Banning Leppa Berry

[Zarel]

I haven't tested this yet, but it should work in theory: in generation I, if a Pokémon with Wrap is out of PP on all other moves, you could keep track of its Wrap PP with a team that's running two Ghost-types. If you switch while Wrap has zero PP remaining, it'll overflow to 63 PP, and the opponent will be forced to continue using it. Two Ghosts will never take damage from Wrap, and double-switching them lets you avoid using PP - so if you can take care of the minor detail of convincing last-mon Dragonite to use all its PP for all of its other attacks, you can hypothetically just keep swapping Gengar and Haunter out and the battle will never end.

EDIT: And here's the replay. Last turn, Onix's PP overflows to 63, after which the cycle will repeat.

PP overflow now makes a Pokémon stale.

 

[Isa]

PP overflow now makes a Pokémon stale.

hang on, does this have any impact on legitimate wrap usage? if i keep switching between my gengar and my golem to absorb wrap, and i allow my opponent to overflow (which is usually a bad idea), what'd be the competitive implications?

 

[Zarel]

hang on, does this have any impact on legitimate wrap usage? if i keep switching between my gengar and my golem to absorb wrap, and i allow my opponent to overflow (which is usually a bad idea), what'd be the competitive implications?

The battle probably ends in a tie. Is this a problem? What were you planning to do? Wait another 64 turns? I can make it so you need to PP cycle twice before becoming stale, but what would your plan be here?

 

[Zarel]

With all the infinite battles taken care of, we should talk about ways to unnaturally prolong battles beyond 1000 turns.

I'll define "unnaturally" here as "when one player wanted it to end at least 1000 turns ago".

My rules, in theory, work by induction. Every turn, either you make a move (-PP, eventually Struggle, leading to +confinement), don't make a move (+confinement), or switch (+confinement). If you get +confinement, you either need to lose HP (and eventually lose) or gain staleness (and eventually trigger Endless Battle Clause).

So the biggest question left is, what are the slowest confinement, PP reduction, and staleness sources?

I already thought of one and patched it: confinement now leads to staleness if you lose less than 1% of your max HP every 2 turns, instead of at least 1 HP.

Another issue is: You can make someone lose PP once every 4 turns without getting confined. This can potentially increase battle length 4x. You can also switch every other turn, which can increase battle length 2x. 64 PP x 4 moves x 6 pokemon is already around 1500 turns, so this adds up to a lot. So the question is, how do you slow down as much as possible?

No avatars for this one, but still, let's think about it.

 

[Isa]

The battle probably ends in a tie. Is this a problem? What were you planning to do? Wait another 64 turns? I can make it so you need to PP cycle twice before becoming stale, but what would your plan be here?

PP overflow can occur naturally without any ill intentions from either side involved, is easily solvable by the not-Wrapped party by not switching, isn't infinite because Wrap can miss at an inopportune time, and the problematic scenario has to be deliberately played for by using Haunter, so it's in my opinion not worth it to force a tie over this. So yes, it's worth it to wait another 64 turns, but even that'd be questionable - "wrap sweeps" are a thing.

 

[Zarel]

PP overflow can occur naturally without any ill intentions from either side involved, is easily solvable by the not-Wrapped party by not switching, isn't infinite because Wrap can miss at an inopportune time, and the problematic scenario has to be deliberately played for by using Haunter, so it's in my opinion not worth it to force a tie over this. So yes, it's worth it to wait another 64 turns, but even that'd be questionable - "wrap sweeps" are a thing.

If the opponent is taking damage from Wrap, it won't end in a tie. Endless Battle Clause only kicks in when no one's taking damage or using PP, e.g. constantly switching between Haunter and Gengar.

 

[Isa]

alright, then we're good. thanks for clarifying.