Dark Gyarados · Team Rocket (RO) #8

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1. 

   Ambassador

   (2 years ago)

   The Pokémon Card Official Book 2000 has a breakdown of Dark Gyarados’ Pokémon Power I’ll provide a modified machine translation of here;

   “When the opponent’s attack damage causes Bad Gyarados to get Knocked Out, you get to decides whether or not to use it special ability, Final Beam. Since the damage to trigger Final Beam must be caused by an attack, you cannot use it if Dark Gyarados is Knocked Out from damage caused by Poison or a Pokémon Power. Since Final Beam is a Pokémon Power, your opponent cannot reduce its damage with Defender. It is affected by Weaknesses and Resistances.”

   Note that the original JP text of Final Beam doesn’t say anything about applying W/R, so this entry answers a question about whether Pokémon Powers that do damage apply W/R. (I feel like we’ve resolved this before, but I haven’t been able to remember of find the card where it was established.) You might be wondering if this contradicts the fact that Dark Golbat‘s Power should not apply W/R, but it doesn’t. The original JP text of that Power did specify to NOT apply W/R, and so between these two cards, from the same set, we have our answer – so the Japanese rules appear to have always taken it as given that Powers that did damage applied W/R, unless otherwise specified.

   ~ I think the general rule Japan was going off was that if a Power 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 do damage to a Benched Pokémon, even if it isn’t necessarily exclusive to Benched Pokémon, then they would specify W/R shouldn’t be applied when that Power did damage, regardless of the target. Think of Feint Attack, it seems like a fair comparison here. Rather than an effect of “Choose one of your opponent’s Pokémon. This attack does X damage to that Pokémon. If you choose one of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon, don’t apply Weakness or Resistance [or whatever else].” there’s a blanket approach of just don’t apply W/R at all. So since Dark Gyarados’ Final Beam only targets the opponent’s Active Pokémon, the default scenario of W/R application holds. Since Dark Golbat’s Sneak Attack could target the opponent’s Active Pokémon, but it also 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 target the opponent’s Benched Pokémon, the Power specifies to not apply W/R (in either scenario).

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   • 

     AmbassadorAmbassador

     (2 years ago)

     The Feint Attack train of thought I suggested probably was the general idea, but there are enough exceptions that I wouldn’t rely on it (e.g. BS Machamp, N2 Forretress can only target the opponent’s Active, but the JP cards specified not to apply W/R). || has:pokemon-power || was significantly less short of a list than I thought it was, so I’ve gone through and commented on the cards that are potentially affected by WOTC muddying this situation up.

     As far as what happens with the successor of Pokémon Powers, Poké-Powers and Poké-Bodies; I don’t think there are any Powers or Bodies that can do damage in e-Card(?), and by ADV/PCG, they do things by placing damage counters, rather than doing damage, which resolves the question altogether.

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