As one of the leading franchises centered around the Gotta Catch 'Em All concept, Pokémon relies a lot in the Random Number God, with it affecting tons of things. At least you're assured to have a different experience with every savegame!
Pokémon GO has its own page.
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Mainline games
General/Multiple games
- No matter the generation, catching any legendary Pokémon. Sure, you can give it status effects, whittle its health down to a sliver, etc., but thanks to having the lowest catch rates of any Pokémon, it ultimately boils down to "Will the game decide that I've caught the legendary before I run out of Ultra Balls/it runs out of PP and KOs itself with Struggle?" It helps that the catch rate is subject to a lot of variants
; calculating them is possible, but not guaranteed to succeed. Even in the optimal situation for catching one, most have a success rate of about 18%. Fortunately, scenarios where you need to catch a legendary to proceed with the game give them a higher catch rate. - And then you have roaming legendaries. Starting in Pokémon Gold and Silver with the legendary beasts (Raikou, Entei, Suicune) and continued on by several more Pokémon, even merely finding them is luck-based. Spending hours chasing them around by looking at the map to see where they are, moving to another area, checking the map, moving to another area... repeat ad nauseum. It almost never works, either. In some games, this is made even worse by having to run into each one of them at least once before you can track them your map. That's right, you need to be lucky enough to run into one of them by chance before you can start actually hunting them. At least in Gen IV (including the remade versions of Gen II), the map on the Pokétch/Pokégear has a tracking feature on it, so you don't have to worry about the luck aspect of the initial finding anymore. Gen V was also kind enough to have its roamers come with storms that track on the electric signs in the gatehouses (and, better yet, you only have to worry about one in Black or White, and none at all in Black 2 or White 2).
- Catching Feebas is this in Generation III and especially IV. In both generations, Feebas can only be found in one area in the game. In Gen III, they appear in a river that consists of hundred tiles in total and Feebas only appears in six of them. SIX. Thought that was bad? In Gen IV, they only appear in a lake and only in four tiles, which are randomized every day. Want to catch a Feebas? You either need a lot of patience... or a lot of luck. Thankfully, Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire adds fixed spots where you can find Feebas 100% of the time.
- The Safari Zone, where you are not allowed to use your own Pokémon to battle the wild Pokémon there, and the Pokémon in the Safari Zone have a random chance to run away each turn. It's either catch the Pokémon instantly with the crappy Safari Ball (which you'll eventually swear is just a normal Pokéball painted over), or watch that Chansey with a 1% chance of appearing (hence the Japanese name "Lucky") run for the hills. Your only aid in helping with this? Pebbles/Mud that really helps raise the catch rate and make it easier for the Pokémon to run away, or Bait that makes it harder to catch the Pokémon, but lowers the likelihood of the Pokémon running away. Naturally, this is in every game before Gen V, and when it came back in OR/AS, the setup is no different from finding/catching Pokémon anywhere else in Hoenn.
- The Battle facilities. You have to win 49/100/170 consecutive times without losing once, and without any continues (and you can't save and reset, you get disqualified). And the game can be brutal about luck sometimes. Say, you meet an opponent with Brightpowder (held item that increases evasion) and one-hit KO move which hits 30% of the time. It's extremely common in the Frontier that both Brightpowder and the one-hit KO move takes effect. Sometimes 3 times in a row, and the matches are 3 vs 3. Say goodbye to your hours of winning. Oh, and the game does mock you if you lose, as if you played bad.
- The Battle Factory is the worst, because you don't even get to play with your own team, instead, you are given random Pokémon to fight, and it resets every 7 matches (there are 49 matches to be won). So unless you get strong Pokémon in all 7 sets, you are screwed.
- The very battle system itself is luck based to an extent. You can plan and strategize as much as you possibly can, but if the game decides it doesn't want a move/item/ability/side effect with a less than 100% chance of working to succeed, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Then there are critical hits, which are possible for almost every move but are also almost always random. Some moves choose targets at random in double and triple battles and others (and a hold item) force the opponent's to switch out at random. Even damage itself has a random variance range rather than being entirely fixed by stats. There are still some other luck based factors not yet mentioned here.
- Breeding, if you aren't an RNGer. Getting one aspect isn't too hard. You can control inherited moves easily as long as your breeders don't level up too much in the daycare (before Gen VI) and getting the right nature is easy with one parent holding an Everstone, and with only one or two abilities, it isn't hard getting the right one, but getting all at once can be aggravating.. And good stat parents help your IV chances but do not guarantee good stat offspring. Even worse is trying for shiny Pokémon. The Masuda method of using one parent from a foreign language game helps, as does Gen V's and VI's Shiny Charm, but the chance is still low. Arceus help you if you're breeding for shiny, good stats and correct nature all at once.
Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, FireRed and LeafGreen
- The very first battle in the game against Blue is an RNG luckfest. It occurs immediately after you get your starter so you won't get the opportunity to level up your Pokémon at all beforehand, and both of your starters are at about equivalent strength with movesets that only consist of a weak Normal move and Growl or Tail Whip. So you really can't strategize, and the match will just come down to ordering Tackle/Scratch over and over, with victory being decided on who got luckier with crits and misses, and if the random AI spent too many turns using Growl/Tail Whip. Picking Charmander gives you the best odds and it'll win most of the time, as it has the fastest Speed among the starters and gets Scratch instead of Tackle, which is slightly better with 40 power and 100% accuracy while Tackle has 35 power and 95% accuracy, but bad luck with crits can still cost you the match. If you have no qualms about using items in battle you can also get the Potion from the PC in your room before getting your starter, which will nearly guarantee victory but you can still lose from bad crit/miss luck. Fortunately you are not required to win this match and you will not be penalized at all for losing unlike with every other battle in the game, but winning does get you a bit more money and enough EXP to level up your starter.
- The Vermilion City Gym. In order to deactivate the electric gates blocking your path to Lt. Surge, you need to flip a pair of switches. What the game tells you is that they're placed randomly, and that the second switch is always next to the first. What the game doesn't tell you is that only half of the cans can even contain the first switch, and not all adjacent cans are necessarily eligible to contain the second switch. What the game can't tell you, because it's due to a programming error, is that the top left can is almost always one of the options for the second switch, even though it's not adjacent to any of the options for the first switch. So, yes, there's a tiny chance of looking in the top left can twice in a row and finding both switches.
Gold, Silver, Crystal, HeartGold and SoulSilver
- A significant portion of the scoring for the Bug Catching Contest is based on the hidden stat values of whatever you catch. These values are effectively random, so you can potentially lose with a rare catch or win with just a Com Mon.
- Finding Raikou, Entei and Suicine (or just the former two in Crystal), who switch routes whenever the player does. The "Area" option in the Pokédex helps track them down, but meeting them for the first time to just get them in your Pokedex is a matter of pure luck as you'll have no idea where they are, and you could very well beat the game before encountering any of them.
- Voltorb Flip in the international versions of HeartGold/SoulSilver, which is basically Minesweeper with much more random guessing. While it is quite deep, some boards are really unsolvable, like ones with something close to "Sum 5/Voltorb 2" on every row and column. Boards like those always require 2 to 4 guesses, which translates to a 1/4 to 1/16 chance of winning, given perfect play. And there's always the chance of landing on a Voltorb on the first turn, even when the row says 7/1 and the column says 8/1 ... And a first turn Voltorb means back to Lvl 1.
- They have online calculators for Voltorb Flip. However, every one of them has a disclaimer that basically amounts to "Voltorb Flip is a Luck Based Mission. This calculator can only give you a reasonable idea of which tiles are safe."
- Like Real Life Casinos, Game Corners in general are a Luck Based Mission. Compared to the outrageously rigged slots in the other generations, Voltorb Flip is downright forgiving. Some actually preferred the luck-based slots, though, since it was much faster-paced and you could just buy casino coins if you were rich and impatient.
Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire
- Mirage Island spawning near Pacifidlog Town. It's possible to slightly influence this based off of Dewford Town's trendy phrase, but still largely in the hands of the Random Number God.
- Some of the Battle Frontier buildings of Emerald:
- The Battle Pike. Pick a pathway and hope it's a safe one. While there are guides who can give you an idea of what lies behind each door, they're not perfect. Oh, and there's little to no healing, so you'll want to avoid paths with battles as much as possible. No wonder your reward for completing it is the Luck Symbol...
- The Battle Palace. The player has to let the AI decide how their team will act and hope it makes the right choices (though this can be influenced by each Pokémon's nature and current health).
- From Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, Mirage Spots that aren't StreetPassed appear randomly at the start of the day, which can be a pain for 100% Completion since some have TMs and/or Evolution items (like the Razor Claw), and they all have rare foreign Pokémon. There is even a special Mirage Island that is only randomly generated that hides Cresselia!
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl
- In Platinum, Beldum may possibly be even worse to catch than the Legendaries. As if the incredibly low catch rate AND Take Down weren't bad enough, you have to wait for a swarm of them to appear, which could take days, possibly even weeks, so you'd have to be patient to even get the opportunity to confront one. This also means that if you miss out on the swarm day, or simply fail to catch one in time, you're boned and have to wait again. Then they only appear on the route that causes constant sandstorm damage to most of your Pokémon. And, since Beldum's only attack inflicts damage on itself, you could do everything right and it could still kill itself. Thankfully, the remakes make this slightly easier due to Beldum now getting Tackle instead of Take Down, but it's still the only move it gets, and due to the horrendous catch rate it has, it's very likely that it will be forced to Struggle anyway before you even CATCH the thing!
- The Honey Trees. If you're lucky, you'll be able to catch Pokémon like Aipom, Heracross and Cherubi that can't be found anywhere else. If you're not lucky, you'll get Wurmples. On every single tree. Adding to the luck factor is that it takes six hours for a Pokémon to appear, and Save Scumming doesn't work as the Pokémon you will encounter is determined the moment you slather the tree. At least the level and gender are randomized before an encounter, though, making it a little bit easier, yet still frustrating, to catch that elusive female Combee. As an added batch of fun, Munchlax is found on precisely four trees, which require the use of a calculator and knowledge of a value found only by hacking shiny Pokémon to determine which of about a dozen are those trees. It's still a 1% chance once you know which trees it is. And if you're planning to shiny hunt it, Arceus help you.
- The "5 Maid Knockout Exact-Turn Attack Challenge" in the Pokémon Mansion. You have to beat five trainers in a row (itself pretty easy since they're all using one Clefairy each at level 25-33), but in an exact number of turns. The "luck-based" part comes from the fact that the total number is usually only one or two more turns, and every single Clefairy knows Endure, so not only do you have to be able to knock them out, you have to hope they don't use Endure at the wrong time or it becomes completely impossible (and the little bit of control you can get is with Taunt, which can only work for the last match). Oh yeah, they also all have Magic Guard to stop poison or burns from taking them out if you manage to hit them with either one. Just to rub salt in the wound, what's actually worth taking this challenge for is the chance to fight one of two trainers holding a Rare Candy (thus this is one of the only ways that item can be farmed) that you need Thief or Trick to get and have to use before the enemy destroys the item by using Fling. And you only get to take this challenge once a day. Hello, soft reset!
- In Contests, there is no way to beat the Master Rank unless you're incredibly lucky. And this is merely an improvement from the Gen III Contests, which were comparably worse due to jamming moves.
- If you want the TM for Explosion, you have to play the slots in the Game Corner and trigger 10 straight bonus rounds. You're playing slots, so your chain can be broken simply due to bad luck. The European and South Korean versions of the game removed the ability to play at the Game Corner, so in those versions you may randomly receive the TM from an NPC.
- Super Contests, most of all the Acting Competition since bonus points are awarded based on how few other Pokémon choose the same judge. The Visual Competition, though primarily dependent on Poffin feeding, also depends on what theme you get since the opponents choose the same accessories every time (and which accessories correspond to which theme are not always intuitive). The only part that isn't particularly luck-based is the Dance Competition, which can possibly make up for lost ground in the other two sections.
- If you want to find extra Reaper Cloths beyond the ones normally found as part of play, you have to go back to Turnback Cave after catching Giratina and successfully find all three pillars in only three moves. The rooms are randomly generated, and a reliable way to predict the correct way to go from each room has yet to be found. Considering that the Reaper Cloth's one use (evolving Dusclops into Dusknoir) isn't seen as all that useful beyond filling out a spot in the Pokédex and you already get one for free, most players don't even bother.
- The Dream World was intended as a successor to HeartGold and SoulSilver's Pokéwalker in that it's an alternative means to obtain Pokémon and items for your game. While it did do that, it preferred to send players to random locations rather than letting the player pick the location to explore for themselves, and you could only take ten steps each visit before leaving and Pokémon would stop coming to you after so many visits in a day.
- Trying to get certain rare Pokémon from Hidden Grottos. Half the time it's an item you find, or a Pokémon you have/don't want.
- The Gym Leaders section of the Pokémon World Tournament. You can only have a specific number of Pokémon on your person when battling (three for Singles, four for Doubles and the new Rotation Battles each, and six for Triples), and it is difficult, if not impossible, to prepare for every possible type you'd face. You simply have to hope you encounter Gym Leaders favorable to the types you have on your team.
- The Rental Tournament. In all the others you at least get to pick Pokémon you raised yourself and whose moves you already know. The Rental Tournament gives you a choice of 6 random Pokémon whose movesets and hold items are set and may not be very good (one possible Pokémon is a Simisage with no STAB attacks).
- And the World Leaders tournament is worse than the region leaders tournament. At least with the region leaders, you have a better idea of who might be showing up and can prepare slightly better.
- Getting all the way to the end of the Battle Subway and the Battle Institute also depends a lot on luck, because the opponents and the teams they have (except for those of the two Subway Bosses) are chosen at random.
- If you're unfortunate to suffer from the Random Number God's wrath during a Pokéstar filming, enjoy refilming if you want a decent ending. Confusion, Critical Hits, and misses, oh my. Ghost Eraser 4 is one of the worst at this is that getting a good ending (slaying the Majin) requires you to not screw up at all and pray you choose the right lines.
- This generation introduces Wonder Trade. You offer one Pokémon, and you get a random Pokémon in return. You won't know what you get until it comes. It could be anything from a legendary to a starter to a Com Mon to anything in between.
- It also brings back the exact-turn battle challenges from Platinum in the form of restaurants, although going a couple turns above or below the par will merely give you a smaller prize, giving you some leeway. The higher-level restaurants, though, will actively try to screw you up by throwing everything they can into defense. And the last one squares the whole luck factor by engaging you in rotating battles, in which the Pokémon you target is completely random. Fail too many guesses and you're guaranteed to get a dent in your wallet.
- Restaurant battles can have Pokémon with Protect. Unless you have a really strong Pokémon with Feint or use Taunt, if Protect is used on the turn you need to finish the battle on, there goes your perfect record, requiring you to try again if you want the star. They can also have Pokémon with Dig and Fly, two-turn attacks which make most attacks used on them between the skill being used and it hitting automatically miss, unless you have something with the No Guard ability or you're faster than them. (There are a few moves that can hit digging or flying opponents, like Earthquake and Thunder, and they tend to be rather powerful, although the first can hurt the Pokémon's partner in a two-on-two match, and the second isn't very accurate.)
- Making beds on level 4 of the Hotel requires you to hit all 4 beds in under 55 seconds. The time itself isn't that big of an issue, but in the first room to the right, there is an NPC who likes to move in front of the doorway, only moving when he damn well feels like it. You will lose most of your time just waiting for him to get out of the way so you can enter or leave the room and move onto the next one.
- Finding rain when trying to evolve a Sliggoo.note
- In contrast, trying to speed up EV training with items and Pokerus and hoping it doesn't rain if you need to use Sweet Scent.
- The Inverse Battles are like this. Your opponent's Pokémon are chosen at random from about three dozen possibilities, it isn't easy, considering that the Type Chart is completely backwards. He even has a Shedinja in his pool of available Pokémon, which is invulnerable unless you use a Super Effective move, due to its Wonder Guard ability; that means moves that would knock a Shedinja out instantly anywhere else won't even scratch it here. Even worse, not only do you have to win in order to get a good prize, you have to get a good score, meaning you have to inflict a lot a Super Effective hits and not take many. (Which means, if you do too well and win by a Curb-Stomp Battle, you'll score low and get a poor reward.)
- The Battle Institute can be this. While you're allowed to pick your Pokémon (minus a few that are banned, including most Legendaries), you're only given three slots for Pokémon (four during the Double Battle test), inevitably meaning that your team will have a few holes in it. Since all Pokémon are set to Level 50 in that test, you'll likely get thrown against a team that has no weaknesses to, or is strong against, everything in your roster. And that's not factoring in the possibility of them using those aforementioned banned Legendaries, which will often result in a total Curbstomp Battle. Battle Points are rewarded based on how well you do during the five battle gauntlet, and even one bad matchup can result in a serious deduction of the rewards.
- The various Ultra Space Wilds areas you arrive in may or may not have a Legendary appear at all—even if there is one, it will be randomized based on what can appear there (assuming you didn't already catch it), so if you're going for specific Natures on specific Legendaries, it can be frustrating. The same holds true for Ultra Beasts; while white wormholes guarantee an Ultra Beast habitat, which one you find is random, with Guzzlord's habitat being particularly rare next to Nihilego's.
- Winning a Max Raid battle is mostly down to strategy (and the beefiness of your mons), but catching the boss is another story, since you only get to throw a single ball before it vanishes. Knowledge of more obtuse balls like the Dusk, Net, and Repeat Balls can help a bit, but with many bosses, whether you snag it or not is ultimately up to chance. This is especially true for Gigantamax ones, which have a ludicrously low catch rate of about 5% if you're using a good Pokéballnote The host player usually gets a higher catch rate, though this is sort of redundant since they can simply re-battle it until they catch it. You do, at least, still get the item drops if it flees.
- Winning a Max Raid battle does become a luck-based mission if you play with the AI trainers, thanks to copious amounts of Artificial Stupidity, and especially with higher-difficulty bosses. There are a set number of trainers that can appear, each one has a specific Pokémon, and it's random which ones appear, so you could very well go up against a boss that has a type advantage over all three of the other Pokémon. That being said, sometimes you can strike gold with your AI trainers, like getting a Wishiwashi against a Charizard.
- Special shout-out to the special Mewtwo Max Raid Battles that was available for a short time, even on team. Good luck facing a Level 100 Pokémon with insane stats. At least the rewards are very good if you somehow managed to complete it.
- The Max Lair is substantially luck-based. The legendary Pokémon at the end is randomized each timenote , as are the Pokémon you are able to rent and find along the way. Even if you do make it to the legendary, an unfavorable team of Pokémon can easily fail and get booted from the lair. Playing with other human players, who may have saved the location of a desired Pok&eaucte;mon, and are generally smarter than AI partners, can be mitigate some of this, but don't expect a ton of help from AI partners. Albeit, even with AI partners you can still have a fair amount of success by simply planning your route to the legendary to focus on fighting and catching Pokémon that have an advantage against or resistance to it (in addition to going for battle items and healing berries). However, there is no guarantee the AI trainers will actually replace their rental Pokémon with these more advantageous ones.
- The "Digging Duo," a pair of NPCs near the Nursery in the Wild Area, can dig up some rare items for you for a 500-watt fee. The quantity and quality of the items they find are both completely random, although the one claiming to be "skilled" in his dialog tends to get more valuable items, while the one with "stamina" tends to gather more stuff before giving up. Save Scumming won't help here, since they force you to save with each attempt.
Spinoffs
- Pokémon Battle Revolution has a few luck-based coliseums. In the first, you have a roulette wheel to determine whether you get to use one of your own Pokémon, or one of your opponent's far less useful ones. In the second, it's a 100-battle endurance match, where the roulette is used to determine if any of your Pokémon get healed. The roulette can actually be controlled with good timing, though, since it decelerates at a fixed rate rather than randomly, but learning the timing will require a few spins of it.
- A good chunk of the dungeons in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games qualify as well. Purity Forest and Zero Isle South, for example. Not only did they have 99 floors, but you could not take any items, money or teammates with you, you could not recruit anything inside, your level was reduced to one and you were forced to save before going in, meaning that essentially whether you made it through or not depended on how quickly you could locate the stairs and what items you could find.
- A few rare trainers love using evasion-increasing moves like Double Team, which are actually banned in competitive play for being too luck-based. The worst offender is probably Janine in Pokémon Stadium 2, whose entire strategy revolves around using Baton Pass with several layers of Double Team. And every one of her Baton Pass targets have either Swagger or Confuse Ray, dropping your percent chance of landing a hit to the single digits while she slowly tortures you to death with Toxic and blocking your escape with Spikes and Mean Look. Either you come fully prepared with a team that packs Haze and Heal Bell, or prepare for a ridiculously long fight.
- The first Stadium game wasn't above using luck-based challenges either. The fourth battle in the final round of the Prime Cup throws the Gambler at you, who has possibly the most aggravating strategy of all the opponents you'll face; paralyze your Pokémon with either Body Slam or Thunder Wave so his mons outspeed yours, then spam one-hit KO moves nonstop. What makes this even worse is that his team is actually of varying types of Pokemon who are all pretty durable, and he's actually smart enough to switch them out when faced with a bad matchup. You could either sweep him effortlessly or get completely annihilated; it's all up to luck. And considering how Pokémon Stadium is with giving your opponents fantastic luck....
- In Pokémon XD, there is the "Metronome Cup." You fight two Pokémon with two of your own. All of the Pokémon have only one move — Metronome, a move that summons any other move at random. Winning or losing is literally and entirely based on luck. There is no strategy involved in the least. It's rather fun, however.
- Also in Pokémon XD is a Battle CD where you use a Zangoose against a Cradily that uses Barrier three times to max out its Defense while you use Swords Dance three times to max out your Attack, then use Slash until you get a Critical Hit, which will bypass the Defense boosts and K.O. Cradily. The problem is that Slash has only a 1 in 8 of being a Critical Hit and you have a limited number of turns, meaning you can run out of turns without ever getting a Critical Hit.
- Stadium 2's Challenge Mode is probably the worst offender. The game is already heavily rigged in the computer's favor in every match, but Challenge Mode makes it worse by forcing you to use 6 randomly generated Pokémon that are almost guaranteed to be complete crap, and then use them to fight the (much better) random Pokémon the computer gets in 4 difficulty levels. The description of the mode says "This mode tests your ability as a trainer", but it would be more accurately described as "This mode tests your ability to resist carpal tunnel syndrome from how many times you'll have to reload the game upon getting a terrible team".
