YMMV / PokéRole

• Game-Breaker:
  • 1.0 examples:
  • Of individual Pokemon in the system, Lopunny is surprisingly potent. While klutz means they can't use held items, they make up for it with high dex, agility to further boost their dex by two, and having multiple attacks that can paralyze or confuse the opponent. What makes them extremely dangerous however is their other ability, Cute Charm. Because of how infatuation works in the system, all this means that the opponent's Pokemon likely won't ever get an attack off and, if they do, they'll either miss from paralysis/being in love and/or damage themselves in confusion.
  • Ninjask! Take everything noted under multiple actions and multiply it times eleven! Not only is its dex stat naturally high, its ability, speed boost, but also increases its dex by one for each round of combat. Note that it's each round of combat, not a static boost like most other stat-boosting abilities. This all results in what would normally be a Fragile Speedster being turned into an absolutely monstrous Glass Cannon. Because the PokeRole system always has Scratch Damage in effect for battles, this means that at the minimum, Ninjask has the ability to deal 5+ damage to a single Pokemon in a single round. In a system where most fully evolved Pokemon have 8+ HP at most. This isn't even getting into evasion mechanics, which further negates Ninjask's drawbacks.
  • Alolan Vulpix and/or Ninetales hold the trophy for being the most busted Pokemon in the 1.0 rulebook, being comparable to that of Clerics from Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition. On top of ice/fairy being amazing offensively, it has access to Snow Warning starting off. Not only does hail deal one damage to all Pokemon on the field (in a system where the highest average HP a Pokemon can have is between 12-15) the book writers decided to give hail a buff by increasing the defense of ice type whiles it up by two. That's right, Vulpix starts off with three defense points right out of the gate, in a system where most Pokemon start out with two to three attacks. Ice types crippling weaknesses against hard-hitting physical moves like rock or fighting? Completely negated! Factor in the number of moves it gets that automatically lowers enemy dex and Alolan Vulpix can sweep teams at way higher levels than were ever intended.
  • Both version examples:
  • While the system works fine with smaller groups, as the core rule book intends for one-on-one battles or two-v-two battles, the game was not designed with larger groups of players in mind. Anything 4+ can and usually does result in the players being able to brute force their way through otherwise impossible encounters based on sheer numbers alone. This is especially notable for the PMD supplement, as a lot of the drawbacks intended to keep horde battles from happening don't apply to it. (It's hard for Pokemon to get confused by trainer orders when you're playing the Pokemon.)
  • Multiple actions as a whole are all kinds of busted. The idea was the ability to get in more than one action a turn at the cost of reduced accuracy. However, the sheer number of Pokemon with naturally high dex plus moves that further boost dex and specializing in whatever your moves specialized accuracy is can often result in a Pokemon who can get in five actions in a single turn; often being able to take down an opponent's Pokemon in a single turn. 2.0 tried to nerf it by introducing crit fails if you get under three successes required to succeed, which damages the Pokemon if they fail their roll, but it's still noted there's very little reason not to go for multiple actions over using single actions.
  • Ice types have been noted as being rather OP in this system compared to how they are in the games proper. As mentioned with Alolan Vulpix, they often get access to AoE ice type moves early on, which is quite potent starting off. Hail also boost most of their ice-type moves as well as give a plus to their defense, negating one of the things that kept them balanced in the games proper. On top of all that, their moves have disproportionately high odds of freezing the opponent, which in this system, requires them to deal a set number of damage to the ice in order to escape it. Combined with multiple actions, this allows the ice type to effectively keep the opponent freeze locked while they whittle away at their HP. It's to the point where an ice type team can rather effectively take out most of the types they're supposed to be weak to with ease.
• More Popular Spin Off: Despite the amount of effort put into the core rule book, most GMs tend to run the PMD supplement over the main book when hosting campaigns.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Happiness, loyalty, and disobedience, as well pain penalizations are common rules to homebrew out in most games, mainly for different reasons.
  • Happiness, loyalty, and disobedience are supposed to be ways to balance out more powerful Pokemon by making it so they don't always listen to you. However, there's no real defined mechanics to it other than 'GM's choice', meaning it's completely up to the GM how they act in battle. Not only is this incredibly abusable by GMs, even more fair GMs will get accusations thrown their way of 'sabotaging' a player's game by making it so their Pokemon doesn't listen to them.
  • Pain penalties make it so the more a Pokemon gets damage, the fewer dice they get to roll on their actions, up to -3 dice. Not only does it make attacks more RNG heavy, but it can also quickly lead to a slippery slope of one PC getting completely swept due to the luck of the dice. Even though 2.0 nerfed the mechanic by only making it a -1 at most, it's still rare to see a GM using the rule in their games.

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