[jc104]

"<+Pwnemon> I really think that risky business was the biggest misnomer to ever befall a concept" - couldn't agree more, not that it really matters.

As for stuff that does, again I'm worried that people are criticising abilities for having no drawbacks. Having a useless ability in one situation is an enormous drawback compared to having an outrageously strong ability in another. As I've said, what we're looking for is the biggest difference between the best-case and worst-case scenarios. Illusion, for instance, makes an enormous difference, because it's so strong when you get it right, while I feel that No Guard makes only a small difference, even if it can be positive and negative. Clearly, if the ability is all positive, we would have to make the pokemon less strong overall, in stats and movepool, to maintain balance. What matters at the moment is accentuating the effects of risk, not whether an ability is good or bad.

Back to my concerns with No Guard. To quote the concept "It should be emphasized that this concept is NOT about luck management" (I'm going to take luck to mean the RNG here since otherwise the whole concept makes no sense). That seems to suggest to me that luck is irrelevant, not that it should be removed. I feel that going so far as deliberately removing "luck" diminishes the effect of risk. I remember someone saying something along the lines of "rock shoudn't beat paper" due to the RNG. However, if you KNOW that rock has a 30% chance of beating paper, that adds an extra layer to the guessing game. After all, there was a roughly 1/3 chance the opponent would have picked scissors anyway. Is there really a distinction between these two types of luck? If both players know that Rock has a 30% chance of beating paper, that doesn't make rock or paper the superior option necessarily. So although the concept is "not about luck management", I don't believe luck management is in opposition to the concept. Had the concept said something slightly different I would have gone as far as to encourage it.

I should also stress that the concept people voted for was what you wrote down, not what was in your head.