Pokémon Movepool Oddities & Explanations

[lemonademaker]

Apologies in advance if I'm replying to something from too far in the past - new to posting in the forum so still getting a handle on the rules!

With Pain Split, it seems to be a literal translation from the Japanese name, "itamiwake". The thing is, while "itamiwake" can literally be translated as "to share pain", the phrase is specifically a sumo wrestling term. It refers to calling a draw on a wrestling match because one player is too injured to continue. (It's also an outdated practice - in modern sumo, a major injury would just be a forfeit.) This loosely makes sense with the effect of the move: one Pokemon is injured more badly than the other, so the two combatants "call a draw" by equalizing their HP.

With that context, the scattered distribution makes sense. You see it on Psychics and Ghosts based on the literal definition of the word — "sharing pain" works with psychic empathic powers and ghostly affinity for pain. You see it on Fighting Pokemon and other physical brawlers because of the martial origins of the term. And any other Pokemon can be given it on the basis that, ultimately, all Pokemon are engaging in a combat sport themselves.

that's really interesting and I didn't know it before. that explains a lot, thx

 

[AztecCroc]

it took them until Gen 9(?) to get Solar Beam (maybe they got it sooner but I know they didn't have it in Gen 6).

Gen 8's when Heliolisk got Solar Beam.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

Been playing through FRLG. As is typical of the series, the only hold items you tend to spot on NPC trainers in this game are berries on the boss trainers' ace Pokemon and some Nuggets or other valuables attached to rich trainers' Pokemon...

...and a ton of Black Belts attached to various NPCs' fighting type Pokemon. Maybe even the majority, and even before the Vs Seeker rematches come into play. What's going on here? Trying to make the Fighting type come off stronger than usual for some reason?

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Been playing through FRLG. As is typical of the series, the only hold items you tend to spot on NPC trainers in this game are berries on the boss trainers' ace Pokemon and some Nuggets or other valuables attached to rich trainers' Pokemon...

...and a ton of Black Belts attached to various NPCs' fighting type Pokemon. Maybe even the majority, and even before the Vs Seeker rematches come into play. What's going on here? Trying to make the Fighting type come off stronger than usual for some reason?

So I got curious about this and assumed "well, if a bunch of Black Belts/Crush Kin have Black Belts on their Pokemon, it probably follows that numerous trainers of other types will have the corresponding items too" but no, you're quite right. Looking at all the other areas in the game... it does seem to mostly just be them.

Makes sense for the trainers in the Fighting Dojo, I guess the idea there is that they're all so determined and single-minded and are the most devoted Fighting trainers in Kanto... but then there's a bunch of other Fighting specialists dotted around, as you say, who have Black Belts on all their Pokemon too. Even in Victory Road, Black Belt Daisuke is the only one who's specified to hold an item (going off Bulbapedia's listing, which usually notes trainer held items). Maybe it's intended as a joke about how the name Black Belt is shared by the NPC class and the item? Only thing that comes to mind.

Diving further into this, I found a video detailing where all the type-boosting items are and FRLG has some weird variance. Some of them are Game Corner prizes, while most are held items on wild Pokemon (good luck finding that Dragon Fang!). But for some reason the Nevermeltice, Silk Scarf, Spell Tag, and Metal Coat are all confined to the post-game - makes sense for the Metal Coat since it's an evolution item, I guess. That's a strange thing to do, and entirely unnecessary since they could have just put those items on an NPC's team somewhere. You'd expect at least one of the Channellers in Pokemon Tower to hold a Spell Tag or something but apparently no, none of them do. But what's most interesting of all is that the Poison Barb and Soft Sand are version-exclusive, since the only way to find them is as held items on wild Arbok/Sandslash respectively.

Actually though - funnily enough, this is consistent with how RSE does it. Some of the type-boosting items are prizes for sidequests (Hard Stone, Magnet), some are freely available or given out as gifts (Miracle Seed, Silk Scarf, Mystic Water, Blackglasses, Charcoal, Nevermeltice), and others are only available as held items on wild Pokemon (Twistedspoon, Spell Tag, Sharp Beak, Soft Sand, Poison Barb, Metal Coat). And then there are those which are oddly gated behind late- or post-game rematches (Black Belt, Dragon Fang, Silverpowder). There's no real uniformity to how they're distributed, unlike - say - how GSC did it. EDIT: Actually no, I'm wrong! In GSC nearly all the type-boosting items are given as gifts by NPCs except for the Soft Sand, Nevermeltice, and Dragon Fang/Scale*, which are items you collect in the overworld. That's apart from the Silverpowder, which is held by wild Butterfree, and the Twistedspoon which is... completely unobtainable without trading. Yep. It's not a held item on wild Kadabra, you literally have to trade in a Kadabra caught in a Gen I game to get it. That's incredibly stupid.

They also had two Normal-boosting items for some reason: the Pink Bow (which you get given by two different NPCs and for some reason in Crystal can be given by a third as well as stolen from a certain trainer in rematches) and the Polkadot Bow (only obtainable by trading Jigglypuff from a Gen I game). That's really weird. Why didn't the girl in the Radio Tower just give you a Twistedspoon instead?

I guess there never was any uniformity to how these items were distributed, then. Thankfully in Gen IV onwards for the most part they made this a bit more standardised and most of them became wild held items and thus renewable if you lost/sold the one you picked up in the overworld.

Which bugs me, so I'm gonna knock up a quick "which Pokemon should have had these as wild items in Gen II/III if they didn't already" table:

If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring

Item	Gen II held item	Gen III held item
Pink Bow/Silk Scarf	Meowth	Jigglypuff
Charcoal	Magmar	Slugma (RSE), Vulpix/Growlithe (FRLG)
Mystic Water	Goldeen	Goldeen
Miracle Seed	Exeggcute/Tangela	Shroomish (RSE), Exeggcute/Tangela (FRLG)
Magnet	Chinchou	Magnemite/Magneton
Poison Barb	Nidoran-F/Nidoran-M	Gulpin (RSE), Nidoran-F/Nidoran-M (FRLG)
Hard Stone	Geodude/Graveler	Geodude/Graveler
Soft Sand	Diglett/Dugtrio	Trapinch (RSE), Diglett/Dugtrio (FRLG)
Sharp Beak	Spearow/Fearow	Wingull/Pelipper (RSE), Spearow/Fearow (FRLG)
Black Belt	Machop/Machoke	Machop/Machoke
Silverpowder	Butterfree	Volbeat/Illumise (RSE), Venomoth (FRLG)
Twistedspoon	Kadabra	Kadabra
Spell Tag	Misdreavus	Shuppet/Banette (RSE), Gastly/Haunter/Misdreavus (FRLG)
Nevermeltice	Swinub	Snorunt (RSE), Seel/Dewgong/Swinub (FRLG)
Dragon Fang/Scale	Horsea/Seadra/Dratini/Dragonair	Horsea/Seadra/Dratini/Dragonair
Metal Coat	Magnemite	Skarmory
Blackglasses	Sneasel	Carvanha (RSE), Meowth (FRLG)

 

[EthanLac]

There are two movepool oddities in the Pokémon games which bug me.

1. Selfdestruct and Explosion are both TMs in the gen 1 games. Snorlax and Mewtwo can learn the former, but not the latter. Fair enough from a game balance standpoint, since Snorlax's Selfdestruct is already a powerful part of its toolkit, but strange from a lore standpoint. (This also applies to Wailmer and Wailord in gen 3, but it makes more sense there — it's a reference to whales being blown up when they wash ashore, and the blast is designed to be just powerful enough to destroy the whale, but not damage anything else in the vicinity.)

2. Skitty learns Doubleslap by level-up, and is sometimes depicted as performing the attack by smacking the opponent with its tail. Later, gen 5 introduces Tail Slap, another multi-hit move which consists of smacking the opponent with your tail... and Skitty doesn't get it.

 

[CPU]

Tail Slap is "Sweep Slap" in Japanese, referencing the cleaning action of the Minccino line's tails. It's why its learners all have rather bushy tails (barring Aipom/Ambipom, but I've "swept" stuff with my hands before, so I kind of get it).

 

[Cool Baton]

Tail Slap is "Sweep Slap" in Japanese, referencing the cleaning action of the Minccino line's tails. It's why its learners all have rather bushy tails (barring Aipom/Ambipom, but I've "swept" stuff with my hands before, so I kind of get it).

Adding to this, the Skitty family doesn't lend well to the "chore" flavor of the move. The Pokedex notes that Delcatty "prefers to live an unfettered existence" and basically does whatever it wants, when it wants, eating and sleeping at random. It also won't deal with dirty places — wild Delcatty don't even keep permanent homes, because they just look for places that are already tidy and sleep there, instead of cleaning up after themselves.

While it's possible Skitty don't become that way until they evolve, they are reportedly easily distracted by moving things and constantly chasing their own tails. They probably don't have the focus to use their tails for sweeping anything effectively.

 

[R_N]

If we're focusing on the "flavor" of the move (cleanliness! bushy tails!) then I'm going to gesture at Buizel & Aipom (whose tails are not bushy as already noted), Greedent (the opposite of clean), Zacian/Zamazenta (who despite having the tails for it I'm shocked even got the move, tbh. certainly not cleaners and no i doubt it was because they "cleaned up" the eternatus incidents let's not get overly cute here)...there's Skuntank too (I think the tail is literaly stuck to the top of its body...) but I think that's mostly just a combination of being The Joke + Stunky getting it so no reason to exclude Skuntank

Skitty/Delcatty have very prominent puffy tail tips (Skitty's is as big as its head!), they don't like dirty places so despite being lazy they have incentive to keep things around them clean and I can even envision cleaning up dust and stuff on accident as it chases its tail. I'm actually surprised it didn't get the move at all in Gen 5 to begin with, as an egg move.

 

[Nokocchi]

Skitty and Delcatty where both coded in Home to learn the Tail Slap TM in SwSh(reminder they added compatibility for the TMs, TRs, and Move Tutors for even the stuff not coded into those games. Stuff like Brave Bird Fearow, Power Whip Gliscor, and Close Combat Raticate). Some of those moves for Pokemon in the game never happened, but all of them were very obviously for some sort of balance reason(like High Horsepower Azumarill, and the Tapus with their specific terrain moves)

 

[DreamPrince]

Meowscarada not having Magician as an ability is a travesty- the thing is literally an anthropromorphic cat dressed up like a Magician.

Ok, let's be honest the only reason this thing got Protean instead was because they knew Magician is a terrible ability and they wanted to complete the starter trio have Protean/Libero + Sprigatitio was clearly the favorite of the staff.

 

[Karxrida]

Re: Black Belts in FRLG

I can only presume it's because Fighting-types don't have their readily-accessible super strong moves yet. Brick Break is the best the type has, but it's a TM and GF avoid putting those in random trainer movesets (at least back then). They were also probably trying to compensate for Gen 1's sins since Fighting was originally the trash type.

So buffs.

 

[Heatranator]

So, Gouging Fire cannot learn solar beam, despite the fact that entei, and most fire types can. (for reference, a tera grass solar beam with a negative nature does huge damage to dondozo and tusk in the sun, even more than tera blast grass. I wanted to create that unique set, but I couldn't. :( )
This is a list of fire types that can't learn solar beam:
Cinderace
Gouging Fire
Ceruledge (can learn solar blade)
Incineroar
Emboar
Rotom Heat (this one makes sense)
Salazzle
Tauros Paldea Blaze from (again, makes sense)
Oricorio Baile Style (again, makes sense)
Flareon
If we take out the form changes and the one that can learn solar blade, there are 6 fire types in the game that can't learn solar beam.