Damage

Damage is the name for the affliction caused when a Pokémon uses an offensive move against the foe. It cuts down the foe's Hit Points.

The amount of damage depends on the category of the move and the stats of the Pokémon. Some moves, such as Grass Knot or Night Shade, depend on other factors. There are also one-hit KO moves like Sheer Cold that will do the maximum amount of damage and knock the opponent out in one hit.

Damage modification

Main article: Damage modification

The damage a move will inflict varies according to the attacker's Attack or Special Attack stats and the defender's Defense or Special Defense. Inflicted damage can be adjusted with in-battle stat enhancers, such as X Attack and X Defend, or moves, such as Swords Dance or Acid Armor.

Damage can also vary according to the user or target's type, with moves either scoring super effective or not very effective hits. Some moves may not do damage at all. For example, when a Template:Type2 move is used on a Template:Type2 Pokémon, it will do 2x damage, while the reverse (a Template:Type2 move used on a Template:Type2 Pokémon) will do 1/2x damage. If a move is either super effective or not very effective against both types of a dual-typed Pokémon, it will do either 4x damage or 1/4x damage.

Some moves have an increased probability of landing critical hits, which multiplies the damage inflicted by 2x.

Many held items and berries can increase or decrease damage inflicted.

Damage formula

The damage dealt when a Pokémon uses a damaging move depends on its Attack or Special Attack-stat, the opponent's corresponding Defense-stat, the move's base damage. In addition, various circumstances, such as type-weaknesses, STAB-bonus, will intensify or weaken the damage of the move.

The damage formula is, from Serebii.net, the following:

level is the level of the damaging Pokémon; stab bonus is 1.5 if the Pokémon is the same type as the attack, 1 otherwise; modifier is the type advantage/disadvantage (Super effective, Not very effective) modifier; and finally rand is a number between 0.85 and 1.00 inclusive. If the move is a physical move, attack is the working Attack-stat of the damaging Pokémon, and defense is the working Defense-stat of the victim; if the move is special, attack is the special attack stat, and defense is the special defense stat.

Example

Let's say our level 75 Glaceon has the following stats:

HP: 201
Attack: 123
Defense: 181

It uses the move Ice Fang (Ice, physical, base damage 65) against Cynthia's level 78 Garchomp:

HP: 270
Attack: 210
Defense: 163
(stats do not represent the actual Garchomp used by Cynthia)

Garchomp is Dragon/Ground, so it has a double weakness to Ice. Thus, modifier = 4. Additionally, Glaceon receives a STAB-bonus, so stabbonus = 1.5. We insert the relevant values and stats in the parameters of damage and get:

Depending on luck, Glaceon will do damage in the range 170-200 HP. Despite Garchomp's double weakness to Ice, Glaceon's Ice Fang will not defeat it in a single hit.

This game-related article is part of Project Games, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on the Pokémon games.