Counting Sheep - A Pokemon Trainer quest

Personally, I think that Scrapping is a good idea for our focus, for our development as a trainer but also as a character. Having good instincts for tempo and engagement timings is something that we do need, and learning how to scrap gives some real depth to our goal of redefining ourselves beyond the limits of the soft boi archetype.

As for Marigold, all of the options are good to be honest, but given my preference for Joan learning to understand the flow of combat, it makes sense to also have Marigold learn some of that through Momentum control and energy conservation. Foundations are good to have just in general, so that would be my second choice, but I feel like fighting experience is something we can develop without Rosalie, while Rosalie's personal conception of Passive trainers is one that I'd like to explore more in detail.

What Joan hates is how people don't take him seriously, so I think training his authority over pokemon would flow naturally into what Joan himself wants to improve in. He's someone who didn't go on his trainer journey till 21 - he was too passive to even make the choice till now, he knows it as his flaw and hates himself somewhat for it

[] Authority. Not something she'd brought up, but in a way it's such a central core of her persona you shouldn't have been surprised. Sure, Marigold only hesitated because the order you gave out was patently unusual, but as you grow as a Trainer you'll likely throw less obedient and loving pokemon at tougher challenges than Ronnie – and while authority is more than just an attitude, over years of building herself as untouchable to humans and pokemon both she's picked up more than a few tricks on projecting it.


And for Marigold herself, I kinda want to lean into a theme of "Taking cute underappreciated pokemon and making them fierce battlers" to fit Joan. So Offensive options I guess?

[] After a couple of decades honing a relentlessly offensive style, it'd be kind of a waste not to let her focus her efforts on Marigold's offensive options. You both worked on Marigold's timing, skill and power with her offensive options – meagre as they may be for now, a lot of what she'll learn here will be useful and applicable for all future offensive moves to come.

I did enjoy the fight and I'd say it went pretty well all things considered. Although, my biggest take away from it is that some of the more utility moves apparently got massive buffs. Like, Pursuit being able to shut down dodging instead of relying on switching and Snatch being viable as a reaction instead of needing to anticipate the opponents move (which, to be fair, would be pretty hard to do if you actually need to shout the instruction out loud) are borderline game changers.

I suppose that makes it a good thing we got a practical demonstration of that fact early on.

Also, don't feel to bad about taking some time for updates, I'm mostly just happy to have another update from you at all and real life concerns obviously come first.

As for the actual choices, it's somewhat late over on my end, so I might change my mind after a good round of sleep, but I'm leaning towards the decisiveness training for Joan. Aside from it being a useful thing for a trainer to have in general, Joan's archetype does come with a preference to start out defensive until he snaps, so if it's part of his style, we might as well make sure he's good at snapping with those snap judgements.

I personally would go with decisiveness, Authority? scrapping? all of that can flow from there but you can't lead and you can't scrap if you are just not decisive enough. If you are not able to decisively react, you can't flex the proper respect for your authority.

Of course, Training authority and Scrapping will be great, but I feel like decisive decision-making is an important trait for both and it would be best to start with the basics when we are such a young trainer.

I'm leaning towards Foundations for Marigold and Decision-making for Joan. They feel like the most beneficial options for newbies like us.

gosh, I feel like our introduction to training is so much different than other trainers.

Heck we're 70k words in and still in part 0, I can't wait for more for our weird wacky adventure to be the best there ever was.

Also can't wait for some darn respect around here!

ReverendSwing said:

[] It might not have been the first thing that jumps to mind when thinking of Rosalie's style, but thinking back on it momentum control and energy conservation seem perfectly natural focuses for her. Just because you don't mind surrendering the flow of the fight to your opponent, doesn't mean Marigold can't learn to regulate it and try to make sure it doesn't become untenable – something which would also be helped by Rosalie helping her learn to smooth out her movements and how to avoid expending energy uselessly, making her built to outlast her opponents.

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ReverendSwing said:

[] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.

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These are my prefered picks. I do like what she said about our style of fighting. I want to capitalize on the switch Marigold does, and actualize it into our fighting style. It also fits the "Cute/Soft Powerhouse" where our passivity gives an outside view of being needlessly soft when we are merely giving way to give our opponent more wool to drown themselves in. This also takes advantage of Marigold's Battery trait, and in the future I want to pair that up with Discharge to give her a wider more paralyzing move intead of the more damaging Thunderbolt.

On Scapping and it's role on things, like I mentioned I want the Defense/Offense switch to be a core part of our style, and Scrapping gives us the foundation towards realizing that. This also furthers the "surprisingly a badass" thing we got going on. After all, no one expects the Soft Boi to go wrestling Nidokings and know what to do in a proper scrap.

ReverendSwing said:

[] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.

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A strong tower, strong foundations needs.

ReverendSwing said:

[] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.

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Authority and decisiveness can be developed. Scrapping experience more important.

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.
[X] Your decisiveness, as she'd mentioned. Forcing you to repeatedly make snap judgments until you stop taking the time to doubt yourself, it's still a work in progress but you can definitely feel a little more steel in your spine when the time comes to give out an order.

Hesitation is bad in a fight. Joan and Marigold are still early in their journey so I think a solid foundation is best.

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.
[X] Your decisiveness, as she'd mentioned. Forcing you to repeatedly make snap judgments until you stop taking the time to doubt yourself, it's still a work in progress but you can definitely feel a little more steel in your spine when the time comes to give out an order.

TimEd said:

On Scapping and it's role on things, like I mentioned I want the Defense/Offense switch to be a core part of our style, and Scrapping gives us the foundation towards realizing that.

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Except that by the way she explains it, that's not really what scrapping is about. It's more of a generalist option to understand elements like spacing and how to best apply our moves, regardless of strategy. Now, that's still useful when you want to switch style mid-battle, but Joan can already do that in the broadstokes, as demonstrated by him deciding to go on the offensive during this fight. The problem with the switch, which Rosalie specifically points out, is that he spend like eight paragraphs considering the situation before actually commiting to it. That's where decisiveness comes in.

[X] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.
[X] It might not have been the first thing that jumps to mind when thinking of Rosalie's style, but thinking back on it momentum control and energy conservation seem perfectly natural focuses for her. Just because you don't mind surrendering the flow of the fight to your opponent, doesn't mean Marigold can't learn to regulate it and try to make sure it doesn't become untenable – something which would also be helped by Rosalie helping her learn to smooth out her movements and how to avoid expending energy uselessly, making her built to outlast her opponents.

[X] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.
[X] It might not have been the first thing that jumps to mind when thinking of Rosalie's style, but thinking back on it momentum control and energy conservation seem perfectly natural focuses for her. Just because you don't mind surrendering the flow of the fight to your opponent, doesn't mean Marigold can't learn to regulate it and try to make sure it doesn't become untenable – something which would also be helped by Rosalie helping her learn to smooth out her movements and how to avoid expending energy uselessly, making her built to outlast her opponents.

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.
[X] Your decisiveness, as she'd mentioned. Forcing you to repeatedly make snap judgments until you stop taking the time to doubt yourself, it's still a work in progress but you can definitely feel a little more steel in your spine when the time comes to give out an order.

[X] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.

[X] After a couple of decades honing a relentlessly offensive style, it'd be kind of a waste not to let her focus her efforts on Marigold's offensive options. You both worked on Marigold's timing, skill and power with her offensive options – meagre as they may be for now, a lot of what she'll learn here will be useful and applicable for all future offensive moves to come.

[X][Marigold Training] solid foundations.
[X][Joan Training] Your decisiveness

Good to see this is back

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.
[X] Your decisiveness, as she'd mentioned. Forcing you to repeatedly make snap judgments until you stop taking the time to doubt yourself, it's still a work in progress but you can definitely feel a little more steel in your spine when the time comes to give out an order.

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.

[X] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.

[X] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.

[X] After a couple of decades honing a relentlessly offensive style, it'd be kind of a waste not to let her focus her efforts on Marigold's offensive options. You both worked on Marigold's timing, skill and power with her offensive options – meagre as they may be for now, a lot of what she'll learn here will be useful and applicable for all future offensive moves to come.

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.
[X] Your decisiveness, as she'd mentioned. Forcing you to repeatedly make snap judgments until you stop taking the time to doubt yourself, it's still a work in progress but you can definitely feel a little more steel in your spine when the time comes to give out an order.

Right I ended up going to sleep before checking back on the thread, but it seems I didn't really miss anything too important.

DarkN0va said:

@ReverendSwing, there's no voting banner at the top & bottom of the page.

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One day I'll remember to put it up, and yesterday wasn't it.

Edgedancer said:

I did enjoy the fight and I'd say it went pretty well all things considered. Although, my biggest take away from it is that some of the more utility moves apparently got massive buffs. Like, Pursuit being able to shut down dodging instead of relying on switching and Snatch being viable as a reaction instead of needing to anticipate the opponents move (which, to be fair, would be pretty hard to do if you actually need to shout the instruction out loud) are borderline game changers.

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Yeah this is something I was pretty keen on as Pokemon has a lot of moves which are cool in concept yet utterly useless on a practical level. I didn't do anything too drastic messing around with these (for example, as I mentioned the Snatch trick would have just slightly perturbed a more experienced opponent, and using it for its actual intended effect is just almost always too much of a gamble to be worth the tradeoff), but it's always worth thinking about how moves might do what they do, and the creative ways you can apply them ! At least so long as you don't try to bring realistic physics into it. We're running on pure shonen magic bullshit here.

PeaterDuck12 said:

gosh, I feel like our introduction to training is so much different than other trainers.

Heck we're 70k words in and still in part 0, I can't wait for more for our weird wacky adventure to be the best there ever was.

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Yeah I am incapable of using one word when ten could do, I'm afraid.

And yup, most don't exactly get to begin like you did. Capital-T Trainers come from all walks of life, but they do usually come from some sort of background that involves either growing up with pokemon/carrying on a family trade, transitioning from a more professionally structured training background or got started in their late teens and got practice during school holidays and the like before actually heading out. Starting from zero like you is very unusual, and while older Trainers are usually around to give the newbies advice that means it's very rare for any to get actively mentored when they set out. Luckily for you, that means no bad habits to unlearn and less time wasted on dead ends/figuring out what the hell you should be doing!


Anyway, I forgot to mention it at the end of the story post, but the usual applies - if you have any questions, ask away, can't guarantee I'll be massively present in the near future but I'll get round to answering eventually!

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.
[X] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.

I want our 'soft boi' to actually be able to throw hands with any Pokemon we train or meet. Like, at some point there's a rampaging Rhydon, and we just go 'nah, it's cool' and judo flip the beast.

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.

[X] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.

[X] Your decisiveness, as she'd mentioned. Forcing you to repeatedly make snap judgments until you stop taking the time to doubt yourself, it's still a work in progress but you can definitely feel a little more steel in your spine when the time comes to give out an order.

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.

[X] In the end, what she's most known for is general fighting prowess. It was always going to end that way : with her making sure that Marigold gets as much experience possible reacting to various situations in live combat, and that she knows how to scrap first and foremost. Style can come after you've both laid solid foundations.
[X] Your decisiveness, as she'd mentioned. Forcing you to repeatedly make snap judgments until you stop taking the time to doubt yourself, it's still a work in progress but you can definitely feel a little more steel in your spine when the time comes to give out an order.

[X] Scrapping. Sure, she'd have done some of that anyway, but she's judged that what you most urgently needed was a better handle on the flow of a fight, and that the best way was to put you front and centre repeatedly until you got it. You never knew improvement could hurt so much.
[X] It might not have been the first thing that jumps to mind when thinking of Rosalie's style, but thinking back on it momentum control and energy conservation seem perfectly natural focuses for her. Just because you don't mind surrendering the flow of the fight to your opponent, doesn't mean Marigold can't learn to regulate it and try to make sure it doesn't become untenable – something which would also be helped by Rosalie helping her learn to smooth out her movements and how to avoid expending energy uselessly, making her built to outlast her opponents.