Battle System FAQ

What?

Just to cover the basics, we live in a pokemon-like society, but with sentient robots called “mons” instead of animals. Wild mons (ones that live out in the wilderness beyond the enclave city most of the game is run within) are able to reproduce. uMon (and other big corporations) capture these wild mons, sterilize them, then modify them to serve as slaves. These slaves are generally classified in general groups per their function as utility (mons tasked with constructions and maintenance of society and its people), pet (self-explanatory), etc.

Sportmons, specifically, are modified to kill each other in entertaining ways.

How are fights organized?

There are two kinds of fighting:

Sanctioned – These follow a strict set of rules set by a corporation (usually uMon) that cover what kinds of mons can fight (usually only the latest to help them bring up demand), how winners are determined, what kinds of tactics are allowed, etc. We don’t know anything about these, really, as they never come up.
Nonsanctioned – These fights have no rules. You want to use an ancient mon from before the corporations existed? Sure. You want to use a “mon” that’s essentially a giant rock with a mon brain encased inside it? Go for it. You want to just “fight” with the cheapest mon you can find and then just give it a gun or a bomb? No problem! You know, so long as no humans get hurt. In many cases, for Nonsactioned tournaments, its up to the competitors to decide what rules they want to fight by and what kinds of “mons” they want to fight with, so it’s left entirely up to them to decide what makes a fair fight. They are entirely their own referees. The only consequences to “cheating” is the risk that nobody will want to fight your team anymore if you do it too often.

How are fights won?

Mons have three numbers in their stat column that you need to keep in the positives:

Their health. If they lose it all, they faint or die.
Their morale. If they lose it all, they become unresponsive.
Their energy. If they lose it all, they collapse.

All three stats can be depleted by damage (physical, elemental, or morale, which are explained below), morale can be depleted by the loss of allies, and energy is depleted through every action a mon makes in battle. Entering battle, leaving it, attacking, defending, even just standing around has an energy cost. At this point there are no attacks, tactics, or mechanics that allow a mon to deplete an enemy’s energy or restore their own mid-fight. Post-fight all energy and morale is restored.

What are the damage types?

There are four types starting with the easiest to describe and working towards the hardest:

Energy damage - These drain energy points from the mon. Everything a mon does in a battle (including just standing around) takes some amount of energy and if they run out of energy they collapse.
Morale damage – These drain morale points for a mon and represent their willingness to fight. These can be drained or boosted by attacks but they also change “organically”, raising when an enemy goes down and decreasing when an ally goes down.
Elemental damage - Elements come in 16 different flavors, each of which is weak (IE takes double damage) to three types, strong (IE takes half damage) to three types, and takes a tenth of the damage from their own element. Sportmons can be any element or set of elements. More info on that here: https://rpg.rrgv.org/wiki/NSC/Elemental A skilled hacker can remove elemental damage taken by a mon.
Physical damage. This is physical trauma being inflicted on a mon by attacks. The real damage that takes actual time and effort to repair no matter what. A lot of elemental attacks (like flamethrower) cause real physical harm on top of being "elemental" in nature. That kind of harm is covered as physical damage, too.

What do “elemental damage” and “morale damage” look like?

Sportmons are full of nanobots that are programmed to make elemental damage have the predicted effects. Take the move “Acid Sap”, for example. The actual attack is just colored water being sprayed at the opponent (more cost-effective than real acid that way), but upon getting hit the defender’s nanobots WILL start dissolving their flesh to make the damage real. Ice damage will make the defender’s nanobots form ice crystals under its skin, lightning damage will make them intentionally short out and blow, etc. Some elements’ effects can’t be replicated in this way, though. Since this kind of damage is self-inflicted by the mon's internal system a skilled hacker can negate the damage if they respond to it quickly.

Morale damage is similarly theatrical, though uMon presumably has the victim mon’s brain get flooded with sad-chemicals when demoralized so that they looked convincingly depressed.

Non-sportmons don’t have nanobots primed to cause them real physical harm as a result of elemental attacks. As a result their elemental resistance is essentially infinite. They can similarly ignore morale attacks since, again, their system isn’t configured to turn on them. This makes them overpowered and only allowed in nonsanctioned competitions.

How does healing work?

Mons are healed either by giving them mon vitamins, which are capsules that contain everything a mon needs for their internal system to fix most injuries, or by putting them in a recovery tank, which is required to repair significant damage that their internal systems wouldn't be able to recover from on their own. The uMon system treats both physical and elemental damage the same. This means a mon that was stabbed and a mon that experienced a "curse" would both need mon vitamins to recover. That said, the mon that was stabbed would then require some time for their internal systems to fix themselves using the mon vitamins, while the mon who was cursed would be instantly fixed as their body registers, and promptly discards, the intake of the unnecessary repair materials.

A skilled hacker, though, can essentially trick a mon's system into thinking it's received such unnecessary mon vitamins and thus avoid such waste.

What are a mon's stats?

These are the traits of a mon abstracted as a number for comparative purposes.

PAT - Physical attack - How physically strong a mon is.
PDF - Physical defense - How physically armored a mon is.
EAT - Elemental attack - How hard their elemental attacks hit according to the uMon system. For non-sportmons, this value is essentially 0.
EDF - Elemental defense - How well they can resist elemental damage applied to them by the uMon system. For non-sportmons, this value is essentially infinite.
WIL - Will - Attacks that inflict morale damage are more likely to succeed and deal more damage based on the difference between the attacker's will and the defender's.
DEX - Dexterity - How accurate the mon is when trying to land a non-morale/will based attack.
AGI - Agility - How well a mon can dodge non-morale/will based attacks. Also determines attack order.
HP - Hitpoints - How tanky a mon is. This is usually a good approximation for the physical size of the mon in that large mons take more punishment to take down. At any negative number the mon collapses. The further this value gets into the negatives, the more likely the mon is to die. Mechanically, this takes the form of a "death save" every time a mon takes damage that results in a negative HP value with the result weighted more and more towards the mon dying as the negative number gets larger. On a failed death save, if the cause of the HP-damage is elemental, a skilled hacker can block the system terminating the mon. If the damage is physical, though, a significantly-high negative number is just an abstract way of describing how close the mon is to being considered a liquid and so the failed death save cannot be prevented.
MP - Morale points - Mostly described above, but represent a mon's will to fight. The mon becomes unresponsive at any negative number.
EP - Energy points - Mostly described above, but represent a mon's ability to perform any of their moves. The mon becomes unresponsive at any negative number.

What are priority attacks?

Priority attacks go first no matter what a mon's agility is (unless there are multiple priority attacks, in which case agility applies again). There are also some actions, like switching in/out mons, which are handled as "priority".

What is a combo move?

Combo moves take up no time, as in a mon can use a normal move/attack AND any number of combo moves. This includes using the same combo move multiple times up to the limit of its ammo. All combo moves have limited ammo.

If the combo move requires a target then it uses the same target a mon's main move that turn has so long as it's a move it can work with. Some combo moves only pair with melee attacks, for example. Lots of combo moves don't require targets at all, though.

What are intrinsics?

Some sportmons have something called an "intrinsic". It's just something that makes them unique... kinda. All given mons of a type have the same intrinsic and multiple mon types can have the same one. What the intrinsic does varies: https://rpg.rrgv.org/wiki/NSC/Mon%20Intrinsics

It's just one more mechanic to keep in mind during fights.

What is flinching?

Every move has some chance to cause flinching, though some more than others. If the mon gets hit with a flinch-inducing move before their attack in a turn, their attack is skipped that turn.

What is a critical hit?

Every move has some chance to cause a critical hit, though some more than others. It typically doubles the power of an attack. This doubling is done after all other parts of the damage calculation are done including the multipliers for elemental effectiveness, the comparing of PAT/EAT to PDF/EDF, etc. Some moves have "exploding critical" that multiply the overall attack by more than 2x on a crit.