Shield Dust (Ability)

Shield Dust	りんぷん
	Scales
Flavor text Generation III Prevents added effects. Generation IV Blocks the added effects of attacks taken. Generation V Blocks the added effects of attacks taken. Generation VI Blocks the additional effects of attacks taken. Generation VII This Pokémon's dust blocks the additional effects of attacks taken. Generation VIII This Pokémon's dust blocks the additional effects of attacks taken. Generation IX Protective dust shields the Pokémon from the additional effects of moves.

Shield Dust (Japanese: りんぷん Scales) is an Ability introduced in Generation III.

Effect

In battle

Pokémon with Shield Dust are unaffected by the additional effects of other Pokémon's damaging moves, including additional effects provided by Poison Touch, Toxic Chain, Stench, King's Rock, and Razor Fang. For example, a Pokémon with Shield Dust cannot be frozen by Blizzard or made to flinch by Fake Out.

Shield Dust has no effect on status moves (such as Thunder Wave or Leech Seed) or Max Moves.

Shield Dust prevents a Pokémon's burn being cured by Sparkling Aria if it is the only target of the attack (even in battles such as Double Battles, as long as there are no other targets of Sparkling Aria); however, if the attack has multiple targets, all targets will be cured on burn even if they have Shield Dust. (Wake-Up Slap and Smelling Salts, which also cure status conditions, are not considered to have additional effects and thus are not affected by Shield Dust.) This behavior is unique to Sparkling Aria—for example, Shield Dust prevents a Pokémon from being paralyzed by Discharge regardless of the number of targets.

Outside of battle

Shield Dust has no effect outside of battle.

Pokémon with Shield Dust

#	Pokémon		Types		First Ability	Second Ability	Hidden Ability
0010		Caterpie	Bug		Bug	Shield Dust	None	Run Away
0013		Weedle	Bug	Poison	Shield Dust	None	Run Away
0049		Venomoth	Bug	Poison	Shield Dust	Tinted LensGen IV+	Wonder Skin
0265		Wurmple	Bug		Bug	Shield Dust	None	Run Away
0269		Dustox	Bug	Poison	Shield Dust	None	Compound Eyes
0664		Scatterbug	Bug		Bug	Shield Dust	Compound Eyes	Friend Guard
0666		Vivillon	Bug	Flying	Shield Dust	Compound Eyes	Friend Guard
0742		Cutiefly	Bug	Fairy	Honey Gather	Shield Dust	Sweet Veil
0743		Ribombee	Bug	Fairy	Honey Gather	Shield Dust	Sweet Veil
0872		Snom	Ice	Bug	Shield Dust	None	Ice Scales
0873		Frosmoth	Ice	Bug	Shield Dust	None	Ice Scales
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

Description

Games Description MDRB Blocks the added effects of moves. MDTDS Blocks the added effects from any moves that hit the Pokémon. BSL わざの ついかこうかを うけない MDGtI Unavailable SMD It blocks additional effects when the Pokémon is hit by an attacking move! MDRTDX This Ability blocks additional effects when the Pokémon is hit by an attacking move.

In the manga

Pokémon Adventures

• Yellow's Caterpie, Kitty, and Green's Weedle were revealed to have Shield Dust as their Ability.

Trivia

• Shield Dust effectively prevents the Pokémon from being frozen in battle by any Pokémon (except those with Mold Breaker or one of its variants), as the Freeze status ailment is always caused as a secondary effect of an opponent's move, and the status cannot be passed to another Pokémon via Baton Pass or Synchronize.
  • Similarly, Shield Dust prevents the Pokémon from flinching as it is always caused as a secondary effect of an opponent's move.
• Every Pokémon that can have Shield Dust as an Ability is Bug-type.
  • Shield Dust is replaced with Shed Skin for the middle stage of every three-stage evolutionary line that has it. Notably, these middle stage Pokémon are all based on cocoons or (in Spewpa's case) cased larvae.

In other languages

Language Title Chinese Cantonese 鱗粉 Lèuhnfán Mandarin 鱗粉 / 鳞粉 Línfěn French Écran Poudre German Puderabwehr Italian Polvoscudo Korean 인분 Inbun Russian Пылевой Щит Pylevoy Shchit Spanish Polvo Escudo Vietnamese Lớp Vảy Bụi

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.