Pokemon That Would Work Well As Starters?

Hey! Just wondering, if you were making a ROM hack, what would be your 3 starter pokemon to choose fron? ( not limited to 3 ) Mine would most likely be Ralts, Ghastly, and Eevee. What would yours be?

I like to stick to the traditional starter trios, but there isn't any reason why, with some stat tweaking, other Pokemon wouldn't work. With Fairy, we have even more type triangles to take advantage of.

Fairy, Fighting, Steel would be interesting. Jigglypuff, Pancham, Bronzor? That has some fun dual-type interactions going on.

Here's a chart of potential type triangles from google:

Deokishisu said:

Here's a chart of potential type triangles from google:

Spoiler:

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Rock isn't super effective against Psychic, lol.
Also;

other Pokemon wouldn't work.

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You mean that with some stat tweaking, they would work, right?

I'd go for

Steel [Beldum] because Metagross is a legend
Dragon [Bagon] because Salamence is a boss
Ice [Spheal] because Walrein is a tank

Sirzechs said:

I'd go for

Steel [Beldum] because Metagross is a legend
Dragon [Bagon] because Salamence is a boss
Ice [Spheal] because Walrein is a tank

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Not really good reasoning, plus, have you looked at beldum's movepool?

Yes but even so Take down is quiet a strong move and can be a easy 1 hit kill

But not a very enjoyable first 20 levels of in game play.

Beldum could have its move pool edited, to be more in line with a Gible or Larvitar.

Couple other things to consider:

1.) Fire/Water/Grass works amazingly well because each of those types resists the type that it is offensively strong against, and each type is also resistant to itself. I'm not aware of any other triangles that function quite so perfectly.'

2.) Fire/Water/Grass also have no immunities. When you look at Fighting/Psychic/Dark, Dark has a big advantage because it is immune to Psychic. Water/Ground/Electric is the same. Any triangle with Steel also has a sizable unbalance because Steel resists a ton of other types including Normal, which puts them at a sizable defensive advantage.

There's a reason I guess why Fire/Water/Grass has persisted for so many games. It's a very rigorously balanced triangle.

Squeetz said:

Rock isn't super effective against Psychic, lol.
Also;
You mean that with some stat tweaking, they would work, right?

Click to expand...

Chart is just a random grab from Google, but you're right, that triangle doesn't work.

Quantum Thief said:

Couple other things to consider:

1.) Fire/Water/Grass works amazingly well because each of those types resists the type that it is offensively strong against, and each type is also resistant to itself. I'm not aware of any other triangles that function quite so perfectly.'

2.) Fire/Water/Grass also have no immunities. When you look at Fighting/Psychic/Dark, Dark has a big advantage because it is immune to Psychic. Water/Ground/Electric is the same. Any triangle with Steel also has a sizable unbalance because Steel resists a ton of other types including Normal, which puts them at a sizable defensive advantage.

There's a reason I guess why Fire/Water/Grass has persisted for so many games. It's a very rigorously balanced triangle.

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This is one of the reasons I like to stick with the traditional starters. It's difficult to get another triangle synergizing well without hitting really specific Pokemon with dual-types/niche abilities that cancel out any primary type advantages. Though, I suppose the Fighting/Psychic/Dark triangle we had going in Gen 6 really put Delphox at a disadvantage, so GameFreak does occasionally superpower one of the starters against the others. All the water starters can learn Ice Beam to break the triangle as well.

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Here's a thought, most of these problems are eliminated by offering only two starters. I remember a hack way way waaaaay back when I started on this forum that gave the player the choice between Nidoran [m] and Nidoran [f]. Counterparts like Vullaby/Rufflet, Volbeat/Illumise, Plusle/Minun, etc. are decent choices. Gastly/Abra could be interesting type-wise (if you gave Abra some moves) as they're both supereffective to each other. Two dragons (Goomy and... Deino?) work too. Two that start off as the same type, but gain different dual-types upon evolution? Or one Pokemon having a favorable type matchup to start with, but they both gain a type upon evolution that turns the tables. Slugma/Seel is a poor example, but it illustrates the concept.

What do you think?

What do you guys think about pichu, horsea, and larvitar? (with horsea's evolution changed to level up)

Considering that 6th gen introduced fairy types, we have a new triangle.
Fighting, Steel and Fairy.

Marugi said:

What do you guys think about pichu, horsea, and larvitar? (with horsea's evolution changed to level up)

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Unless you'd be changing stats, ignore this.

I don't really like it... Larvitar would end up being stronger than the others, and Pichu's line isn't particularly strong..

Yeah, I agree Tyranitar is just too powerful compared to kingdra and raichu. I could replace tyranitar with golem, but golem is kind of a common pokemon, which means that I would have to make geodudes rare in the wild.

Urist McHemlock said:

Considering that 6th gen introduced fairy types, we have a new triangle.
Fighting, Steel and Fairy.

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Early game steel types are way too good, have you ever played a randomizer? For a long time they resist basically everything thrown at them.

frog said:

Early game steel types are way too good, have you ever played a randomizer? For a long time they resist basically everything thrown at them.

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That's why we give them another type at the final evolution.

I guess I might as well post this here: the starters in my hack are gonna be Sandile, Machop (or maybe Timburr) and Gothita. Is this okay? I'm most likely gonna be editing base stats and such like.

Dragonflycave.com has a type tool that can calculate type triangles.
These are all the triangles that appeared where Type X is super effective against Type Y and Type Y is weak against Type X, like the Grass, Water, Fire combination.

Since I hack fire red I think Pikachu, Eevee, and dratini (I'm not sure about dratini though. Maybe I'll change it to Ghastly or Wooper.)

Hitmonlee