Tomas Elliot

Come to think of it, we italians literally know nothing about Finland... The only thing the average italian will tell you about Finland is that there are hot blonde women there, and even that is actually a Sweden stereotype: this just goes to show our level of misinformation! So yeah, I have no idea of what is going on up there, which side is the top party on, or why brilliant ideas like this (I hope the sarcasm is evident) came into being... Hell even in Italy nobody ever came up with a law like this, and considering that the Pope lives literally next to the House of Parlament, and that our leading party for something like 45 years has been a party named "Democrazia Cristiana" (="CHRISTIAN Democracy") that's saying something...

Oh ok I must have misinterpreted the word "trans". Apologies...

I came in all serious about telling you that starting a random petition on a Pokemon forum cannot really change anything... And then I saw it was an actually official petition by no other than Amnesty International. I apologize for being prejudicial. Gonna sign it now. EDIT: wait something just struck me... The petition mentions the fact that trans people shouldn't "be forced to be sterile" but... Aren't trans people sterile by definition? I mean, isn't the very nature of the operation to switch gender supposed to make you sterile as a side effect? Or am I getting something wrong? Asking out of sheer curiosity...

Eh, the problem however is that the opponent can pack a counter-counter of their own and keep on switching... That's what we call a core! In Gen 5 everything was easy: the number one defensive threat to dragons was Skarmory, and Magnezone could easily dispose of that thanks to its Magnet Pull ability... This aside, I'll repeat: I did NOT say that Dragonite is unable to sweep this generation, what I said is that dragons as a whole are less effective at sweeping this generation because they cannot just spam Outrage mindlessly (which was their standard way of sweeping to begin with), and I have also said that, in such a scenario, there are other dragons that do a slightly better job at sweeping, which kinda causes Dragonite to be overshadowed. But I also said that this does NOT mean that Dragonite's days in OU are numbered: as I explained in more details earlier, there are many other things Dragonite can do other than sweeping, many different sets one can try. I just hope this situation, in which Dragonite is overshadowed by better sweepers in a tier chock full of counters and checks, will encourage people to experiment more, instead of sticking to the old HG/SS set consisting of Outrage, EQ, D-dance and E-speed...

The problem with Weakness Policy is that it leaves you wide open to be WoW'd (BEFORE WP is triggered I mean). A burnt Dragonite is a dead Dragonite... But ehi, that's an option too I guess, if you can predict right...

Well, my point was simply that in actual games, the early stages are not a real challenge, and thus you can afford using Pokemon that learn the good stuff MUCH later, simply because you won't risk anything serious from it. Basically, you keep winning through the early stages, and by the time you reach the difficult stuff your Pokemon have learned all the tools you may need. But Reborn is hard from the get go (which is why we all play it, by the way), so it is wiser to pick Pokemon that learn good moves early on, simply because otherwise you'll be short of options to deal with the difficult stuff that will be thrown at you in the early stages. This is just a generic rule of thumb: in the specific case, I had no idea you could obtain Hariyama before Flobot, hell Hariyama is actually a good Pokemon to have in Reborn in general, so yeah, I guess you are right when you say it can be used to fill in the Fighting spot, which leaves the choice to use something else as a starter... Long story short: you are right when you say the starter doesn't have to do all the fighting. I just assumed it would have to do most of the fighting because I didn't know about many of the good options you can obtain early on. (On a completely unrelated note, what do you mean by "Rain Dancing Charlotte"? I thought Charlotte was a human NPC?)

More importantly: realistically, how would you get a guy to pay? O.o

This was moved to the right section now, wasn't it? So, Dragonite. Crippled by its own schyzofrenic learnset in the first 3 generations (all Dragon-type attacks were special back then, and Dragonite's defining stat is physical Atk), overshadowed by the horridly broken Garchomp and Salamence in the fourth, when those two were actually Ubers (and by the way their ban was what allowed Dragonite to find a spot in Gen 4 OU as the only dancing dragon left), finally got a boost that gave it the edge over its cousins in Gen 5, the ability Multiscale that pushed it to the top of the food chain. Now Gen 6 has come out and all top-tier Dragon have obtained a Mega form, to compensate for their reduced effectiveness courtesy of the new Fairy type... Except Dragonite. Granted, Multiscale is still one heck of an ability, but while in Gen 5 that ability allowed you to punch holes into teams to allow a companion to sweep away the weakened opponents later on (all you had to do was to lead with Lum Berry Multiscale Dragonite, use Dragon Dance twice, and then just spam Outrage to sensibly weaken anything that dared to switch in. When Dragonite eventually goes down, bring in some nasty sweeper to finish opponents off), nowadays that is not possible because Fairies running rampant prevent you from carelessly locking yourself into Outrage, and Dragon Claw is just not strong enough. Does this mean Dragonite's era is over? In my opinion, yes. Dragonite is not an effective sweeper/hole puncher anymore, and there are a lot of dragons that can do the job better. But does this mean Dragonite is destined to become a b-series dragon? Hell no. What people seem to forget is Dragonite's exceptional versatility: one generation of people running the same set over and over caused everyone to believe that's the ONLY set Dragonite can run. It isn't: Dragonite has a decent Special Attack too, his Multiscale ability is great, and it is the only Pokemon to learn BOTH Thunder AND Hurricane (which is STAB). Use him in rain with a bulky set, with maxed HP and Sp Atk, and Roost to recharge health and keep Multiscale alive, and watch some serious pseudo-parafusion happen. "But Tomas! Weather was nerfed this gen too!". As I mentioned, Dragonite has decent bulk, and that insane ability named Multiscale. So why not trying out the Parashuffler set? Thunder Wave, Dragon Tail, Roost and a filler, with an EV spread to put the emphazis on bulk: if you have a powerful but slow sweeper in your team, this is the ideal companion. All in all, Dragonite has lost the status as top-tier physical sweeper it had in Gen 5 (this is not to say it cannot do that job anymore: simply, dragons as a whole are worse at sweeping now, and if you really want to sweep with a dragon there are better choices, like the trio of megas Garchomp-Salamence-Charizard X), but there are still a lot of things it can do for any good OU team. So let's not assume Dragonite as a Pokemon is finished just yet.

This is a very accurate post and it's hard to add anything to it. There is one factor that this analysis doesn't take into account tho: Ame's sadism. With many good things being axed in later episodes and the usual anti-grinding mechanic, building a strong or even half-decent team is as hard as ever now. Therefore, it is imperative that, upon setting your mind on using a certain Pokemon, you go with specimens that can naturally learn good moves as early as possible. For example, while Contrary Serperior is evil and all, it learns its key move (Leaf Storm) quite late, in fact later than you can obtain most good non-starter grass types. Empoleon's level-up learnset suffers from some severe schyzofrenia, specially at early stages, with normal and special attacks being learned without a defining logic, and without the stats to support a mixed set. Torterra has a double weakness to Ice, and given that Sierra still haunts my dreams after almost a year has passed since I battled her, that is enough of a reason for me to advice against it. So, this leaves Infernape and Delphox. Chimchar can evolve into Monferno and learn Mach Punch before you face the Flobot and her Cradily. I think we have a winner.

Unless you can get Girafarig before Shade's battle (and I am pretty damn sure you can't), this run of yours is gonna be a pain I am afraid... Maybe Inkay? I know that fella is in the game, and is the only Psychic that is not weak to Ghost as of Gen 6 (except the aforementioned Girafarig), but can you get it before Shade?

Something I thought I'd point out: Grass resists Electric. So you don't need the (rather awful) Torterra to take on Electric and Water (against which by the way Torterra is only neutral), just about any Grass-type will do, without the need for the crippling 4x weakness to Ice. So yeah, next time you need something to wall Electric and Water attacks, consider a pure Grass or Poisom/Grass Pokemon, like Tangrowth, Roserade or Venusaur for the job... Two resistances are better than an immunity and a neutrality with added crippling weakness to Ice! I just felt the need to point this out because I find the "must have immunity to counter effectively" mentality to be rather harmful, and I want to help people to realize that it is better to ditch it... As long as you have bulk and recovery, you can effectively tank hits you are neutral to, let alone resistant! You don't need the extra immunity to tank effectively, specially if it comes at the cost of a crippling 4x weakness to a commonly used coverage type (mot Electric Pokemon have HP Ice, and most Water ones have Ice Beam). So yeah, I know you have removed Torterra in the last version of your team, but I felt I had to address the reasoning that lead to you including it in the first place...

Wonderful. Ok everyone, myself and AuthorReborn shall now start working to polish all the details of the roleplay, including plot and NPCs: the official Sign-up topic will be posted on monday, you can look forward to it!

So, after some problems it would seem AuthorReborn is claiming the co-host role for himself... Can you please confirm this, AuthorReborn?

The Sign-Up topic will come as soon as I find myself a co-host, which means, as soon as AuthorReborn's pal contacts me (I hope)...

Wonderful, I'll be waiting for him to contact me

All 3 of them!