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Tokuhara
2019-06-11, 10:48 AM
So I'm going to be running a monthly 5e game set in Johto with 3-4 PCs and I wanted a worthwhile evil organization, and after perusing the established orgs, I came across Cipher (for those of you who don't know them, they were the antagonists of the Colosseum games) and had a fun little trip back in time to my first ever 100% of a Pokemon game (go ahead and hate me) of Gale of Darkness.

So the idea was that Cipher infiltrated Johto to collect Ho-Oh and Lugia to corrupt them, but then I realized that Shadow Pokemon don't have rules in the homebrew I'm using (@JoetheDM's on Reddit).

So here's my question: how do I build a template for Shadow mons while staying relatively true to their "lore?" (Shadow Pokemon were essentially torture victims by machines and essentially made Evil (as in the Alignment))

Thanks for any help!

snafuy
2019-06-26, 08:34 PM
It seems like the shadow rules should be pretty straightforward to translate.
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Shadow_Pokémon
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Shadow_move

Choose Colosseum version, Gale version, or a combination of your making.

Squire Doodad
2019-06-27, 08:19 PM
It should be pretty clear cut, though there's some interesting ways to play it.
If not already in place normal Pokemon have a major disadvantage if told to attack people; Shadow Pokemon get a minor bonus instead. I imagine they don't listen too well either; if using badges in-game to determine whether Pokemon listen or not I would make it be that unless someone is a Team Cipher member or the one who made the Shadow Pokemon they act as though they have one badge less/need to roll each time they get a Shadow Pokemon to see if it will listen to them with higher level ones having a harder roll (meaning that any Shadow Pokemon above 70 shouldn't listen without a roll). If you near purifying a Shadow Pokemon you get half a badge's worth of coverage for it. This would mean that if badges aren't in effect you get a reroll on whether the Shadow Pokemon listens to you and you get better odds of commanding one that doesn't listen.

In general any Shadow Pokemon should require the player to roll a d20 with an easy DC once per battle. Let's say if the player rolls a 4 or above, and the SP already will listen to them normally, the SP will listen for the duration of the battle. If they fail it, it has a 1 in 6 chance of not responding. A small thing, but it ups difficulty and emphasizes that the Shadow Pokemon are not just pokemon with a bad backstory.

I've never done a Pokemon roleplaying game so I would know nothing about this, this is all conjecture and ideas. I have however played Colosseum the whole way through.