Rate my excellent and easily-programmed idea that works: The Odd Rod.

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

Everyone loves Fishing in Pokemon. You've got the Old Rod for catching garbage, the Super Rod for catching good Pokemon, and the Great Rod... Exists.

The Old Rod is a joke that gets unfunny quickly. It can only catch Magikarp. You'll eventually have enough Magikarp. And then... It's boring.

It's a waste of space compared to better rods that can catch better Water-type Pokemon on many different routes and any town or other location with water.

Grass full of wild Pokemon might seem unusual in some cities, but water looks normal anywhere. If you want every Pokemon to be obtainable in a single region, the Super and Great rods are godsends for developers looking for places to put Water Pokemon.

But the Old Rod will always be a joke item unless you ruin the joke by letting it fish up good Pokemon.

However, what if we fix the Odd Rod by giving it a more interesting niche and a more interesting joke?

Just rename OLD ROD to ODD ROD in the Items.PBS, and change its description to call it unusual. Then change your Encounters.PBS file to make Odd Rod encounters some wacky finds.

Fishing up a Wailord with the Super Rod, and then fishing up a Charizard or Snorlax with the Odd Rod? Sounds good to me!

So, what do you think? Pretty cool, huh? It could even work in romhacks, if the encounter tables for Old Rod encounters are separate from Good and Super rod encounters. I forget if they are or not.

If you've got many hundreds of pokemon obtainable in your region, you want as many distinct encounter areas as possible, which means as many places for players to find pokemon as possible. Caves can have many floors and forests can have many sections and towns can have grassy parks and buildings dedicated to wild pokemon (Does your early game lack Ice Pokemon? Add a Cold Storage or Ice Rink area into an early town!) but puddles to fish in can be ANYWHERE.

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

I had another idea:

What if the Good Rod fished up Legendaries, and was obtained during the postgame?

Suddenly catching 70ish pokemon became a game of exploration. Every old area just got a brand new reason to be visited!

 

[KevinXDE]

Hmm, it depends on what your game is focused on I guess, if you want it too seem realistic, catching something like a Charizard doesn't seem like the right thing xD, but other non-water types that learn Surf should be pretty fine.

Something that came to my mind reading this though, is: what if the old/odd rod only catches bad fish, but has a low chance where you can catch something pretty rare that can't be caught anywhere else? The thing is, that rod is so old that it breaks and you have to repair it after a number of uses. I kinda like it this way, because the original old rod is pretty boring, as you say

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

It's totally realistic for a mysterious magical weird rod to fish up impossible thing. Pokemon is a franchise full of impossible things. Could always claim the rods use Ultra Wormhole technology to fish in alternate dimensions.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

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That's a very cool idea, I like it, but I also like realism, so I think I'll make an attempt at coding something in the middle,
treat it like a random pokemon happened to fall in the water, normally it'll pull magikarp,
but it also has chances to pull rare random pokemon.

I think encounter tables are pretty strict, but I'd like to see if I can set something up that'll search through
and make shifting or random encounter table out of the lowest chance encounter from different maps.

That way old rode is useful, and you have a somewhat better chance of encountering those rare pokemon.

No idea if its possible or when I can get around to trying it, but your idea was cool regardless.

 

[SuperSpyroDragon64]

Come to think of it, it could make sense for a Fishing Rod to pull up a Pokemon you normally wouldn't expect to see in a river, like a Pikachu. It probably just fell in.