paralysis.

[Skinderella]

TSAREENA

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A Pokémon with an aggressive personality and a mastery of kicking, it cackles every time it kicks an opponent.

[Skinderella]

ESPEON

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Wields an arcane power with which it can predict the weather and even people's thoughts. When bathed in sunshine, the scarlet orb on its brow glows and builds energy.

[Skinderella]

CLODSIRE

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When attacked, this Pokémon will retaliate by sticking thick spines out from its body. It’s a risky move that puts everything on the line.

[Skinderella]

Another update with an additional 3 mons!

Tsareena can bond with other Pokemon, and optionally wound her bondee to bolster her own offense. On top of this she provides defensive support against unblockables. Gengar pairs particularly well with her, able to take a wound from her bonding and move it elsewhere, whilst disliking unblockables that Tsareena negates.

Espeon provides a variety of supportive options. It can protect allies for a turn and can inflict confusion with Psybeam. It can also save Order Markers, which can come in handy when paired with Pokemon like Volcarona, who can remove Order Markers on its card to boost itself.

Clodsire creates a small area of swamp water that can poison enemies within. It can also ride a wave of poison both to attack enemies and to close in on them. And with its Unaware ability, it can invalidate stat boosts on enemies it combats.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

So this might have been brought up before but just wondering, would it perhaps be better for like your Empoleons and such to like... only bond within their type or something?

IDK, I guess Pokemon dont really have other Pokemon they should work with anyways. But like if you go into this to any real depth it seems a bit hard to build some like proper cool interactions and such if like every leader is bonding to the whole lot of them.

[Shiftrex]

I think the closest thing Pokemon have to teamwork, in world, is that they can communicate to varying degrees between themselves:

- Can talk to all Pokemon somewhat
- Can understand Pokemon that share a type better (Pikachu made Zapdos understand it in a movie)
- Can understand their own species (evolutionary line included) the best.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

I'm just kinda thinking of it like:

Empoleon bonds with Water and Steel types =

1. An immediate direction on what to look at for your army.
2. A limited enough pool that you could control who has soft synergy better. Like he really likes him some Piplups or like Skarmory has some neat interaction cause they're both birds.

Empoleon bonds with everybody feels hard to like not have a lot of arbitrary synergy combos that could make army crafting feel a bit unsatisfying.

But it does depend a lot on just how many cards this project is intended to have.

[MrNobody]

Could be cool if the starters had more general powers (as the "protagonist" Pokemon in a lot of senses) and then a lot of the other ones were more about synergizing with peeps that are more similar to them.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

Yeah wasn't saying like Empoleon superficially had to change. Just like if everyone is generalist I think that gets kinda rough.

[Skinderella]

Originally Posted by Soundwarp SG-1

So this might have been brought up before but just wondering, would it perhaps be better for like your Empoleons and such to like... only bond within their type or something?

IDK, I guess Pokemon dont really have other Pokemon they should work with anyways. But like if you go into this to any real depth it seems a bit hard to build some like proper cool interactions and such if like every leader is bonding to the whole lot of them.

It's a very valid point and one that I've thought about a lot before. There are sprinklings of it already with Sceptile (who wants grass, bug, or flying mons around), and Tyranitar (rock, ground, and steel being immune to its sand stream damage), and I do have some bonders coming that work off of types, one specifically working with mons that share a type with it, or that have a weakness to its types.

Currently I have about 50 mons planned, but will probably sprinkle more in over time. The reason I went more generalist for a lot of mons is for several reasons:

• taking into account the 18 types, some bonders could suffer from a lack of options (though that's easily fixable).
• the games often promote type diversity, but also you can still build around certain types if you want to.
• pushing for specific type teams could lead to games that are a pretty big struggle (grass team vs. fire team? Could be really hard for grass to win that).
• something I've thought about before are trainers that work like C3G story cards, and allow for bonuses or bonding to mons of certain types. So for example, Lance provides something for Dragon and Flying type mons, but Dragonite being his main mon, gets its own bonus like a new move or a stat buff.
• soft synergies can help gear mons towards certain others whilst still promoting type diversity. For example:
  • Tsareena provides Gengar an immunity to unblockables, and can wound Gengar, which it can then give to someone else thanks to Chaos Move.
  • Volcarona likes any mons that can inflict burns or can move it around, such as Empoleon. It also helps mons that can attack with fire moves by giving them a slight boost.
  • Pikachu being small and electric, can provide Vikavolt its buffs and also bond with it.

However, I can definitely see how working off of types can help for clearer team building and limiting problematic combos, and have thought about it multiple times before. I'm down to adjust some mons like Cinderace, Empoleon, and Tsareena to compensate for it. I could see giving each one multiple types to work with, that way it still helps push for diversity and gives each one several options. Perhaps it could look like this?

• Cinderace: Fire, Fighting, Ground?, Normal
• Empoleon: Water, Ice, Flying, Normal
• Tsareena: Grass, Bug, Fighting / Flying / Fairy, Normal

One issue I have is just deciding who bonds with what types? Maybe looking at the habitats for those mons and going from there?

I do also plan to convert these to 2.0 language in the future, so certain mons could synergise off of habitats or regions as well?

I love the feedback though, thank you! Definitely nice to hear others' opinions, this project has been in my own echo chamber for so long that I'll definitely gloss over / miss things.

[Skinderella]

CRAMORANT

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Spoiler Alert!

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Cramorant instinctively swallow everything whole. They're at their most formidable when they're struggling to swallow overly large prey.