I have been assigned the task of defining moves that bypass Protect and Substitute, as well as what constitutes move failure for the purposes of Stomping Tantrum.
Protect and Substitute
At present, players are directed to the Bulbapedia lists for moves that penetrate
Protect and
Substitute when handling interactions with these moves. Given that these are two of the primary methods of defense in BBP at large, these interacts come up often. People have a vested interest in defeating these moves when facing them, and in these moves holding fast when they're the user.
This makes inconsistency between the Data Audit, the bot commands, and the wiki a constant source of friction that impacts every single high-stakes match in the game, every game. Even lower-stakes matches like facilities are worsened by this inconsistency. So, the decision has been reached to make a formal list of penetrating moves for each of these defenses... But which moves, and how to choose them? That's where the feedback comes in here, in deciding between the following options:
1) Defining bypassing moves with a set of rules.
This option entails defining a short list of rules that define groups of moves as ignoring Protect and Substitute when used. This already occurs on some level with the current method. For example, all moves tagged #Sound will ignore Substitute, and all full-trapping moves ignore Protect. But there are odd moves out that this method doesn't cover (such as Role Play) that this leaves out, and deciding whether to stick to pure rules-based logic or having an additional set of specifically named bypassing moves becomes messy quickly.
Moves such as these would need to be mentioned by name in the description of Protect, bloating the description unpleasantly. There are moves whose effect text states that they ignore protect, such as Phantom Force and Feint, but having a dozen situational moves carry this property without mentioning them in the effect text of Protect makes for both nasty surprises in crucial rounds of a match, and necessitates awkward find-in-page searching of the Data Audit move list to properly assess the opponent's options.
2) Maintaining a discrete list of bypassing moves.
This entails keeping a post listing all moves that bypass Protect, Substitute, or both in an official capacity somewhere. Relevant effect text on Protect and Substitute would be amended to link to these lists, and the posts would be kept current through the march of generations by moderators. This settles all disputes on the matter by putting a move's status as bypassing or non-bypassing on public display for all to see. This method ensures the possibility of full in-game accuracy as well.
However, directing players to an additional reference, even one we maintain ourselves, retains an element of friction compared to looking up the details of any other move in the game. This runs the possibility of being arbitrary and difficult to remember, as difficult at least as remembering the list as it exists on an external wiki.
Move Failure, Results, and Stomping Tantrum
The move Stomping Tantrum should provide a powerful method to punish disruptive moves like Taunt, as well as a tool for use in clever ways such as after a waking Snore. Defining a list of situations that enable Stomping Tantrum's damage bonus, and a list of situations that do not, would in theory do the job of allowing players to play with the unique effect of the move.
However, attempting to create such a list quickly turns into an ever-expanding list of edge cases and exceptions. For example, missing a crash move (e.g. Jump Kick) counts as successful execution as per
Smogon research and thus does not boost Stomping Tantrum, but our effect text for Stomping Tantrum itself explicitly states "failed or missed". In-game, Taunting a Taunted foe would cause the boost to occur next turn, but we have no rule in place that would cause a status move to explicitly Fail when it has no effect on the game state.
Creating a short section in the Handbook that spells out what it means to attempt a move, execute a move, for a move to succeed or fail, and so on; would allow us to clean up Stomping Tantrum and many effects like it, to something resembling the following:
Stomping Tantrum
The user stomps on the ground in rage, striking the opponent in the process. If the user's last executed move failed or missed (except if it was blocked, or if the user crashed), this move has 15 BAP instead of 8.
Fly (Evasive)
Has 4 BAP instead of 9 and costs 11 EN, but gains Damaging Evasive properties. Gust, Hurricane, Sky Uppercut, Smack Down, Thunder, Twister, and Whirlwind ignore Fly's evasive properties and cannot miss the user during the evasive phase. Smack Down and Gravity will cause the user to crash to the ground, cancelling Fly without move failure and making the user take (2 * Weight Class + 4) crash damage. Gust, Twister, and Whirlwind will make Fly miss when used during the evasive stage, but will not deal crash damage.
Protean
By default, this Pokemon switches their type upon executing a damaging attack to match the type of attack they are about to use, and keep that type until another damaging move is used or until they switch out.
Having language that clarifies if being fully paralyzed, recovering a combo that induces Cooldown, or if being Grounded during Fly counts as move failure, and whether it counts as the move being executed, can help clear up many corner cases in the rules. But this is a huge undertaking given the sheer amount of effect text in the Data Audit, and we could expect to be cleaning up "old text" for many years to come. Looping back to Stomping Tantrum, the only thing it wants from us for now is a couple bullet points in the Handbook defining move failure.
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These two tasks are what I'll be working on after I finish up the February event and launch it. Until then, I'll be happy to hear any thoughts on them.