I am zero luck person

[zaqrwe]

I recently started playing reborn (again after a very long break) from the beginning and.. I just can't get rid of a  feeling that gym battles are set up just to make you struggle a bit more than it should. What I mean.. For example, when I tried to use grass whistle on Elecrode in first gym battle, the game just said something like "electrity sparks away" and it cannot be put to sleep. And I checked, there is no presence of any electrode ability which would made it unable to put to sleep. Next thing, fourth gym anorith.. It have protection for every hits in first turn? Again, no ability which coul give him that perk. Not to mention i tried to beat that gym exaxlty 7 times, and every time i put Illumiese to sleep in the first turn and.. exaclty only once the sleep lasted more than 1 turn (to be specific it lasted exactly 2 turns that one time).

Not to mention the fact if i paralyze pokemon in any trainer battle, not just a gym battle but every trainer battle. it never paralyze the target so far. It seems to work only on the wild pokemons(personal record is some pulsle machine tangrowth battle when tangrowth gets paralyzed and then for 7 next turns this effect did nothing), BUT when other trainers pokemons paralyze me, I lost at least 1 for every 3 next turns(sometimes all 3 turns). 

Oh, and when aquq gang pokemons used rock slide, one time it flinched me 4 times in a row.. Really? It has 30% chance to flinch.. 4 times in a row.. its something about 0,005% chance to happen..

 

So, am I that extremally unlucky person, or there is something in the game that makes NPCs pokemon effect chances a bit more effective than it should be?

[Arkadius]

Okay so what you are experiencing is bad luck on the one hand but the field effect that Reborn features on the other. 

Florinia tells you about the field effects after the Mosswater Factory story (at the beginning of the game, before Julia's gym). 

The field effects impact battles in a lot of different ways: moves can be more powerfull, abilities can be active and other effects can be present. 

 

Take Julia's gym. You fight Julia on an Electric Terrain field effect. One of the effects of this field is that electric moves increase in base power by a factor of 1.5. Another effect is that grounded Pokémon may not fall asleep. This explains why your grasswhistle failed. 

You can see all the other effects of the field here:  https://pokemon-reborn.fandom.com/wiki/Electric_Terrain 

You can also collect information about the field effects in the game. 

 

The Anorith in Shelly's gym is holding a telluric seed. Shelly is fought in a forest field. The telluric seed is activated in this field and boosts the holder's Attack and also applies Spiky Shield to the user. This is why you cannot attack it the turn that it is send out. 

 

I actually really like the field effects. It makes the battles way more interesting and complex. You can also try to devise a strategy in which you benefit from the field effect yourself. 

 

The sleep being so short is just back luck, I don't think that is influenced in any way by the field or something else. 

I would also say that the paralysis and the rock slide flinching is just back luck. I would guess that it is actually not as bad as you think it is, it's just that when you experience it in a negative way it stands out more which can cause some bias. 

The chance of 4 flinches in a row is (0,3)^4 = 0,0081‬, or 0,81% or about 1 in 123.46. This is not that unlikely. 

 

 

 

[doombotmecha]

Ok, first off: electric terrain bulls sleep for all Pokemon. It's one of the few terrains copied almost wholesale from mainline Pokemon, so you have Game Freak to thank for that.

 

The other poster covered anorinth

 

Thirdly, getting awful rng is the Pokemon experience. I basically don't use sleep any more myself, since it's so unreliable.

 

All that said, that is some godawful luck you've got there. I hope it gets better soon!

 

P.S. Shelly really gave me trouble too. Her whole gym is designed to thwart traditional bug weaknesses, and it works all too well.

[zaqrwe]

Okay, thanks for the clarification about field effects, I didn't know that Well, at least shiny chance is higher, so that compensates bad RNG I guess ( I couldn't catch any shiny geodude/graveller so far tho, all ot them used selfdestruct on the first turn so.. hello again bad RNG )

 

As for the Shelly - it wasn't that bad (I started with Persian using fake out and power gem nad Rosealie with grass whistle and poison spikes, then Prinplup wiht peck, Graveller, Kricketune and Vanillite), just double battles feel like a bit harder than usual 1:1 in general. But also I started with water pokemon, so the whole beginning was very harsh for me, first two gyms was electric and grass, then grass pulse machines.. man, I sometimes really wanted to start over with charmander