Are using potions now considered good?

[Zander]

I've finished episode 16 a long time ago, I got new members, bred myself an almost perfect Goodra and trained all my pokemon in Agate Circus. I have...999999 poke. Yeah even the trainers are not giving me any money. So I bought 50 full restores,50 revives,50 hyper potions,50 full heals and a lot of various poke balls.

 

Now I'm wondering if I should actually use these healing items in pokemon battles or should I do as probably everyone has been playing the game up till now, ie not use any items inside battles.

It kinda respects the difficulty of the game but you could also argue that this is just a Pokemon game and if you want super competitive then play on showdown.

So should I use items in battles or not? Need to soothe a conscience

[Ice Cream Sand Witch]

Play however you prefer to play. 

[Alistair]

Actually I think most people have used healing items in Reborn at some point. Heck even Leaders and Meteor admins use 1-3 copies of the best healing item they've got in every match, as soon as their active pokemon hits yellow hp. If they can do it, I don't know why you shouldn't

[EndearingCharacterTrait]

Nah go ahead. Especially since the opposition seems to always have better items than us anyway 

[Kunikunatu]

seconding icsw's post. play how you want, they're there for a reason. no one's gonna come to your house and beat you with a stick because you used a potion lol

 

[Zander]

Lol okay I guess. I'll try not to use much though, try to keep a minimum difficulty without having to go into hard mode or something

[Titania]

It's rather unsettling how questions about ethics quickly start to make everything feel on shaky ground.  So let's cut past that by abstracting away all the non-central issues:

 

Suppose hypothetically that you are a witch.  One afternoon you're taking a stroll through the woods (witches love the woods okay) and you stumble on a guy with a gun mugging an innocent little princess.  If you don't act, she's going to lose her purse, get hurt, and possibly worse.  You can go at the guy swinging your fists to stop him, but you might get shot.  On the other hand, you can use your awesome witch magick to deflect the bullets, throatlift the guy, and conk him out for a bit.  You can even conjure a stylish light display in the sky over his unconscious body directing the police where to find him if you like!  So what do you do?  Pause to think here and decide.

 

Oy!  Don't think I can't see you peaking ahead before you've picked!  *glare*   Okay, so we probably all agree we're busting out the athame on this one, right?  I think for most people this thought experiment constitutes totally unobjectionable use of the extra power you bring to the table.  So why was that?  All of a sudden the argument seems pretty flimsy that just because everyone else didn't get the same powers we did, we're ethically bound not to use them.  It's not inherently wrong to exercise extra skills/talents/resources that we have access to.

 

There are some obvious objections to this argument that I anticipate.  Perhaps some feel that saving the princess is a necessary imperative, while beating a boss in Pokemon Reborn is not.  But this cannot be.  Inside Reborn we have a rigorous construct of what it means to win: a specific goal to achieve subject to certain constrainst.  Furthering that end is the highest ethic!  Real life has no such equivalent; we don't have a well-defined meaning for how you win at life.  Beating the boss in Pokemon Reborn was flat out necessary for anybody playing Reborn.  Saving the princess was (regrettably) not.  And I sincerely doubt anyone's answer was "Wait, tell me how I came by these witchcraft talents!  That's what decides whether I'll use them!"  So we don't get that out either: how you came by this many potions (so long as it was subject to the confines of the game, which it was) doesn't impact the ethics of using them.  In the end there's not much we can grasp at to fight this conclusion: use the darn potions; if anything it's more ethical than not because they enable the thing that's defined to be the highest and only good within the bounds of the game.

 

So now the question is: Do you WANT to?  There's no moral reprehensibility about it.  But would it give you the most fun?  And that's the same place all the rest of this thread wound up: do it if it's more fun, don't do it if isn't.  Making sure the difficulty remains high enough seems to be an important part of your own personal utility function, so using in moderation seems the way to go.  That's right kids: "hyper potions" and alcohol are the same   If you're hunting for less philosophical and more pragmatic advice, you could try setting a budget of what you'll allow yourself in each fight by trainer type.  Gym leaders you get to use the same items as them, final bosses you get to use 2 of each, normies you get a full heal, etc.  That kind of thing, but whatever numbers feel most fun to you.

 

TL;DR: Ya same

[YinYang9705]

Use the healing items, they're given to you for a reason.

[Swampellow]

I'm not sure where you get the info that most people don't use healing items in battle, most people I know use them fairly often, not all the time, but they are used.

[Zander]

10 hours ago, Titania said:

It's rather unsettling how questions about ethics quickly start to make everything feel on shaky ground.  So let's cut past that by abstracting away all the non-central issues:

 

Suppose hypothetically that you are a witch.  One afternoon you're taking a stroll through the woods (witches love the woods okay) and you stumble on a guy with a gun mugging an innocent little princess.  If you don't act, she's going to lose her purse, get hurt, and possibly worse.  You can go at the guy swinging your fists to stop him, but you might get shot.  On the other hand, you can use your awesome witch magick to deflect the bullets, throatlift the guy, and conk him out for a bit.  You can even conjure a stylish light display in the sky over his unconscious body directing the police where to find him if you like!  So what do you do?  Pause to think here and decide.

 

Oy!  Don't think I can't see you peaking ahead before you've picked!  *glare*   Okay, so we probably all agree we're busting out the athame on this one, right?  I think for most people this thought experiment constitutes totally unobjectionable use of the extra power you bring to the table.  So why was that?  All of a sudden the argument seems pretty flimsy that just because everyone else didn't get the same powers we did, we're ethically bound not to use them.  It's not inherently wrong to exercise extra skills/talents/resources that we have access to.

 

There are some obvious objections to this argument that I anticipate.  Perhaps some feel that saving the princess is a necessary imperative, while beating a boss in Pokemon Reborn is not.  But this cannot be.  Inside Reborn we have a rigorous construct of what it means to win: a specific goal to achieve subject to certain constrainst.  Furthering that end is the highest ethic!  Real life has no such equivalent; we don't have a well-defined meaning for how you win at life.  Beating the boss in Pokemon Reborn was flat out necessary for anybody playing Reborn.  Saving the princess was (regrettably) not.  And I sincerely doubt anyone's answer was "Wait, tell me how I came by these witchcraft talents!  That's what decides whether I'll use them!"  So we don't get that out either: how you came by this many potions (so long as it was subject to the confines of the game, which it was) doesn't impact the ethics of using them.  In the end there's not much we can grasp at to fight this conclusion: use the darn potions; if anything it's more ethical than not because they enable the thing that's defined to be the highest and only good within the bounds of the game.

 

So now the question is: Do you WANT to?  There's no moral reprehensibility about it.  But would it give you the most fun?  And that's the same place all the rest of this thread wound up: do it if it's more fun, don't do it if isn't.  Making sure the difficulty remains high enough seems to be an important part of your own personal utility function, so using in moderation seems the way to go.  That's right kids: "hyper potions" and alcohol are the same   If you're hunting for less philosophical and more pragmatic advice, you could try setting a budget of what you'll allow yourself in each fight by trainer type.  Gym leaders you get to use the same items as them, final bosses you get to use 2 of each, normies you get a full heal, etc.  That kind of thing, but whatever numbers feel most fun to you.

 

TL;DR: Ya same

That was literally the best comment I have read in my entire time here! The way you explained it was phenomenal. You really have an extremely creative mind which you used to make the most entertaining comment ever. 

Thank you for explaining it like that, it clarifies everything. I guess I'll be using potions in moderation then like you suggested. Seriously thanks