Robot's Deconstruction Hour: Type Ace
Aug 12, 2016 14:20:02 GMT
Nocturne, Breakthelevee, and 3 more like this
Post by Robot on Aug 12, 2016 14:20:02 GMT
Overview: I have seen the mountain. It is tall, and it is vast. Eighteen. Eighteen are the branches that make up this class. It looms like some horrid amalgam of text and numbers, dwarfing even my greatness in it's very shadow. A chill rolls down my spine, and somewhere in the distance, my greatest enemy mockingly whispers 'elementalists' as a challenge to everything I have set out to do. I set my jaw, and begin the ascent. I may not survive this test of my mettle, but only time will tell. Dawn. Type Ace is the third and final class in PTU 1.05's specialist team classes. Each Type Ace is designed around improving a specific typing of Pokemon, or like-typed attacks. As with Style Expert, there are distinctive fluctuations in power curves from type to type, some have a strong thematic feel about them, and others do not. Ironically what was arguably the strongest typing in Gen 1 has the worst Ace out of the bunch, being Dragon.
Pros
-Type Ace can be fit into literally any build to create someone that prefers a monotype, or heavily slanted team. It is not required, but gains more benefit when used this way. It encourages you to find ways to work around that particular type's weaknesses, and play to it's strengths, while also assisting in this process.
-Skill Prereqs vary from type to type, but often line up with the general theme of a class that would conceivably be an Ace of this type, this is by design. As an example, Fighting Ace uses Combat, Martial Artist uses Combat. Dark Ace uses Stealth, Rogue uses Stealth. It allows for paired character and team theme.
-Type Refresh and Move Sync both interesting features that provide utility or some inherent homebrew sourcing for attacks.
Cons
-Monotype play risky, and sets the player up to struggle against gyms or encounters that strongly favor the enemies unless intelligence is observed and utilized.
-Not all Type Aces created equal, settled into three tiers. These tiers are 'Garbage', 'Useful', and 'Bullshit'.
-Encourages players to annoy GMs for type swaps of their personal favorites, or to want to get their hands on Type Sync or This One's Special I Know It for special snowflake action.
Base Feature: Type Strategist or Last Chance Tutor; DR When using status moves of your type, increased at low health, or Damage when using damaging moves of your type, increased at low health. As base features go, it is good both mechanically and strategically. Permits types with a lot of status or support moves, such as Grass or Psychic, to remain on the field longer. Conversely, it doesn't limit types lacking in such options from performing better, such as the more offensively oriented Fighting or Ice. Required, and good. Effective use of the feature is pretty much 'which of these two options do I teach my Pokemon.'
Type Refresh: For 2 AP, refreshes all EoT moves of your Ace's Type, and replenishes an additional use of a Scene move. Once per target, per scene. As an Orders feature, it does work with Commander. If, party wide, you can convince your allies to pick up a move on their Pokemon that will benefit from this, it can be used on the group as a whole. That maneuver is very AP expensive though. The feature is sort of overkill too, since an EoT move refreshes every other turn anyway. Really that's just a wording thing.
Move Sync: Spend a Tutor Point to shift a move that your Pokemon knows to the type associated with your ace. GM Subjective, but there is a section that gives tips on ways to use this ability. Like Signature Technique from Ace Trainer, it allows for more customization in your team to work in non-canon attacks, like the anime is constantly doing. Personally I really like the feature, and it pairs well with the Ability Tutor the base feature grants.
Bug Ace
Insectoid Utility: I love this feature so much, it improves your Bug-Associated Capabilities (being Threaded, Wallclimber, Naturewalk, and Sky Speed) by granting immunity to a bunch of lesser seen added effects to moves (slow, tripped, push, and stuck). The +1 Evasion for possessing a Sky Speed is okay, but what -really- shines about this feature, is your Pokemon with Threaded can perform Combat Maneuvers (Trip, Grapple, Push, and Disarm) using their Threaded Attack which is a Shift Action. This special attack also ignores weight restrictions on your opponents. So while bugs may not have the best Combat dice to work with this, a ranged 5 maneuver for your movement is brutal. This use is kind of up to interpretation, I could see a GM setting the restriction that you must threaded attack as a standard to combat maneuver, but this is my view of it as written. Also notable about the Threaded entry for this feature; Nowhere in the feature does it specify 'A Bug Type Pokemon'. This means Pokemon that can learn attacks that grant Threaded, such as Vine Whip, Power Whip, String Shot, Spider Web, or Sticky Web, are also capable of utilizing the feature. Your Pokemon with Naturewalk keep those bonuses regardless of type.
Iterative Evolution: Also known as Improved Tinted Lens. Bug Ace's Stratagem feature gives +2 Acc if the Bug Attack is Super-Effective, +Up to 6 Damage if it's a Neutral hit, or improves effectiveness one step if it's resisted. On a Pokemon that naturally has Tinted Lens, this stacks, and lets you throw bug moves at literally everyone for neutral damage unless it is somehow triple resisted. Not to say those instances don't happen, but it gives your Pokemon a very predictable damage curve barring Bulletproof, Fur Coat, or Trainer Features. Feels good to hit a double resist for neutral, and allows your Bug Type Pokemon to flourish from a damage perspective even in environments that might otherwise be hostile. Like Insectoid Utility, this is a must have.
Chitin Shield: Daily x3 Nope as a free action for a Bug Type Pokemon. Usually when spiders are involved, every else nopes. This lets the spider nope out a Status class move -and- also gain immunity to that particular attack until the end of the Scene. Once per Pokemon, obviously. Allowing for more than that would be really strong. Lets you dodge T-Waves on your Scolipede Mount, stat-downs, slow/suppress effects, if an enemy tries to Snatch your boost. It's really nice, go where you please.
Disruption Order: Daily x3 Allows your Bug Attacks to apply your Type Linked Skill (Max 8) as an accuracy penalty to your opponent, which is larger than blind, or 6 on acquiring the skill which is equal to, and stacks with. They also Slow all targets, and all attacks flinch on a 16+ for one round. If applied to an area attack such as Bug Buzz, this becomes a very strong area control tool that can turn the tide of battle. With the rework on Flinch, you can also completely destroy an opponent's initiative for the rest of the fight and render them vulnerable if several allies work in tandem. With it permitting flinch on all attacks, this frees up fun strategies, like non-combat trainers attacking for the sake of making flinch checks.
Dark Ace
Clever Ruse: A consolation prize for failure, but a good one at least. Robots don't believe in failure, but I still support this feature. If a Dark move misses, you can leave, gain a hefty chunk of evasion, or ignore an opponent's stat evasion on your attack in the following turn. Great for a missed Torment, Taunt, Flatter, or other Status class move, as Dark has many. Conversely if you miss with one, you can followup with another at substantially increased chances of success. As far as consolation features go, this is probably the strongest in the game.
Sneak Attack: Type Ace has many, many damage boosts across the board. It'd be fine if some of them weren't extremely situational for the same benefit as others. Sneak Attack is Dark's stratagem, and requires either team support/team play, or for you to utilize in-combat stealth or Dark's status moves in order to actually receive your +2 Accuracy and +Skill in Damage. This is then compared to Fire's Incandescence which adds full of both stats, or Water's Fishbowl which just gives a flat +5 and triggers water abilities, or Bug's 'neutral hits get +Skill Damage'. As far as Stratagems go it is one of the weakest since it requires setup in order to function at all.
Devious: Provides very strong Status-based action economy, allowing you to followup that Taunt with a Swagger. Or Torment with Attract, if you really want to pick on someone cute to let them know that you care. That said, unlike many Type Ace features, this one isn't just Dark Pokemon or Dark Move centric, it actually expands to all moves with the Social Keyword as well. It opens up a lot of play options, but only if you're willing to devote an entire turn to whipping off what are likely to be volatile statii. Devious has the potential to no fun zone almost any encounter faster then you can say Provocateur.
Blackout Strike: Once per Scene, and 3 Times a Day, When landing a Dark Attack, put the target to sleep. If the damage from said attack put a Pokemon between it's 25% and 1% Hp Marker, it instead faints. AC 2 Sleep Status? Check. Ignoring a quarter of your opponents hitpoints? Double check. Extremely strong with the buff Sleep got between 1.04 and 1.05 from a crowd control perspective. Allows you to inflict a strong status off-movelist, or faint a target early. Prediction is key with it's use, however.
Dragon
Tyrant's Roar: Creates a Burst 2 effect that applies Slowed to all targets hit (which persists until they are switched out or take a breather) and lowers all positive combat stages that Pokemon has by -1. Probably a strong option to counter Serene Grace Ancient Power, if it weren't twice a scene. That said, the AoE Slow is very strong against melee attackers, and with most dragons being able to fly on top of that, allows you to run interference for allies even if it's only by limiting your enemy's mobility.
Highlander: If there could be only one stratagem feature for Dragon, this should not have been it. By binding up 2 AP, you protect your dragons from dragon typed attacks, and their dragon typed attacks do more damage against other dragons. The two things wrong with this being; 1. No one runs dragon typed attacks for coverage on dragons, 99.9% of the time it's going to be ice because of the common double weakness that the type has. If it can't run ice, it'll probably still run fairy first. Did I mention fairies? If you're the only dragon, and a fairy shows up, well. There can't be any. You dead. 2. Dragon typed attacks aren't sought after until you get into the big guns, being Outrage and Draco Meteor, barring the odd utility pick of Dragon Breath, because they are on the sad side for damage up until that point. Dragon Pulse on your Mega Launchers is probably the only exception to this.
Unconquerable: I get what they were going for, dragons shouldn't be able to get shut down just by pure status. Making the trigger for the feature three statuses, instead of one or two, sets it up to be unusable most of the time. This includes if you use Outrage and trigger both the Enraged and Confused statuses on yourself. You -still- have to be caught with a third from somewhere in order for this feature to bear any kind of fruit. Probably best skipped.
This Will Not Stand: If you are getting wrecked by raw damage or crits, gives you half a shell smash without the defensive drops, as a +1 Attack, Special Attack, and Speed. Good when paired with defensively minded classes like Enduring Soul, or one of the Stat Aces. Can even be auto-procced if you're running Deadly Gambit Taskmaster. Decent synergy but it's once per scene, per Pokemon.
Electric Ace
Lockdown: Whenever you land a Paralysis proc on an already paralyzed Pokemon, they cannot move for the turn, and are locked into At-Will frequency moves. If the target also happens to be Suppressed, this makes them incapable of using anything except for Struggle Attacks at melee range while also being unable to move. Really good way to force a switch if you're operating on expanded effect ranges or using the appropriate Orders feature to automatically apply statuses. A strong feature, since it improves an already potent status.
Overload: Electric Ace's Stratagem allows their Pokemon to sacrifice a tick of Hp to deal a tick of Hp plus the trainer's type linked skill rank to an enemy. Sort of like an orders version of Life Orb. It is a larger damage boost then a lot of the ones you will find in the game, but comes at a personal sacrifice, so it remains balanced despite that. Fun pick if you like playing risky. For some reason it also immediately makes me think of Helioptile and Heliolisk with their Solar Powered in addition to the Overload effect.
Shocking Speed: Allows you to use an At-Will Electric Attack as though it were Advanced Priority, meaning you can attack and retreat, or move to a safer location while taking your turn before the enemy can followup. If this procs Lockdown, it can completely shut down a melee attacker's round. I'm particularly fond of Ace Trainer's Double Down Thundershock when combined with the two before-mentioned features.
Chain Lightning: Gives area damage as a Daily x3. Also allows you to proc Paralysis multiple times on multiple opponents with a single attack provided all three are within 3 meters of each other. You lose damage per target beyond the first, but with Overload worded as it is, you may chose to lose a tick of Hp per target struck, adding a tick of damage +skill rank. Excellent power plays between Electric type's strong status, the multi-target effect, and the damage increase from Overload.
Fairy Ace
Fairy Lights: As a Standard Action create 3 Fairy Lights. These work as charges and can be used to either gain 1 Tick of Temporary Hp, or fire off a free Fairy Wind at an attacking opponent, but not both. This is basically a Fairy-Typed Fox Fire (Ability you'll find on foxy Pokemon) without a use limit, and the extra utility of being able to provide temporary Hp. This effect is very strong on offensive walls or bulky sweepers.
Arcane Favor: Twice a scene, all allies gain a +1 bonus to all rolls for one round. Combat maneuver checks, accuracy, damage rolls, skill checks. Sky is the limit. Yes, it's only a +1, but it's like Oprah decided fairies were the shit. Everyone's going home with a box full of +1. Not a fan myself, small bonuses are small, but it's good team support all in all.
Fey Trance: Fairy's stratagem functions a bit like Dark's does, in that it applies to both Fairy moves, and moves with the Social Keyword. It functions a bit like Ahri's charm, for those of you that enjoy the MOBA scene. Target becomes infatuated for one turn and wastes it's shift action moving towards your Pokemon. Probably best used on melee attackers, to hinder their ability to output damage, either through poor positioning or the infatuate effect itself.
Fairy Rite: A Daily x3 trigger healing effect that procs when you use Fairy Lights to create a healing effect equal to Pokemon Level. It can then expend a Fairy Light to give an ally or itself a tick of hitpoints. This effect comes at the cost of it's own hitpoints, but Fairy getting access to Draining Kiss, and at least Florges some of Grass' drain moves (if I am not mistaken), this isn't a bad trade off.
Fighting Ace
Close Quarters Mastery: Fighting Stratagem that lets a Pokemon with Fighting Type moves mark a target. Given how common fighting coverage moves are, either via levelup, TM, or Tutor, this feature is almost always promises to be useful in some regard. Marked Pokemon that shift out of an adjacent square into a non-adjacent one (that is, they disengage for space) suffer an attack of opportunity. Close Quarters Mastery plays into everything else Fighting Ace has, and gives the class a very punishing, tank sort of theme to it.
Brawler: 2x Scene, Forward, Forward Up, Up, High Punch. Shoryu Reppa. If your Pokemon triggers a struggle attack (see Close Quarters Mastery) they can instead make it a Burst 1, Friendly (presumably) DB 5 move, that does fighting damage. If it's Conkeldurr, or another Pokemon with Wielder, this can go as high as a DB 7 Fighting Burst. Not too shabby.
Face Me Whelp: Your Pokemon almost become pocket Fortresses. When a target is marked and adjacent they take a -4 (maximum) penalty to Acc and a -10 penalty to damage against targets that aren't the marking Pokemon. This encourages them to disengage or move away from you. Which procs Brawler, and also procs Fighting Ace's capstone, Smashing Punishment. The entire class is centralized around getting on top of one person, taking away all of their choices, and making them hate life.
Smashing Punishment: Unlike most of the other features of the class, the capstone for Fighting Ace actually specifies 'Fighting Type Pokemon'. It's attack of opportunity automatically hits, deals Fighting-Type Damage, and is a Critical Hit, 3x Daily. At high enough Combat this is an auto crit DB 5. With Sniper, courtesy of Cool Expert, it's a triple crit, and only slightly weaker then non-stab Storm Throw. A really good feature, and Fighting Ace in particular has a lot of cohesion to it. Very nice.
Fire Ace
Brightest Flame: All fire moves now burn targets. Fire moves that already burned targets have their effect ranges increased by three. Heatwave? More like Burnwave. Blast Burn? More like... why didn't it burn before? The feature itself is really good, since it's a static. No effort required, just burns for everyone. Sick, sick burns. Also gives you +Skill as a damage bonus against burned targets.
Trail Blazer: Daily x3 lays super hazards as a free action. When your fire type {okemon shifts, it leaves behind a burning square, up to a maximum of 8 squares or it's movement, whichever is lower. Anyone beginning or ending their turn on a fire hazard is burned, anyone who passes through one loses a tick of hitpoints. Once per scene. Paired with other features, or forced movement effects like Push, lets you set up burns on more enemies, to go with the other burns you're inflicting from Brightest Flame.
Incandescence: Fire Stratagem, which is super twisted power. With Fire's abilities often granting bonus damage, burns granting bonus damage, and Incandescence giving mixed sweepers like Flareon or Houndoom huge boosts like this, Fire Ace tends to sit on a very high average damage curve. Fire is one of the most offensively oriented of the Type Aces as a result.
Fan The Flames: Scene x2 Makes a single target move into a burst if melee or cone if ranged. Probably really fun when used alongside Inferno, or Flamethrower. Allows you to spread around still more burns. Fire Ace struggles with it's weaknesses more then some of the other classes do, but also struggles against it's own typing because of Flash Fire and Burn Immunity. Thankfully there are class options to help circumvent some of these, but Fire Ace does not possess them itself.
Flying Ace
Celerity: Flying Type Pokemon, or -anything- with a Sky or Levitate speed gains +Skill to Initiative, and when disengaging shifts half their movement instead of 1 meter. Flying stratagem. Friggan gross. Flying has just the right mix of range, and often has many short to mid-range options, that allow it to take full advantage of this feature. Add in the fact that, not only is Flying the most, if not one of the most, common secondary types AND this applies to Pokemon that just hoover around. This feature is really strong.
Gale Strike: Scene x2 Whenever attacking with a Flying Type move, you roll two dice. Take the lower and it hits, you don't expend Gale Strike. You're constantly attacking with an advantage if the dice are good, and setting yourself up for much easier crits. Gale Strike is wonderful on critical builds. For some reason this entire class makes me think of the Dark Rider from Fire Emblem. Gale Force was too strong. Tornado charge also too strong.
Zephyr Shield: Standard Action Interrupt or Shift Action At-Will to give a penalty to Acc and damage of incoming attacks, gain immunity to powder moves and weather. If it's a standard action interrupt you can lead into your Sky Attacks and your Fly on the turn following your Zephyr Shield. Not terribly rude, but a good defensive boost.
Tornado Charge: Fair and balanced. Honest. There's no way three At-Will or EoT attacks in a single turn, or a Zephyr Shield, a setup move, then an EoT attack is overpowered. Strike Again is once per scene, Tornado Charge is 3x Daily, usable every other turn provided it's a different Pokemon each time. This sits the Flying Ace on the highest action economy in the game at a whopping 11 standard actions in 5 turns. I really can't even. Other then like, make a small holier then thou nasal sound and turn my nose up. Probably while secretly being turned on. Don't make eye contact with me.
Ghost Ace
Ghost Step: Allows you to attack, then completely remove yourself from the fight for the turn as a shift action, once per Pokemon per Scene. In fights that aren't full contact, allows for an in-and-out style of gameplay that has a more tricksy feel to it, and works very well alongside Ghost Ace's stratagem. Isn't really a stall tactic so much as it is something to throw your opponent off balance, and give you the opportunity to strike them twice before they hit you once (at least in the case of faster ghost types).
Haunting Curse: One of the more mechanically complex stratagems, but probably my favorite out of the bunch. Whenever your Pokemon uses Ghost Step, or a Ghost Type move (setup and resolution included) it gains a Curse Token. It can spend these as a standard action or on fainting. It can apply as many conditions as it has curse tokens for. One token lowers a single CS, and you can conceivably blow all of them to make this into a super powerful Memento (for the Video Game) style effect. Two tokens gets you Cursed at no hitpoint loss, which is the only other way to afflict targets with it, very good all said. This allows for Mean Look into Ghost Step with your first action, then returning to Curse your target and shift away as normal. Three tokens is Suppression. Four is Sleep and Bad Sleep, which is normally a two turn setup with the move Nightmare. Very versatile, quite rude, and employs the best volatile statii in the game.
Vampirism: Hit an adjacent foe with a ghost move, it loses a tick of Hp and a CS of choice, your Pokemon gains those (the tick is Temporary Hp). Not actual healing, and not a drain effect, it doesn't worry about things like liquid ooze. Useful where Ghost Types rarely carry boosting moves. They either tend not to have them available (at least not relevant ones), or aren't solid enough to take advantage of them. Golurk seems to be an exception to the rule, many sets run Rock Polish.
Boo!: Daily x3, when your Pokemon reappears from Ghost Step, or the set-up phase of Phantom Force or Shadow Force, the next Ghost-Type attack it uses gains Smite and can't be Intercepted or avoided in any way. Decently powerful ability, but associated with a type that tends to have lack luster damage capability in the first place in terms of raw damage in their moves. Boosted Hex is the exception to the rule, with Shadow Ball being the next strongest at it's relatively dinky DB 8.
Grass Ace
Foiling Foliage: Extra move slots are always nice, especially on Grass Type Pokemon, where Status is half of their entire schtick anyway. Allows you to pack a Stun Spore, Cotton Guard, Leech Seed, Synthesis, or other fun tools away in a seventh slot all to itself. Options is the word.
Sunlight Within: Grass' stratagem. Like Foiling Foliage, also very straightforward. Could not have been given to a better class, your Pokemon are treated as though they were in Sunny Weather. No limit duration. Fire moves gain a damage boost if your Pokemon somehow has one (I remember Gourgeist gets Will-O-Wisp but not if the jack-o-lantern theme ends there). Solarbeam fires without a charge time, Synthesis always heals for the largest amount, and it triggers a whole slough of wonderful abilities. Photosynthesis, Leaf Guard, Sun Blanket, Chlorophyll, many of them very, very common across the type and all quite strong. Praise the sun.
Enduring Bloom: A Scene x2 reaction based on Grass' weaknesses. Let's be honest, of the three 'starter' types, Grass got the short end of the stick when it comes to weaknesses. The saving grace for it in earlier generations was the addition of Poison typing, and the lack of Bug and Flying attack options. Generations later it's often overlooked in favor of more aggressive types. Gives you 2xSkill Temp Hp and +1 Combat Stage in two stats when receiving a SFE hit, provided you've applied your stratagem.
Cross-Pollinate: Great for those wombo moments, as a Daily x3 lets you use some of your really good setup or status moves as part of an attack. Solarbeam into Ingrain, sure. Power Whip into Stun Spore. Giga Drain into Synthesis (lol). Sky's the limit, moveset depending. Cross Pollinate isn't limited per Pokemon or Per Fight, so if you've got the options, move frequency, and durability, keep that one Pokemon around a long time. Really piss off the competition.
Ground Ace
Mold The Earth: Ground Ace does some fun improving the use of the Groundshaper ability, and most of it's features lean against on terrain and area control. It excels against melee attackers, but can just as easily set up an opponent to not want to move by pinning it down in spiked slow terrain. Twice a scene, a ground move creates a cross shaped burst under the attack, in the squares under or adjacent to your Pokemon, or in the attack's normal area. Fun little extra bonus, required, and gives the class it's theme.
Desert Heart: Not as useful as Sunlight Within, Desert Heart operates on similar principles, except the Sandstorm Effect instead. Your Pokemon gets an uninterruptible weather benefit. Fewer effects consult Sandstorm then Sunny Day, and it's meant to be more of a hindrance for your opponent normally. Still, triggers Sand Veil, and Sand Force, so that's something.
Earthroil: At the cost of a Pokemon's shift action, Earthroil makes your Ground-Type moves into a Line 4 or Burst 1, but they take a -5 penalty on damage if it's a single target attack. Allows you to reduce or prevent friendly fire in big area moves like Magnitude and Earthquake, also allows you to scale up your damage on attacks like Mud Bomb by hitting multiple targets. Flood! from Water Ace functions on similar principles, with less of a penalty.
Upheaval: A Daily X3 free action area trip check. As worded you can trip any target on any square you have changed with the groundshaper capability, but as intended it probably means that particular instance of. Still, it's a free trip with a skill bonus, ensuring the target has to remain where it is on the following turn should the trip be successful. Not hugely impressed with this one as a Daily, but I mean, I did just do Flying Ace. If you compare everything to Flying Ace it makes you sad. Don't try to measure up to Flying Ace. Upheaval, you shake the ground and make the peoples fall down. It's okay I guess, with Trip being single target and standard, and Magnitude being a Burst 2. Trip all the things!
Ice Ace
Glacial Ice: Oh my god if there was ever a necessary feature. Static gives Ice Damage Reduction against attacks that are Super-Effective against Ice types. Maximum 8. Because of how super effective damage is calculated, this saves you twelve damage per empowered hit coming in on your freezy of choice.
Polar Vortex: Third of the four weather stratagems, as with Desert Heart, Polar Vortex doesn't accomplish quite as much as Sunlight Within. It does have the added benefit of making Blizzard auto-hit, while activating abilities like Snow Cloak, however. If you don't have any Pokemon with weather activated abilities, or a lot of instances of pokemon with Blizzard, this feature might actually be worth skipping if you're hurting for selection.
Arctic Zeal: Scene x2 Gain a use of an off-list move 'Mist', with added effects you can spend the blessings on. These mist charges can be burned to gain more DR on Glacial Ice when it's needed, reduce an enemy's damage and slow them, or gain defensive CS. Gives some fun synergy, extra action economy, and more protection to a strong offensive type that has so many weaknesses. Soooo many weaknesses. Arctic Zeal is a good pick.
Deep Cold: Daily x3 Automatically freeze a target you hit with an Ice Attack and lower it's Atk SpA and Spe -1 CS each. They thaw automatically after one full round. Crowd control an enemy, weaken their offenses, and give your allies a full turn to beat on them with attacks that don't break the ice. Really good option, especially since you don't call it before making the attack. Since the feature specifies 'hits with a damaging move', you already know the die result in advance. Meaning as long as you connect, it's a freeze, or a freeze, if you want it.
Normal Ace
Extra Ordinary: Type Strategist? Last Chance? Por que los no dos? Normal Ace is the only Type Ace that can tutor both effects on their Pokemon at the same time. Given the huuuuge range of moves the type gets, it's no surprise that this feature would be an option. As with all Type Ace first features, this one is mandatory to take any of the following, and some of them are too worth.
Plainly Perfect: Normal's stratagem, and holy shit. Max damage on everything forever. With Normal having access to the two highest damage base moves in the game, and with how type sync works? This is wrong. It is wrong and probably should not be allowed and I want it. I laughed though, I should never laugh.
New Normal: Scene x2 Moves with conditional damage modifiers instead do max damage. DB 16 STAB Retaliate at max damage before an Ally ever actually faints? Pre-emptive retaliation is overpowered. Should always do.
Simple Improvements Daily x3 +Skill to all your Pokemon's rolls this turn, +2xSkill as Temp Hp. Basically a good all rounder as a daily, and useful in a slough of situations, in or out of combat. Probably key to making some really ludicrous skill check values. Take a Pokemon with Master rank in a skill, or max bonus from Action Hero Stunt. Apply Inspired Training and Orders. Max roll value... 6d6+18? +4 from orders, +8 from Simple Improvements, +6 from Poffin Stat, 6 dice from poffins? Do anything as long as it's awesome, forever. You are John Everyman.
Poison Ace
Potent Venom: The poison status lowers whatever stat you want it to lower, and also Hp (equal to Skill every time it triggers). This is really strong, and sets poison up to cripple every foe, all of the time. Two combat stages in a stat you aren't using isn't something anyone cares about. This feature shreds high investment walls, and beatssweepers with a crutch until they willingly take it and hobble off. All you have to do is inflict poison. This of course, makes Poison types, Steel types, and Pokemon with the Immunity ability the bane of your existence.
Debilitate: Poison's stratagem, and not one I am particularly fond of. Hitting a poisoned target applies a small accuracy and evasion penalty for a round. Good for theme, fits well with the class, but compared to some of the other features we've seen, comes off as a little lack luster. It starts to shine when your Pokemon is using Poison Gas, Smog, or other (while limited) area Poison moves, to damage poisoned targets. At which point you are doing work, as long as the dice fall in your favor.
Miasma: A consolation feature that gives you a free attack is my kind of feature. The poison gas use of this ability triggers your Debilitate stratagem, and potentially allows you to get off even more poisons, making Poison Ace to poison, what Fire Ace is to burn. If the poison gas falls just right, further triggers Potent Venom and allows you to stat crush the enemy formation. You can also just use it as a standard action to get started, which is also nice. Smokescreen is okay, but the strategy got old back when I figured out Chronicler can make it's Pokemon immune and... well, that was certainly a thing. Scene x2.
Corrosive Blight: Daily x3 Make your GM hate you. Boss shows up? Blight it using Toxic. Allies hammer it dead. Playing a Hunter too? Pack Hunt that shit. People will think you're a Bug Ace for how many ticks you're putting off of people. Do you like damage over time classes? An endless stream of small numbers flying off of people? Warlocks? Corrosive Blight is a really good feature for party support and also tons of damage.
Psychic Ace
Psionic Sponge: Encourages the player to run Focused Command or the Supernatural psychic elementalists/sage alongside it's psychic Pokemon. Why Sage? Reflect and Light Screen are both Psychic Typed. The Psychic Pokemon adds a move from an ally's list to it's own until the end of their turn, once per Pokemon per scene. Me? I'd use Future Sight, and Juggler. No one would be safe. Rocks telekinetically fall, everyone dies.
Mindbreak: Psychic's stratagem is a bit janky, like Dark's. +1 Effect Range and +3 Damage to Psychic moves for each of a mess of volatile conditions the target is suffering from. The damage bonus isn't based on skill rank, so that helps take the ceiling off of it. Psychic can inflict a few of these on it's own, but Bad Sleep and Curse are ghost exclusive. The remainder either require some deep movepools and cost in action, or synergy with allies.
Psychic Resonance: Scene x2, Your Pokemon follows up a Psychic Type status move with Encore. This inflicts one of three potential statii on your opponent, all of which are on the list from Mindbreak. Isn't that handy? Action economy features are almost always worthwhile, and this permits a Hypnosis, Roleplay, or Calm Mind, as well as others, to be followed by a debilitating status. Not a bad feature overall.
Force of Will: Daily x3 Even more action economy, and encourages the Psychic Ace to fall into a more support oriented role. Allows you when using a Psychic Status move with a range of Blessing, Field, Hazard, or Self to follow up with another similar move, then Encore because Psychic Resonance. This allows for single turn dual screening. PPUp Calm Mind becomes Very Calm Mind. Psychic doesn't have any hazards to memory, but homebrew allows for some interesting life choices.
Rock Ace
Gravel Before Me: Have I mentioned that I hate puns? I'm not sure which horrible person wrote Rock Ace, but I'm cringing while also trying very hard not to laugh. I kept referring to Type Ace as the mountain, and here we are nearing the top in alphabetical order. How could it have come to this? Gravel Before Me allows you to create lots... and lots... of stealth rock hazards. Whenever your Pokemon receives an Injury, suffers a critical hit, misses all targets, or faints. Rock has some of the highest base ACs among all attacks in the game. Pair this with Taskmaster and the feature that improves Press, and you can just make stealth rocks. Creates a single hazard per trigger, but potentially quite a few per Pokemon. As an example, your Golem receives a super effective grass critical, sturdy saves it. It is at 1 HP, took two injuries and a crit. That's three stealth rock hazards. If it then misses with Rock Slide, that's a fourth. Adds up man.
Bigger and Boulder: Scene x2 Makes Rock Slide absolutely disgusting. When your Pokemon damages with a rock move it shoves enemies half skill away as a push effect, makes them vulnerable, and creates a Stealth Rock per target. The only problem I see with this, is that a target can only be affected by a stealth rock once in a given encounter unless recalled. Pairing this effect with Roar, or anything else that forces a switch makes it a bit more palatable.
Tough as Schist: Rock's Stratagem. All these stealth rocks. Sure would be nice if we could do something else with them OH WOW! Comes a bit late at the Expert skill level, but it grants DR against Water, Grass, Ground, Fighting, or Steel against SFE hits provided you munch on a stealth rock hazard. If I were to twiddle with the class at all, I'd probably make the stratagem produce a stealth rock hazard whenever you land a rock move, and make the Scene activations let them use their defense in place of their special defense when receiving a SFE hit. Rock's biggest crippling weakness is taking special. There are no special rock walls that stand out to mind, and it's biggest weaknesses tend to come from Water and Grass which are special oriented, as opposed to the more physical Fighting, Ground, and Steel. Looking back at Ice, which gets a similar effect as a static, this could probably do with a rework, but fits the theme.
Gneiss Aim: Daily x3 Rock Move gains Smite if it misses. Consolation feature. Some damage is better then no damage, but adding a clause that the target can be affected by Stealth Rock again this encounter might make it more worthwhile given the rest of the class revolves around that mechanic.
Steel Ace
Polished Shine: Static boosts your Steel Type Effect Ranges by +2. Direct, a little boring, but potent enough with nearly every Steel move either raising or lowering CS. Type Sync gives more mileage out of this feature. I am most fond of Steel Power/Ancient Steel, Wowie. (DB 8 STAB, boosts all stats +1 on a 17-20).
Iron Grit: Steel's stratagem is Big Pecks but it also gives you a free +1 Defense. Defense Ace loves Steel Ace, and Steel Ace loves Defense Ace too. Lets you only climb in the numbers, until the only thing you have to fear is special fire attacks. Or the odd special fighting attack. Or a special ground attack. Pffff nobody uses those. Stand super robot proud. Spirit of steel baby.
Assault Armor: The best offense is a good defense, Scene x2. Allows your +6 CS physical wall to hit like a mac truck that destroys planets, while rambling about drills and the strength of a man's spirit. I can really get behind this style of feature since it provides incentive to boost and wall, in order to land the hit that ends the fight.
True Steel: Daily x3 shaves away your non-steel typing to calculate attack effectiveness. Steel has few weaknesses on it's own, and often Pokemon (with the exception of Mega Aggron) suffer additional weakness because of secondary typings. On top of that, gives a small bit of equal Skill DR. Not that you needed it, if this was a physical hit, but specials will come too. True Steel is the sort of thing to use when you want to lean into an attack while making eye contact.
Water Ace
Flood!: As a shift action, use a damaging Water-Type Move as if it had a range of Line 4 or Close Blast 2. Doesn't give the same damage penalty as Ground Ace's near identical feature. The only difference between them is that was a burst or line, and this is a blast or line. Which allows for more safety for allies while aiming... and costs the same kind of action. Why? Why you do this? Water Pulse is probably my favorite for Flood! AoE confusion is hilarious, even more if it's a DB 10 because Mega Launcher.
Fishbowl Technique: The last of four weather stratagems. Like Sunlight Within, this feature gets a great deal of use. It triggers effects like Rain Dish, Hydration, Water Veil, and gives a small damage boost to your water-type moves. In addition to all of this, it also makes Thunder auto-hit, making Lantern a choice pick for any Water Ace.
Fountain of Life: Daily x3, When landing a damaging Water type attack, you may take up to 24 damage at virtuoso, or half what you rolled whichever is lower, as a penalty on your attack. This grants you twice that amount in Temporary Hp, and you then also cure yourself of one status affliction. The term 'bulky waters' gets whipped around a lot in the meta community. 48 Temporary Hp is huge, typically most of a neutral hit after defenses are accounted for. You are similarly not doing much damage with the reduced hit, but because this is based on 'total damage dealt' with a cap, you will want to be able to put out damage on the high side, at least 48 points average. Going too hard on defenses prevents this, and going too light on them makes the temp Hp count for less. Lot of little nuances to this feature, but it is really good still. The self-purge as a free action alone is better then a lot of things Enduring Soul sees, sitting in it's corner.
Aqua Vortex: All targets hit by your (hopefully AoE) water move are now caught in a Vortex and take Skill as a damage roll penalty. Stuck, Trapped, taking a tick of damage every round they fail a check, and a damage penalty? Plus Vortex is a pretty rare effect being limited to Fire Spin, Whirlpool, Sand Tomb, and Infestation. Very, very strong. Spin them right round, baby, right round. Like a record player, right round round round.
And time. Approximately seven hours, over two days. On the fifth day, I rested, because lazy.
Pros
-Type Ace can be fit into literally any build to create someone that prefers a monotype, or heavily slanted team. It is not required, but gains more benefit when used this way. It encourages you to find ways to work around that particular type's weaknesses, and play to it's strengths, while also assisting in this process.
-Skill Prereqs vary from type to type, but often line up with the general theme of a class that would conceivably be an Ace of this type, this is by design. As an example, Fighting Ace uses Combat, Martial Artist uses Combat. Dark Ace uses Stealth, Rogue uses Stealth. It allows for paired character and team theme.
-Type Refresh and Move Sync both interesting features that provide utility or some inherent homebrew sourcing for attacks.
Cons
-Monotype play risky, and sets the player up to struggle against gyms or encounters that strongly favor the enemies unless intelligence is observed and utilized.
-Not all Type Aces created equal, settled into three tiers. These tiers are 'Garbage', 'Useful', and 'Bullshit'.
-Encourages players to annoy GMs for type swaps of their personal favorites, or to want to get their hands on Type Sync or This One's Special I Know It for special snowflake action.
Base Feature: Type Strategist or Last Chance Tutor; DR When using status moves of your type, increased at low health, or Damage when using damaging moves of your type, increased at low health. As base features go, it is good both mechanically and strategically. Permits types with a lot of status or support moves, such as Grass or Psychic, to remain on the field longer. Conversely, it doesn't limit types lacking in such options from performing better, such as the more offensively oriented Fighting or Ice. Required, and good. Effective use of the feature is pretty much 'which of these two options do I teach my Pokemon.'
Type Refresh: For 2 AP, refreshes all EoT moves of your Ace's Type, and replenishes an additional use of a Scene move. Once per target, per scene. As an Orders feature, it does work with Commander. If, party wide, you can convince your allies to pick up a move on their Pokemon that will benefit from this, it can be used on the group as a whole. That maneuver is very AP expensive though. The feature is sort of overkill too, since an EoT move refreshes every other turn anyway. Really that's just a wording thing.
Move Sync: Spend a Tutor Point to shift a move that your Pokemon knows to the type associated with your ace. GM Subjective, but there is a section that gives tips on ways to use this ability. Like Signature Technique from Ace Trainer, it allows for more customization in your team to work in non-canon attacks, like the anime is constantly doing. Personally I really like the feature, and it pairs well with the Ability Tutor the base feature grants.
Bug Ace
Insectoid Utility: I love this feature so much, it improves your Bug-Associated Capabilities (being Threaded, Wallclimber, Naturewalk, and Sky Speed) by granting immunity to a bunch of lesser seen added effects to moves (slow, tripped, push, and stuck). The +1 Evasion for possessing a Sky Speed is okay, but what -really- shines about this feature, is your Pokemon with Threaded can perform Combat Maneuvers (Trip, Grapple, Push, and Disarm) using their Threaded Attack which is a Shift Action. This special attack also ignores weight restrictions on your opponents. So while bugs may not have the best Combat dice to work with this, a ranged 5 maneuver for your movement is brutal. This use is kind of up to interpretation, I could see a GM setting the restriction that you must threaded attack as a standard to combat maneuver, but this is my view of it as written. Also notable about the Threaded entry for this feature; Nowhere in the feature does it specify 'A Bug Type Pokemon'. This means Pokemon that can learn attacks that grant Threaded, such as Vine Whip, Power Whip, String Shot, Spider Web, or Sticky Web, are also capable of utilizing the feature. Your Pokemon with Naturewalk keep those bonuses regardless of type.
Iterative Evolution: Also known as Improved Tinted Lens. Bug Ace's Stratagem feature gives +2 Acc if the Bug Attack is Super-Effective, +Up to 6 Damage if it's a Neutral hit, or improves effectiveness one step if it's resisted. On a Pokemon that naturally has Tinted Lens, this stacks, and lets you throw bug moves at literally everyone for neutral damage unless it is somehow triple resisted. Not to say those instances don't happen, but it gives your Pokemon a very predictable damage curve barring Bulletproof, Fur Coat, or Trainer Features. Feels good to hit a double resist for neutral, and allows your Bug Type Pokemon to flourish from a damage perspective even in environments that might otherwise be hostile. Like Insectoid Utility, this is a must have.
Chitin Shield: Daily x3 Nope as a free action for a Bug Type Pokemon. Usually when spiders are involved, every else nopes. This lets the spider nope out a Status class move -and- also gain immunity to that particular attack until the end of the Scene. Once per Pokemon, obviously. Allowing for more than that would be really strong. Lets you dodge T-Waves on your Scolipede Mount, stat-downs, slow/suppress effects, if an enemy tries to Snatch your boost. It's really nice, go where you please.
Disruption Order: Daily x3 Allows your Bug Attacks to apply your Type Linked Skill (Max 8) as an accuracy penalty to your opponent, which is larger than blind, or 6 on acquiring the skill which is equal to, and stacks with. They also Slow all targets, and all attacks flinch on a 16+ for one round. If applied to an area attack such as Bug Buzz, this becomes a very strong area control tool that can turn the tide of battle. With the rework on Flinch, you can also completely destroy an opponent's initiative for the rest of the fight and render them vulnerable if several allies work in tandem. With it permitting flinch on all attacks, this frees up fun strategies, like non-combat trainers attacking for the sake of making flinch checks.
Dark Ace
Clever Ruse: A consolation prize for failure, but a good one at least. Robots don't believe in failure, but I still support this feature. If a Dark move misses, you can leave, gain a hefty chunk of evasion, or ignore an opponent's stat evasion on your attack in the following turn. Great for a missed Torment, Taunt, Flatter, or other Status class move, as Dark has many. Conversely if you miss with one, you can followup with another at substantially increased chances of success. As far as consolation features go, this is probably the strongest in the game.
Sneak Attack: Type Ace has many, many damage boosts across the board. It'd be fine if some of them weren't extremely situational for the same benefit as others. Sneak Attack is Dark's stratagem, and requires either team support/team play, or for you to utilize in-combat stealth or Dark's status moves in order to actually receive your +2 Accuracy and +Skill in Damage. This is then compared to Fire's Incandescence which adds full of both stats, or Water's Fishbowl which just gives a flat +5 and triggers water abilities, or Bug's 'neutral hits get +Skill Damage'. As far as Stratagems go it is one of the weakest since it requires setup in order to function at all.
Devious: Provides very strong Status-based action economy, allowing you to followup that Taunt with a Swagger. Or Torment with Attract, if you really want to pick on someone cute to let them know that you care. That said, unlike many Type Ace features, this one isn't just Dark Pokemon or Dark Move centric, it actually expands to all moves with the Social Keyword as well. It opens up a lot of play options, but only if you're willing to devote an entire turn to whipping off what are likely to be volatile statii. Devious has the potential to no fun zone almost any encounter faster then you can say Provocateur.
Blackout Strike: Once per Scene, and 3 Times a Day, When landing a Dark Attack, put the target to sleep. If the damage from said attack put a Pokemon between it's 25% and 1% Hp Marker, it instead faints. AC 2 Sleep Status? Check. Ignoring a quarter of your opponents hitpoints? Double check. Extremely strong with the buff Sleep got between 1.04 and 1.05 from a crowd control perspective. Allows you to inflict a strong status off-movelist, or faint a target early. Prediction is key with it's use, however.
Dragon
Tyrant's Roar: Creates a Burst 2 effect that applies Slowed to all targets hit (which persists until they are switched out or take a breather) and lowers all positive combat stages that Pokemon has by -1. Probably a strong option to counter Serene Grace Ancient Power, if it weren't twice a scene. That said, the AoE Slow is very strong against melee attackers, and with most dragons being able to fly on top of that, allows you to run interference for allies even if it's only by limiting your enemy's mobility.
Highlander: If there could be only one stratagem feature for Dragon, this should not have been it. By binding up 2 AP, you protect your dragons from dragon typed attacks, and their dragon typed attacks do more damage against other dragons. The two things wrong with this being; 1. No one runs dragon typed attacks for coverage on dragons, 99.9% of the time it's going to be ice because of the common double weakness that the type has. If it can't run ice, it'll probably still run fairy first. Did I mention fairies? If you're the only dragon, and a fairy shows up, well. There can't be any. You dead. 2. Dragon typed attacks aren't sought after until you get into the big guns, being Outrage and Draco Meteor, barring the odd utility pick of Dragon Breath, because they are on the sad side for damage up until that point. Dragon Pulse on your Mega Launchers is probably the only exception to this.
Unconquerable: I get what they were going for, dragons shouldn't be able to get shut down just by pure status. Making the trigger for the feature three statuses, instead of one or two, sets it up to be unusable most of the time. This includes if you use Outrage and trigger both the Enraged and Confused statuses on yourself. You -still- have to be caught with a third from somewhere in order for this feature to bear any kind of fruit. Probably best skipped.
This Will Not Stand: If you are getting wrecked by raw damage or crits, gives you half a shell smash without the defensive drops, as a +1 Attack, Special Attack, and Speed. Good when paired with defensively minded classes like Enduring Soul, or one of the Stat Aces. Can even be auto-procced if you're running Deadly Gambit Taskmaster. Decent synergy but it's once per scene, per Pokemon.
Electric Ace
Lockdown: Whenever you land a Paralysis proc on an already paralyzed Pokemon, they cannot move for the turn, and are locked into At-Will frequency moves. If the target also happens to be Suppressed, this makes them incapable of using anything except for Struggle Attacks at melee range while also being unable to move. Really good way to force a switch if you're operating on expanded effect ranges or using the appropriate Orders feature to automatically apply statuses. A strong feature, since it improves an already potent status.
Overload: Electric Ace's Stratagem allows their Pokemon to sacrifice a tick of Hp to deal a tick of Hp plus the trainer's type linked skill rank to an enemy. Sort of like an orders version of Life Orb. It is a larger damage boost then a lot of the ones you will find in the game, but comes at a personal sacrifice, so it remains balanced despite that. Fun pick if you like playing risky. For some reason it also immediately makes me think of Helioptile and Heliolisk with their Solar Powered in addition to the Overload effect.
Shocking Speed: Allows you to use an At-Will Electric Attack as though it were Advanced Priority, meaning you can attack and retreat, or move to a safer location while taking your turn before the enemy can followup. If this procs Lockdown, it can completely shut down a melee attacker's round. I'm particularly fond of Ace Trainer's Double Down Thundershock when combined with the two before-mentioned features.
Chain Lightning: Gives area damage as a Daily x3. Also allows you to proc Paralysis multiple times on multiple opponents with a single attack provided all three are within 3 meters of each other. You lose damage per target beyond the first, but with Overload worded as it is, you may chose to lose a tick of Hp per target struck, adding a tick of damage +skill rank. Excellent power plays between Electric type's strong status, the multi-target effect, and the damage increase from Overload.
Fairy Ace
Fairy Lights: As a Standard Action create 3 Fairy Lights. These work as charges and can be used to either gain 1 Tick of Temporary Hp, or fire off a free Fairy Wind at an attacking opponent, but not both. This is basically a Fairy-Typed Fox Fire (Ability you'll find on foxy Pokemon) without a use limit, and the extra utility of being able to provide temporary Hp. This effect is very strong on offensive walls or bulky sweepers.
Arcane Favor: Twice a scene, all allies gain a +1 bonus to all rolls for one round. Combat maneuver checks, accuracy, damage rolls, skill checks. Sky is the limit. Yes, it's only a +1, but it's like Oprah decided fairies were the shit. Everyone's going home with a box full of +1. Not a fan myself, small bonuses are small, but it's good team support all in all.
Fey Trance: Fairy's stratagem functions a bit like Dark's does, in that it applies to both Fairy moves, and moves with the Social Keyword. It functions a bit like Ahri's charm, for those of you that enjoy the MOBA scene. Target becomes infatuated for one turn and wastes it's shift action moving towards your Pokemon. Probably best used on melee attackers, to hinder their ability to output damage, either through poor positioning or the infatuate effect itself.
Fairy Rite: A Daily x3 trigger healing effect that procs when you use Fairy Lights to create a healing effect equal to Pokemon Level. It can then expend a Fairy Light to give an ally or itself a tick of hitpoints. This effect comes at the cost of it's own hitpoints, but Fairy getting access to Draining Kiss, and at least Florges some of Grass' drain moves (if I am not mistaken), this isn't a bad trade off.
Fighting Ace
Close Quarters Mastery: Fighting Stratagem that lets a Pokemon with Fighting Type moves mark a target. Given how common fighting coverage moves are, either via levelup, TM, or Tutor, this feature is almost always promises to be useful in some regard. Marked Pokemon that shift out of an adjacent square into a non-adjacent one (that is, they disengage for space) suffer an attack of opportunity. Close Quarters Mastery plays into everything else Fighting Ace has, and gives the class a very punishing, tank sort of theme to it.
Brawler: 2x Scene, Forward, Forward Up, Up, High Punch. Shoryu Reppa. If your Pokemon triggers a struggle attack (see Close Quarters Mastery) they can instead make it a Burst 1, Friendly (presumably) DB 5 move, that does fighting damage. If it's Conkeldurr, or another Pokemon with Wielder, this can go as high as a DB 7 Fighting Burst. Not too shabby.
Face Me Whelp: Your Pokemon almost become pocket Fortresses. When a target is marked and adjacent they take a -4 (maximum) penalty to Acc and a -10 penalty to damage against targets that aren't the marking Pokemon. This encourages them to disengage or move away from you. Which procs Brawler, and also procs Fighting Ace's capstone, Smashing Punishment. The entire class is centralized around getting on top of one person, taking away all of their choices, and making them hate life.
Smashing Punishment: Unlike most of the other features of the class, the capstone for Fighting Ace actually specifies 'Fighting Type Pokemon'. It's attack of opportunity automatically hits, deals Fighting-Type Damage, and is a Critical Hit, 3x Daily. At high enough Combat this is an auto crit DB 5. With Sniper, courtesy of Cool Expert, it's a triple crit, and only slightly weaker then non-stab Storm Throw. A really good feature, and Fighting Ace in particular has a lot of cohesion to it. Very nice.
Fire Ace
Brightest Flame: All fire moves now burn targets. Fire moves that already burned targets have their effect ranges increased by three. Heatwave? More like Burnwave. Blast Burn? More like... why didn't it burn before? The feature itself is really good, since it's a static. No effort required, just burns for everyone. Sick, sick burns. Also gives you +Skill as a damage bonus against burned targets.
Trail Blazer: Daily x3 lays super hazards as a free action. When your fire type {okemon shifts, it leaves behind a burning square, up to a maximum of 8 squares or it's movement, whichever is lower. Anyone beginning or ending their turn on a fire hazard is burned, anyone who passes through one loses a tick of hitpoints. Once per scene. Paired with other features, or forced movement effects like Push, lets you set up burns on more enemies, to go with the other burns you're inflicting from Brightest Flame.
Incandescence: Fire Stratagem, which is super twisted power. With Fire's abilities often granting bonus damage, burns granting bonus damage, and Incandescence giving mixed sweepers like Flareon or Houndoom huge boosts like this, Fire Ace tends to sit on a very high average damage curve. Fire is one of the most offensively oriented of the Type Aces as a result.
Fan The Flames: Scene x2 Makes a single target move into a burst if melee or cone if ranged. Probably really fun when used alongside Inferno, or Flamethrower. Allows you to spread around still more burns. Fire Ace struggles with it's weaknesses more then some of the other classes do, but also struggles against it's own typing because of Flash Fire and Burn Immunity. Thankfully there are class options to help circumvent some of these, but Fire Ace does not possess them itself.
Flying Ace
Celerity: Flying Type Pokemon, or -anything- with a Sky or Levitate speed gains +Skill to Initiative, and when disengaging shifts half their movement instead of 1 meter. Flying stratagem. Friggan gross. Flying has just the right mix of range, and often has many short to mid-range options, that allow it to take full advantage of this feature. Add in the fact that, not only is Flying the most, if not one of the most, common secondary types AND this applies to Pokemon that just hoover around. This feature is really strong.
Gale Strike: Scene x2 Whenever attacking with a Flying Type move, you roll two dice. Take the lower and it hits, you don't expend Gale Strike. You're constantly attacking with an advantage if the dice are good, and setting yourself up for much easier crits. Gale Strike is wonderful on critical builds. For some reason this entire class makes me think of the Dark Rider from Fire Emblem. Gale Force was too strong. Tornado charge also too strong.
Zephyr Shield: Standard Action Interrupt or Shift Action At-Will to give a penalty to Acc and damage of incoming attacks, gain immunity to powder moves and weather. If it's a standard action interrupt you can lead into your Sky Attacks and your Fly on the turn following your Zephyr Shield. Not terribly rude, but a good defensive boost.
Tornado Charge: Fair and balanced. Honest. There's no way three At-Will or EoT attacks in a single turn, or a Zephyr Shield, a setup move, then an EoT attack is overpowered. Strike Again is once per scene, Tornado Charge is 3x Daily, usable every other turn provided it's a different Pokemon each time. This sits the Flying Ace on the highest action economy in the game at a whopping 11 standard actions in 5 turns. I really can't even. Other then like, make a small holier then thou nasal sound and turn my nose up. Probably while secretly being turned on. Don't make eye contact with me.
Ghost Ace
Ghost Step: Allows you to attack, then completely remove yourself from the fight for the turn as a shift action, once per Pokemon per Scene. In fights that aren't full contact, allows for an in-and-out style of gameplay that has a more tricksy feel to it, and works very well alongside Ghost Ace's stratagem. Isn't really a stall tactic so much as it is something to throw your opponent off balance, and give you the opportunity to strike them twice before they hit you once (at least in the case of faster ghost types).
Haunting Curse: One of the more mechanically complex stratagems, but probably my favorite out of the bunch. Whenever your Pokemon uses Ghost Step, or a Ghost Type move (setup and resolution included) it gains a Curse Token. It can spend these as a standard action or on fainting. It can apply as many conditions as it has curse tokens for. One token lowers a single CS, and you can conceivably blow all of them to make this into a super powerful Memento (for the Video Game) style effect. Two tokens gets you Cursed at no hitpoint loss, which is the only other way to afflict targets with it, very good all said. This allows for Mean Look into Ghost Step with your first action, then returning to Curse your target and shift away as normal. Three tokens is Suppression. Four is Sleep and Bad Sleep, which is normally a two turn setup with the move Nightmare. Very versatile, quite rude, and employs the best volatile statii in the game.
Vampirism: Hit an adjacent foe with a ghost move, it loses a tick of Hp and a CS of choice, your Pokemon gains those (the tick is Temporary Hp). Not actual healing, and not a drain effect, it doesn't worry about things like liquid ooze. Useful where Ghost Types rarely carry boosting moves. They either tend not to have them available (at least not relevant ones), or aren't solid enough to take advantage of them. Golurk seems to be an exception to the rule, many sets run Rock Polish.
Boo!: Daily x3, when your Pokemon reappears from Ghost Step, or the set-up phase of Phantom Force or Shadow Force, the next Ghost-Type attack it uses gains Smite and can't be Intercepted or avoided in any way. Decently powerful ability, but associated with a type that tends to have lack luster damage capability in the first place in terms of raw damage in their moves. Boosted Hex is the exception to the rule, with Shadow Ball being the next strongest at it's relatively dinky DB 8.
Grass Ace
Foiling Foliage: Extra move slots are always nice, especially on Grass Type Pokemon, where Status is half of their entire schtick anyway. Allows you to pack a Stun Spore, Cotton Guard, Leech Seed, Synthesis, or other fun tools away in a seventh slot all to itself. Options is the word.
Sunlight Within: Grass' stratagem. Like Foiling Foliage, also very straightforward. Could not have been given to a better class, your Pokemon are treated as though they were in Sunny Weather. No limit duration. Fire moves gain a damage boost if your Pokemon somehow has one (I remember Gourgeist gets Will-O-Wisp but not if the jack-o-lantern theme ends there). Solarbeam fires without a charge time, Synthesis always heals for the largest amount, and it triggers a whole slough of wonderful abilities. Photosynthesis, Leaf Guard, Sun Blanket, Chlorophyll, many of them very, very common across the type and all quite strong. Praise the sun.
Enduring Bloom: A Scene x2 reaction based on Grass' weaknesses. Let's be honest, of the three 'starter' types, Grass got the short end of the stick when it comes to weaknesses. The saving grace for it in earlier generations was the addition of Poison typing, and the lack of Bug and Flying attack options. Generations later it's often overlooked in favor of more aggressive types. Gives you 2xSkill Temp Hp and +1 Combat Stage in two stats when receiving a SFE hit, provided you've applied your stratagem.
Cross-Pollinate: Great for those wombo moments, as a Daily x3 lets you use some of your really good setup or status moves as part of an attack. Solarbeam into Ingrain, sure. Power Whip into Stun Spore. Giga Drain into Synthesis (lol). Sky's the limit, moveset depending. Cross Pollinate isn't limited per Pokemon or Per Fight, so if you've got the options, move frequency, and durability, keep that one Pokemon around a long time. Really piss off the competition.
Ground Ace
Mold The Earth: Ground Ace does some fun improving the use of the Groundshaper ability, and most of it's features lean against on terrain and area control. It excels against melee attackers, but can just as easily set up an opponent to not want to move by pinning it down in spiked slow terrain. Twice a scene, a ground move creates a cross shaped burst under the attack, in the squares under or adjacent to your Pokemon, or in the attack's normal area. Fun little extra bonus, required, and gives the class it's theme.
Desert Heart: Not as useful as Sunlight Within, Desert Heart operates on similar principles, except the Sandstorm Effect instead. Your Pokemon gets an uninterruptible weather benefit. Fewer effects consult Sandstorm then Sunny Day, and it's meant to be more of a hindrance for your opponent normally. Still, triggers Sand Veil, and Sand Force, so that's something.
Earthroil: At the cost of a Pokemon's shift action, Earthroil makes your Ground-Type moves into a Line 4 or Burst 1, but they take a -5 penalty on damage if it's a single target attack. Allows you to reduce or prevent friendly fire in big area moves like Magnitude and Earthquake, also allows you to scale up your damage on attacks like Mud Bomb by hitting multiple targets. Flood! from Water Ace functions on similar principles, with less of a penalty.
Upheaval: A Daily X3 free action area trip check. As worded you can trip any target on any square you have changed with the groundshaper capability, but as intended it probably means that particular instance of. Still, it's a free trip with a skill bonus, ensuring the target has to remain where it is on the following turn should the trip be successful. Not hugely impressed with this one as a Daily, but I mean, I did just do Flying Ace. If you compare everything to Flying Ace it makes you sad. Don't try to measure up to Flying Ace. Upheaval, you shake the ground and make the peoples fall down. It's okay I guess, with Trip being single target and standard, and Magnitude being a Burst 2. Trip all the things!
Ice Ace
Glacial Ice: Oh my god if there was ever a necessary feature. Static gives Ice Damage Reduction against attacks that are Super-Effective against Ice types. Maximum 8. Because of how super effective damage is calculated, this saves you twelve damage per empowered hit coming in on your freezy of choice.
Polar Vortex: Third of the four weather stratagems, as with Desert Heart, Polar Vortex doesn't accomplish quite as much as Sunlight Within. It does have the added benefit of making Blizzard auto-hit, while activating abilities like Snow Cloak, however. If you don't have any Pokemon with weather activated abilities, or a lot of instances of pokemon with Blizzard, this feature might actually be worth skipping if you're hurting for selection.
Arctic Zeal: Scene x2 Gain a use of an off-list move 'Mist', with added effects you can spend the blessings on. These mist charges can be burned to gain more DR on Glacial Ice when it's needed, reduce an enemy's damage and slow them, or gain defensive CS. Gives some fun synergy, extra action economy, and more protection to a strong offensive type that has so many weaknesses. Soooo many weaknesses. Arctic Zeal is a good pick.
Deep Cold: Daily x3 Automatically freeze a target you hit with an Ice Attack and lower it's Atk SpA and Spe -1 CS each. They thaw automatically after one full round. Crowd control an enemy, weaken their offenses, and give your allies a full turn to beat on them with attacks that don't break the ice. Really good option, especially since you don't call it before making the attack. Since the feature specifies 'hits with a damaging move', you already know the die result in advance. Meaning as long as you connect, it's a freeze, or a freeze, if you want it.
Normal Ace
Extra Ordinary: Type Strategist? Last Chance? Por que los no dos? Normal Ace is the only Type Ace that can tutor both effects on their Pokemon at the same time. Given the huuuuge range of moves the type gets, it's no surprise that this feature would be an option. As with all Type Ace first features, this one is mandatory to take any of the following, and some of them are too worth.
Plainly Perfect: Normal's stratagem, and holy shit. Max damage on everything forever. With Normal having access to the two highest damage base moves in the game, and with how type sync works? This is wrong. It is wrong and probably should not be allowed and I want it. I laughed though, I should never laugh.
New Normal: Scene x2 Moves with conditional damage modifiers instead do max damage. DB 16 STAB Retaliate at max damage before an Ally ever actually faints? Pre-emptive retaliation is overpowered. Should always do.
Simple Improvements Daily x3 +Skill to all your Pokemon's rolls this turn, +2xSkill as Temp Hp. Basically a good all rounder as a daily, and useful in a slough of situations, in or out of combat. Probably key to making some really ludicrous skill check values. Take a Pokemon with Master rank in a skill, or max bonus from Action Hero Stunt. Apply Inspired Training and Orders. Max roll value... 6d6+18? +4 from orders, +8 from Simple Improvements, +6 from Poffin Stat, 6 dice from poffins? Do anything as long as it's awesome, forever. You are John Everyman.
Poison Ace
Potent Venom: The poison status lowers whatever stat you want it to lower, and also Hp (equal to Skill every time it triggers). This is really strong, and sets poison up to cripple every foe, all of the time. Two combat stages in a stat you aren't using isn't something anyone cares about. This feature shreds high investment walls, and beatssweepers with a crutch until they willingly take it and hobble off. All you have to do is inflict poison. This of course, makes Poison types, Steel types, and Pokemon with the Immunity ability the bane of your existence.
Debilitate: Poison's stratagem, and not one I am particularly fond of. Hitting a poisoned target applies a small accuracy and evasion penalty for a round. Good for theme, fits well with the class, but compared to some of the other features we've seen, comes off as a little lack luster. It starts to shine when your Pokemon is using Poison Gas, Smog, or other (while limited) area Poison moves, to damage poisoned targets. At which point you are doing work, as long as the dice fall in your favor.
Miasma: A consolation feature that gives you a free attack is my kind of feature. The poison gas use of this ability triggers your Debilitate stratagem, and potentially allows you to get off even more poisons, making Poison Ace to poison, what Fire Ace is to burn. If the poison gas falls just right, further triggers Potent Venom and allows you to stat crush the enemy formation. You can also just use it as a standard action to get started, which is also nice. Smokescreen is okay, but the strategy got old back when I figured out Chronicler can make it's Pokemon immune and... well, that was certainly a thing. Scene x2.
Corrosive Blight: Daily x3 Make your GM hate you. Boss shows up? Blight it using Toxic. Allies hammer it dead. Playing a Hunter too? Pack Hunt that shit. People will think you're a Bug Ace for how many ticks you're putting off of people. Do you like damage over time classes? An endless stream of small numbers flying off of people? Warlocks? Corrosive Blight is a really good feature for party support and also tons of damage.
Psychic Ace
Psionic Sponge: Encourages the player to run Focused Command or the Supernatural psychic elementalists/sage alongside it's psychic Pokemon. Why Sage? Reflect and Light Screen are both Psychic Typed. The Psychic Pokemon adds a move from an ally's list to it's own until the end of their turn, once per Pokemon per scene. Me? I'd use Future Sight, and Juggler. No one would be safe. Rocks telekinetically fall, everyone dies.
Mindbreak: Psychic's stratagem is a bit janky, like Dark's. +1 Effect Range and +3 Damage to Psychic moves for each of a mess of volatile conditions the target is suffering from. The damage bonus isn't based on skill rank, so that helps take the ceiling off of it. Psychic can inflict a few of these on it's own, but Bad Sleep and Curse are ghost exclusive. The remainder either require some deep movepools and cost in action, or synergy with allies.
Psychic Resonance: Scene x2, Your Pokemon follows up a Psychic Type status move with Encore. This inflicts one of three potential statii on your opponent, all of which are on the list from Mindbreak. Isn't that handy? Action economy features are almost always worthwhile, and this permits a Hypnosis, Roleplay, or Calm Mind, as well as others, to be followed by a debilitating status. Not a bad feature overall.
Force of Will: Daily x3 Even more action economy, and encourages the Psychic Ace to fall into a more support oriented role. Allows you when using a Psychic Status move with a range of Blessing, Field, Hazard, or Self to follow up with another similar move, then Encore because Psychic Resonance. This allows for single turn dual screening. PPUp Calm Mind becomes Very Calm Mind. Psychic doesn't have any hazards to memory, but homebrew allows for some interesting life choices.
Rock Ace
Gravel Before Me: Have I mentioned that I hate puns? I'm not sure which horrible person wrote Rock Ace, but I'm cringing while also trying very hard not to laugh. I kept referring to Type Ace as the mountain, and here we are nearing the top in alphabetical order. How could it have come to this? Gravel Before Me allows you to create lots... and lots... of stealth rock hazards. Whenever your Pokemon receives an Injury, suffers a critical hit, misses all targets, or faints. Rock has some of the highest base ACs among all attacks in the game. Pair this with Taskmaster and the feature that improves Press, and you can just make stealth rocks. Creates a single hazard per trigger, but potentially quite a few per Pokemon. As an example, your Golem receives a super effective grass critical, sturdy saves it. It is at 1 HP, took two injuries and a crit. That's three stealth rock hazards. If it then misses with Rock Slide, that's a fourth. Adds up man.
Bigger and Boulder: Scene x2 Makes Rock Slide absolutely disgusting. When your Pokemon damages with a rock move it shoves enemies half skill away as a push effect, makes them vulnerable, and creates a Stealth Rock per target. The only problem I see with this, is that a target can only be affected by a stealth rock once in a given encounter unless recalled. Pairing this effect with Roar, or anything else that forces a switch makes it a bit more palatable.
Tough as Schist: Rock's Stratagem. All these stealth rocks. Sure would be nice if we could do something else with them OH WOW! Comes a bit late at the Expert skill level, but it grants DR against Water, Grass, Ground, Fighting, or Steel against SFE hits provided you munch on a stealth rock hazard. If I were to twiddle with the class at all, I'd probably make the stratagem produce a stealth rock hazard whenever you land a rock move, and make the Scene activations let them use their defense in place of their special defense when receiving a SFE hit. Rock's biggest crippling weakness is taking special. There are no special rock walls that stand out to mind, and it's biggest weaknesses tend to come from Water and Grass which are special oriented, as opposed to the more physical Fighting, Ground, and Steel. Looking back at Ice, which gets a similar effect as a static, this could probably do with a rework, but fits the theme.
Gneiss Aim: Daily x3 Rock Move gains Smite if it misses. Consolation feature. Some damage is better then no damage, but adding a clause that the target can be affected by Stealth Rock again this encounter might make it more worthwhile given the rest of the class revolves around that mechanic.
Steel Ace
Polished Shine: Static boosts your Steel Type Effect Ranges by +2. Direct, a little boring, but potent enough with nearly every Steel move either raising or lowering CS. Type Sync gives more mileage out of this feature. I am most fond of Steel Power/Ancient Steel, Wowie. (DB 8 STAB, boosts all stats +1 on a 17-20).
Iron Grit: Steel's stratagem is Big Pecks but it also gives you a free +1 Defense. Defense Ace loves Steel Ace, and Steel Ace loves Defense Ace too. Lets you only climb in the numbers, until the only thing you have to fear is special fire attacks. Or the odd special fighting attack. Or a special ground attack. Pffff nobody uses those. Stand super robot proud. Spirit of steel baby.
Assault Armor: The best offense is a good defense, Scene x2. Allows your +6 CS physical wall to hit like a mac truck that destroys planets, while rambling about drills and the strength of a man's spirit. I can really get behind this style of feature since it provides incentive to boost and wall, in order to land the hit that ends the fight.
True Steel: Daily x3 shaves away your non-steel typing to calculate attack effectiveness. Steel has few weaknesses on it's own, and often Pokemon (with the exception of Mega Aggron) suffer additional weakness because of secondary typings. On top of that, gives a small bit of equal Skill DR. Not that you needed it, if this was a physical hit, but specials will come too. True Steel is the sort of thing to use when you want to lean into an attack while making eye contact.
Water Ace
Flood!: As a shift action, use a damaging Water-Type Move as if it had a range of Line 4 or Close Blast 2. Doesn't give the same damage penalty as Ground Ace's near identical feature. The only difference between them is that was a burst or line, and this is a blast or line. Which allows for more safety for allies while aiming... and costs the same kind of action. Why? Why you do this? Water Pulse is probably my favorite for Flood! AoE confusion is hilarious, even more if it's a DB 10 because Mega Launcher.
Fishbowl Technique: The last of four weather stratagems. Like Sunlight Within, this feature gets a great deal of use. It triggers effects like Rain Dish, Hydration, Water Veil, and gives a small damage boost to your water-type moves. In addition to all of this, it also makes Thunder auto-hit, making Lantern a choice pick for any Water Ace.
Fountain of Life: Daily x3, When landing a damaging Water type attack, you may take up to 24 damage at virtuoso, or half what you rolled whichever is lower, as a penalty on your attack. This grants you twice that amount in Temporary Hp, and you then also cure yourself of one status affliction. The term 'bulky waters' gets whipped around a lot in the meta community. 48 Temporary Hp is huge, typically most of a neutral hit after defenses are accounted for. You are similarly not doing much damage with the reduced hit, but because this is based on 'total damage dealt' with a cap, you will want to be able to put out damage on the high side, at least 48 points average. Going too hard on defenses prevents this, and going too light on them makes the temp Hp count for less. Lot of little nuances to this feature, but it is really good still. The self-purge as a free action alone is better then a lot of things Enduring Soul sees, sitting in it's corner.
Aqua Vortex: All targets hit by your (hopefully AoE) water move are now caught in a Vortex and take Skill as a damage roll penalty. Stuck, Trapped, taking a tick of damage every round they fail a check, and a damage penalty? Plus Vortex is a pretty rare effect being limited to Fire Spin, Whirlpool, Sand Tomb, and Infestation. Very, very strong. Spin them right round, baby, right round. Like a record player, right round round round.
And time. Approximately seven hours, over two days. On the fifth day, I rested, because lazy.