Revisions: Starter Trio#001-003 Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, and Venusaur#004-006 Charmander, Charmeleon, and
Revisions: Starter Trio#001-003 Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, and Venusaur#004-006 Charmander, Charmeleon, and Charizard#007-009 Squirtle, Wartortle, and BlastoiseHello all! Revisions on the “final” copy of the 5e Pokedex are still ongoing. I’m going through and revising every single evolutionary family, one by one, with as fine-toothed of a comb as I can. It’s a slow process, and I imagine that once I get more than halfway through the Pokedex, it’ll pick up. What is making the process so intensive at the moment is the fact that I’m revisiting the very first stat blocks that I made, before I had nearly a year of experience or a particularly solid design philosophy. Additionally, other responsibilities are still occupying my time during these dog days of summer. In retrospect, my estimate of getting this done “before the end of July” was absurdly, hilariously optimistic.So to keep this blog at least partially active during revisions, I’ll try to share stat blocks with you all that have undergone especially intense revision, such as the starter Pokemon and their evolved forms. You can find the original (and I mean original) stat blocks for Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle and their evolved forms by clicking their names in this sentence.The primary problems plaguing these old stat blocks are a lack of clarity, and an abundance of redundancy. Venusaur’s old Frenzy Plant is the worst offender. The language is almost as knotted and meandering as the vines that the action summons, and the fact that the vines grapple a creature as well as restrain them just adds unneeded complexity. And if the Venusaur’s vines move along with it, what happens to creatures restrained by the vines when they move? The revised form of Frenzy Plant made sure to keep the language as concise as possible, keep the moments per round that Frenzy Plant could activate consistent, and simplify the effects of Frenzy Plant as much as possible.Another large problem was Blastoise and its pre-evolutions, who appeared egregiously weak despite a CR of 11. The problem was how I accounted for Withdraw in my original calculation of their CR—I counted the Blastoise as dealing maximum damage while having maximum armor, when in reality, it must sacrifice a whole turn’s worth of damage output to gain the defensive benefits of Withdraw. The solution was to increase these Pokemon’s natural armor some and to increase their damage output overall, bringing their power up to CR 11 snuff. Also, while understandable for a weakling Squirtle, Wartortle and Blastoise lacked any reliable melee attack for close-quarters combat. To fix that, I not only changed Skull Bash into a normal attack, but gave these Pokemon an additional Bite attack.Click Read More below for a detailed list of changes made to these Pokemon, relative to how they appeared in Preview: The Kanto Compilation.Individual Changes Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, and Venusaur. Revised ore text. Changed Leed Seed to be a distinct action from Vine Whip, target creatures only, deal 1 piercing damage, not require any saving throws, and have more accessible ways of being neutralized (such as applying fire to the seed). Ivysaur and Venusaur. Revised Ivysaur and Venusaur’s Multiattack actions to let them replace one of their Vine Whip attacks with Leech Seed. Changed Poison Powder to Recharge 4-6 and to allow an affected creature to re-peat the saving throw at the start of each of its turns in-stead of the end.Ivysaur. Changed the damage of Vine Whip to 6 (1d8 + 2) from 8 (2d4 + 3). Changed Poison Powder’s radius to 15 feet from 10 feet and the damage to 11 (2d10) from 7 (2d6). Corrected Passive Perception to 11 from 10.Venusaur. Changed the damage of Vine Whip to 13 (2d8 + 4) from 14 (4d4 + 4). Changed Poison Powder’s radius to 10 feet from 5 feet and the damage to 22 (4d10) from 21 (6d6). Significantly revised Frenzy Plant; most notably it no longer affects creatures when it first appears, the sa-ving throw has been changed to Strength from Dexterity,a creature must succeed on a DC 17 Strength check to es-cape its restraints, and the roots may drag a restrained creature while moving along with the Venusaur.Charmander, Charmeleon, and Charizard. Revised lore text. If these Pokémon’s burning tail is extinguished, they must use their action to repeat and succeed on the Consti-tution saving throw in order to reignite it.Charizard. Changed Multiattack to allow three attacks with its claws (Slash) and one with its tail. Changed the damage of Slash to 11 (2d6 + 4) from 10 (1d12 + 4). Revised the wording of Blast Burn to be more similar to fireball. Increased the Challenge Rating to 10 (5,900 XP).Squirtle. Expanded the story of the Squirtle Squad.Wartortle and Blastoise. Changed Withdraw to no long-er remove vulnerability to lightning damage. Changed Skull Bash so that it can be used without the user necessarily being withdrawn. Added a Bite attack.Wartortle. Added a Multiattack action.Blastoise. Changed Multiattack to let the Blastoise choose between three Water Gun attacks or two Bite attacks and a Skull Bash attack. Corrected Skull Bash to include a saving throw against being knocked prone if the target is a creature. Corrected Torrent to increase the da-mage of Hydro Cannon. Revised Hydro Cannon; changed the single-stream damage of Hydro Cannon to 58 (9d12) from 44 (8d10) and the separate-stream damage to 26 (4d12) from 22 (4d10).Attribute ChangesBulbasaur.Str 12 (+1) 10 (0)Dex 13 (+1) 12 (+1)Ivysaur.AC 13 (natural armor) 12 (natural armor)Str 16 (+3) 14 (+2)Dex 14 (+2) 12 (+1)Venusaur.HP 190 (21d8 + 105) corrected to199 (21d8 + 105)Str 20 (+4) corrected to 19 (+4)Dex 14 (+2) 12 (+1)Int 6 (-2) 8 (-1)Wis 12 (+1) 14 (+2)Cha 8 (-1) 10 (0)Charmeleon.Con 14 (+2) 15 (+2)Cha 7 (-2) 10 (0)Charizard.Cha 12 (+1) 14 (+2)Squirtle.Str 12 (+1) 10 (0)Wartortle.AC 13 (natural armor) 14 (natural armor)Str 14 (+2) 12 (+1)Blastoise.AC 15 (natural armor) 17 (natural armor) -- source link
#bulbasaur#ivysaur#venusaur#charmander#charmeleon#charizard#squirtle#wartortle#blastoise#pokemon#patch notes#design notes