Status Effects

Status Effects, also colloquially referred to as status conditions, are conditions that affect a Pokémon in-battle. They can be onset by a or a secondary effect of a damage-dealing move used against the Pokémon, or as a self-afflicted repercussion of a move used by the Pokémon.

There are currently two categories of working status effects within PWO: status ailments, and stat-enhancing effects. Due to the underdeveloped battle system of PWO, status conditions — including the supported categories of status effects — have limitations or function improperly here, compared to how they functioned in the handheld games (explained more in-depth below).

Status Ailments

Status ailments are conditions that affect a Pokémon's ability to battle. When onset, the ailment last until it either subsides (inapplicable for some ailments), is substituted by the onset of another status ailment, or until the Pokémon is healed.

Resultant of battle-system limitations, many status ailments — as they were conceived in the handheld games — are non-existent in PWO's battle system. The following status ailments, with their limitations defined, are itemized below:

List of Status Ailments within PWO

Burn

A Pokémon that is beset by the burn condition will sustain damage at the end of each turn, proportionate to the Pokmon's maximum-health capacity (1/8th of it, precisely).

In PWO, burn will not halve the damage output inflicted by physical moves by the affected Pokémon.

Confusion

Confusion, when induced, will cause the Pokémon to attack itself 50% of the time. The self-inflicted damage is calculated as a typeless move on 40 base-power points.

Confusion's duration ranges from 1-4 turns while in battle. It is not automatically expunged after battle; it only ends after a determinate amount of turns while in battle. The only out-of-battle cure for confusion is healing in a Pokémon center.

Freeze

Freeze currently has no producible effect in battle; it is a functionless status condition. However, if the freeze status is induced upon a Pokémon, it will overwrite the Pokémon's previous status ailment; any previous status ailment in effect will be effectively removed as a result.

Paralysis

Paralysis will physiologically prevent the Pokémon from attacking at randomly determined turns—a 1/4th chance that the afflicted Pokémon will not attack at all.

As a differential limitation in PWO's battle system, paralysis does not reduce the afflicted's speed by 75%. Attacking priority will remain unaffected, still accounting solely for the Pokémon's speed, and whether or not priority moves are being used as determinants.

It has no determinate ending point; it lasts indefinitely until either the Pokémon is healed, or until the status ailment is overwritten by another one.

Seeding

Seeding, solely inducible by Leech Seed, will sap 1/8th of the afflicted Pokémon's health, and use that amount of damage to restore the user of Leech Seed.

Leech Seed does have a determinate ending point; there is no counter for it to end after a determinate amount of turns have elapsed. It can only be removed by visiting a Pokémon Center, or by the onset of another status ailment to overwrite it.

Sleep

When a Pokémon is asleep, it can not make any move, thus it can not retaliate to the opponent at all. The sleep effect will last for up to 3/4 turns.

Due to the battle system's incapability for moves to work jointly with status conditions, moves that would require the user to be asleep to use them, namely Snore and Sleep Talk, are effectless, even if the user is asleep.

Self-inducing moves for the sleep ailment in the official games, such as Rest, also do not produce that effect here; the battle system currently lacks the functionality for healing moves to restore health, thus the move is functionless altogether.

All-Encompassing Limitations

Lack of the Volatile-Nonvolatile Split

Under PWO's mechanics, status ailments are not classified as volatile] or non-volatile, as they were in the official games; they are treated inseparably in that regard.

Implications of this are as follows:

• Volatile and non-volatile ailments, as they were conceived in the handheld games, are not stackable. Example: if a Pokémon was already asleep, and the opponent landed a Leech Seed attack on it, Leech Seed would overwrite the sleep status; the Pokémon would no longer be asleep, but strictly seeded instead.
• Volatile statuses, as already explained with confusion and Leech Seed, will not wear off as the battle does.
• Damage-dealing status ailments, namely burn, poison and so forth, will not inflict damage as the user walks outside of battle, but their effects will resume throughin the next battle.

Immunity

In the official games, Pokémon were immune to the onset of some status ailments, depending on their types; this is not the case here. Status conditions in themselves are not treated as classifiable types, thus Pokémon of any type will not be immune to them; if they are immune to the type of the move in itself, however, then the status-inducing move will have no producible effect on the target.

For example: if Thunder Wave was used on a Ground-type, the move would be precluded from onsetting paralysis, because it is impossible for an Electric-type move (Thunder Wave, in this context) to land a hit on a Ground-type Pokémon. However, if Stun Spore, a Grass-type move, was used on the Ground-type Pokémon, it would still paralyze the target due to its lack of type-property immunity to the move.

Stat-Modifying Effects

Moves can also affect the stats of a Pokémon — their Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense and Speed — in battle, which will alter their stats for the duration of the battle. After the battle ends, the stats will reset back to their unaffected values.

Stages

There are 6 stat-increasing stages, as well as 6 stat-decreasing stages. The stages are stackable, meaning that stat-increasing and stat-decreasing moves can add or subtract from the net stages—for example, if a stat-increasing move was used for a 2-stage increase in the Pokémon's Attack (equating to a +2 net stage), a stat-decreasing, which would reduce the same stat by 1 stage, would subtract it to a net stage of +1.

Stages are calculated in fractional increments, which are outlined below:

Subtractive Stages							Base	Additive Stages
Stage	-6	-5	-4	-3	-2	-1	0	+1	+2	+3	+4	+5	+6
Fraction	2/8	2/7	2/6	2/5	2/4	2/3	1	11/2	2	21/2	3	31/2	4
Percentage	25%	29%	33%	40%	50%	67%	100%	150%	200%	250%	300%	350%	400%

Known Limitations

• Currently, the stat-enhancing mechanics only allow single-stat modifications. Dragon Dance, which raised both the user's Attack and Speed in the handheld games, is only capable of raising one stat (the user's Attack) in PWO.
• Stat-modifying effects do not take into effect until the round after which they are used. For example, if a Pokémon attacked first in round 1, using a Defense-increasing move, and sustains an attack by the opponent in the same round, the damage would be calculated as if the Defense was not altered; it would not go into effect until round 2.
• While stat-modifying moves do exist to increase Accuracy and Evasion, these two stats are not calculated as in-battle stats at this time. Even if Sand Attack reduced the target's accuracy, its accuracy - as calculated by the battle system - would remain intact.

Critical Hits

There is a 5% chance for any move to score a critical hit, which would invariably double the damage output of the move. Currently critical hits are not announced in the battle log, side-aligned to the left of the battle screen, but the magnitude of their damage differential is large enough to be often noticeable.

Since it is an invariant 5% chance of landing a critical hit at this time, there are no move-designated critical-hit ratios. Since the 5% chance is static, moves such as Focus Energy can not increase the critical-hit chance.