Sniper (Ability)

Sniper	スナイパー
	Sniper
Flavor text Generation IV Powers up moves if they become critical hits. Generation V Powers up moves if they become critical hits. Generation VI Powers up moves if they become critical hits. Generation VII Powers up moves if they become critical hits when attacking. Generation VIII Powers up moves if they become critical hits when attacking. Generation IX If the Pokémon's attack lands a critical hit, the attack is powered up even further.

Sniper (Japanese: スナイパー Sniper) is an Ability introduced in Generation IV.

Effect

In battle

Sniper increases critical hit damage by 50%.

Generation IV

Critical hits will do 3× damage instead of 2× damage. Sniper cannot be activated by Beat Up.

Generation V

Sniper can now be activated by Beat Up. Additionally, rather than changing the critical hit multiplier directly, Sniper now multiplies by 1.5 the damage dealt by a move that deals a critical hit, applied last to damage as part of the "final" modifiers that get applied to the damage, resulting in virtually the same effect.

Generation VI onward

Critical hits will now effectively do only 2.25× damage, as a result of the critical hit multiplier being lowered to 1.5×.

Outside of battle

Sniper has no effect outside of battle.

Pokémon with Sniper

#	Pokémon		Types		First Ability	Second Ability	Hidden Ability
0015		Beedrill	Bug	Poison	Swarm	None	Sniper
0021		Spearow	Normal	Flying	Keen Eye	None	Sniper
0022		Fearow	Normal	Flying	Keen Eye	None	Sniper
0116		Horsea	Water		Water	Swift Swim	SniperGen IV+	Damp
0117		Seadra	Water		Water	Poison Point	SniperGen IV+	Damp
0167		Spinarak	Bug	Poison	Swarm	Insomnia	Sniper
0168		Ariados	Bug	Poison	Swarm	Insomnia	Sniper
0223		Remoraid	Water		Water	Hustle	SniperGen IV+	Moody
0224		Octillery	Water		Water	Suction Cups	SniperGen IV+	Moody
0230		Kingdra	Water	Dragon	Swift Swim	SniperGen IV+	Damp
0451		Skorupi	Poison	Bug	Battle Armor	Sniper	Keen Eye
0452		Drapion	Poison	Dark	Battle Armor	Sniper	Keen Eye
0688		Binacle	Rock	Water	Sniper	Tough Claws	Pickpocket
0689		Barbaracle	Rock	Water	Sniper	Tough Claws	Pickpocket
0816		Sobble	Water		Water	Torrent	None	Sniper
0817		Drizzile	Water		Water	Torrent	None	Sniper
0818		Inteleon	Water		Water	Torrent	None	Sniper
Please note that abilities marked with a superscript are only available in the stated generation or later. For Generation III and IV games, ignore Hidden Abilities.

In other games

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series

In Explorers of Time, Darkness, and Sky, Sniper makes critical hits do 2× damage instead of 1.5× damage.

Description

Games Description MDTDS Boosts the damage the Pokémon inflicts with critical hits. BSL きゅうしょに こうげきを あてたときの ダメージが おおきくなる Conq. Powers up moves if they become critical hits. MDGtI Unavailable SMD Damage when an attack results in a critical hit goes up! MDRTDX This Ability increases the damage of moves that result in critical hits.

In the manga

Pokémon Adventures

• Yellow's Seadra is revealed to have Sniper as his Ability.

Trivia

• All Pokémon that can have Sniper can learn Focus Energy or at least one move with a high critical-hit ratio.

In other languages

Language Title Chinese Cantonese 狙擊手 Jēuigīksáu Mandarin 狙擊手 / 狙击手 Jūjíshǒu / Jūjīshǒu French Sniper German Superschütze Italian Cecchino Korean 스나이퍼 Sniper Brazilian Portuguese Franco-atirador Spanish FrancotiradorVI+ Francotirad.III–V Thai สไนเปอร์ Turkish Keskin Nişancı

This article is part of Project Moves and Abilities, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on two related aspects of the Pokémon games.