Battle Damage

Type Modifier Chart

Myths

Question: What's with the "1"s and "0.5"s and the like? Aren't moves either super effective or not very effective?

Answer: Not exactly. Those descriptions are fine when the victim of an attack has only one type. When the victim has two types, both of them must be considered. Thus, while a move may say "It's super effective!", it may actually be dealing less damage than you think. Take Vine Whip, for instance. Against a Tentacool, the game says "It's super effective!" but in reality, it's acting the same as if it were a Normal type attack (see the example below).

Question: So what do those numbers mean?

Answer: The numbers are multipliers. When attacking a Pokémon with two types, you need to multiply the numbers together to see exactly how effective attacks of a particular type would be.

Let's take the Vine Whip/Tentacool example from above. First, you find your attack type along the side. In this case, we're looking for Grass. Next we go across until we find the numbers for the defending Pokémon's types, i.e. Water and Poison. Against Grass, Water types take double damage, but Poison types take only half damage. Now multiply them together: two (2) times one-half (0.5) is one (1). This is how much extra damage the attack does. In this case, using Grass attacks against Tentacool doesn't give you an edge.

Question: Does a zero in the chart means the attack does no damage?

Answer: Yes. And since zero times anything equals zero, even if just one of the victim's types is unaffected by a particular attack, the Pokémon will take no damage. For example, Farfetch'd is a dual type Pokémon (Flying and Normal). If Sandshrew uses Earthquake against Farfetch'd, the multiplier is 1 against the Normal type but 0 against the Flying type, so the attack will be completely ineffective.

Question: Then why does Night Shade work on Psychics?

Answer: Night Shade deals what we at Azure Heights call "calculated damage". That is, the damage done by Night Shade is calculated directly according to some variable other than the attacker's Attack or Special score. In the case of Night Shade, the damage done equals 1 point per level of the attacking Pokémon, and this amount is not affected by type modifiers. This is also why it affects Normal types. Think of it this way: Night Shade isn't really a Ghost type attack for purposes of determining damage.

Question: Why does Ghost vs. Psychic have a zero multiplier anyway? My instruction manual says that Ghost attacks are super effective against Psychics.

Answer: The early copies of the manual are wrong for the Red and Blue versions. The Lick attack, which is the only Ghost type attack that can be gauged for effectiveness, is always ineffective against Psychics.

Some manuals also state that Ice attacks are super effective against Rock, but this is also not true.

Question: The manual also says that Dragon is super effective against Dragon types. Why do you have a bunch of question marks?

Answer: The only Dragon type attack in the game, Dragon Rage, always deals exactly 40 points of damage. It ignores type completely. When this chart was done, attacks that relied on types were used, such as Poison Sting on a Tangela. Since there are no variable damage Dragon type moves, the Dragon type row is filled with "?"s.

It has been noted that if you use a gaming device to create a type-based Dragon attack, the damage is, in fact, based on the attacker's Special score. However, since the only way to come up with this data is to create an attack that cannot be used in legitimate play, the question marks remain.

Question: How did you find the multiplier for a certain type?

Answer: Members of the Azure Heights Research Staff used Porygons for this. During a Game Link battle, they had their Porygons use Conversion to switch to a particular type, and Recover to keep from fainting. Let's use Blizzard as an example. First, the researcher would see how much damage this Ice attack did while a Porygon was Normal type. Next, they would have the Porygon Convert to another type, such as a Sandshrew's Ground type. Blizzard would be tested again and the damage done this time would be compared to the previous trial. Blizzard was found to do about double the damage when Porygon was a Ground type as opposed to when he was Normal. So against Ground types, Ice attacks have a multiplier of 2.

Question: Wait a second, that works for Pokémon with one type. What about dual types?

Answer: The same principle can be used for dual types. Let's consider the previous scenario, but include Rock types into the equation. When Porygon converts into a Ground/Rock type, the damage from a Blizzard would be double the damage taken if it was Normal type: the same as when its type was Ground alone. In this way, we can determine that Rock gives a multiplier of 1 when defending against Ice attacks.