So much talk of Ghost/Normal! Yeah, it's a really cool typing conceptually with a lot of neat possibilities design-wise. At one point, I got bored and made up a bunch of Pokemon (as we all do from time to time, I'm pretty sure), and my legendary trio was a Ghost/Fighting representing omnipotence, a Ghost/Psychic representing omniscience, and a Ghost/Steel representing omnipresence. I then had the trio's master be a Ghost/Normal representing omnibenevolence. Given this kind of characterization of Ghost/Normal, giving it the abilities Justified isn't out of the question, meaning that using the only super-effective type against the Pokemon will also raise its attack power. I really like it when a Pokemon has an ability that both makes great sense thematically and also benefits it greatly competitively.
CAP4 will likely be a fast, bulky Ground-type with a heavy support emphasis. What are your ideas for the artwork for a CAP of this description? Names? Possible flavour abilities? Discuss.
Well, the first thing we have to get out of the way is that we have to be honest with ourselves and admit that CAP is heavily biased towards picking type combinations that are not already found in the games. This means that the type combinations we would be most likely to see from such a Pokemon would be... Ground/Normal or Ground/Fighting. Neither is too awesome, to be honest. Normal only offers Ghost immunity, which is okay but not critical, and it comes at the cost of a Fighting weakness, which is highly undesirable. Ground/Fighting seems awesome at first, considering that Ground and Fighting are both great offensive types, but some of the coverage is redundant. Still, and even despite the fact the CAP has so many Fighting types already, I think that Ground/Fighting would be the most likely here, and it does have some merits.
In the spirit of what I said in my earlier post, I'd like to go with a design that has some legendary or mythological basis already built in, so no simple "kick-boxing rabbit", "scrappy badger", "Earthworm Jim", or anything like that (as awesome as that last one would be). Off of the top of my head, Gargoyle is covered by Druddigon and Golem is covered by Golurk, but that still leaves us some other good options. Stereotypical fantasy Dwarves have strong associations with earth and are considered great warriors, so a humanoid Pokemon modeled after a Dwarf could be interesting. A Sphinx-inspired design could also work, especially if it were more specially-based than physically. Then you have more obscure things like the Grootslang, and if we want to go with something more silly or modern, there's always the Graboid, though I'd worry there about the
possible conceptual overlap with Colossoil. Either way, if we're looking for something fast and more on the support side of combat, it seems to me that the Sphinx should be the perfect fit for a design starting point.
Now, many depictions of Sphinxes include wings, and that may present some problems for those people that think wings must equal either Flying typing or Levitate as an ability, but we can get around this with just a bit of creative thinking. For example,
this is a common pose for a Sphinx's wings to be posed in. I propose that this structure simply look like wings but actually function as a kind of back-mounted fin or scythe-like weapon. That may somewhat resemble what Absol has going on, but I'm personally perfectly okay with this similarity.
As for flavor ability, it'd be great to have something as evocative as possible of the Sphinx's connection to riddles. Analytic sounds cool; it'd be useless to a Pokemon that we want to be fast, but it's a flavor ability, so whatever. Own Tempo could maybe work, suggesting that the Pokemon is too used to clever thinking to be so easily confused. For a general desert-evocative theme, there's always Sand Force, Sand Rush, or Sand Veil, but those would be pretty competitive. Finally, there's Mummy, playing up part of the Egyptian theme.
EDIT: Whoops, forgot to give it a name. Hmm... It has to have some element of the word "riddle" in it... or maybe puzzle, enigma, mystery, paradox, perplex, conundrum... Mysterend? Riddlance? Puzzlance? Enigmedge? Sphinxlash? Eh, I don't think I'm that great at names.