Revisions: Oddish, Gloom, and Vileplume; Paras and Parasect#043-045 Oddish, Gloom, and Vileplume#046

Revisions: Oddish, Gloom, and Vileplume; Paras and Parasect

#043-045 Oddish, Gloom, and Vileplume
#046-47 Paras and Parasect

Hello all—your author here. I was thinking about this project again today, and figured that I had a few hours set aside to do at least a few more revisions. The lucky candidates today were the Oddish and Paras families. Parasect, as it happens, is my second-favorite Pokemon (behind Wigglytuff), while Oddish is my partner’s favorite, so these were actually some of the first I ever wrote before I decided to do them in order.

The challenge with these Pokemon is their extensive utilization of status, especially Paras and Parasect. I’ve written before about the difficulty of balancing the their signature move, Spore, before. Specifically, putting someone to sleep in Dungeons & Dragons carries a lot more weight than it does in Pokemon. While your allies can rush to your aid to wake you, if they can’t get to you before another enemy does, you could suffer a tremendous amount of damage and perhaps even die just because you missed one saving throw. The mitigations that I devised and described in that linked post to make Spore a more balanced move still apply, but even after all of that, I have increased Parasect’s challenge rating from 2 to 3 because of how unpredictably devastating its spores can be to a party, just from the luck of the roll.

I also significantly revised the description of “Effect Spore.” The idea is that on a roll of 18-20 (triggered by the Parasect being hit with a weapon attack), the mushroom cloud ruptures, and depending on whether the roll is an 18, 19, or 20, the spores cause onestatus condition to those exposed to them. The original description read:

Each creature within 5 feet of the [Paras or Parasect] must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or become poisoned, paralyzed, or unconscious until the end of its next turn on a roll of 18, 19, or 20, respectively.

Sounds fine, right? Well, I thought so—but in attempting to be concise, it meant that creatures with a resistance or immunity to the poisoned condition would still be completely vulnerable to the paralysis or unconsciousness of ostensibly poisonous spores. The revised description isn’t as concise, but by clarifying that each of the effects are concomitant with poisoning instead of completely separate effects, it rewards player characters who are (or who have invested in preventative measures to become) resistant to poison instead of inexplicably circumventing their abilities. Consistency is key when designing a series of monsters, and one rule for being consistent is that spores, saps, and venoms are always poisons first.

Anyway, you can click the Read More for the specific changes made to the Pokemon above. Until next time.

Individual Changes

• Vileplume. Increased the area of effect for the Stench ability to 10 feet from 5 feet. Increased the area of effect for the Sweet Scent ability to 40 feet from 20 feet. Corrected an erroneous reference to Gloom in the description for Sweet Scent.
• Paras and Parasect. Revised Effect Spore so that paralysis and unconsciousness were results of being poisoned so that creatures resistant or immune to the poisoned condition are less affected.
• Parasect. Changed Spore so that an affected creature is poisoned for 10 minutes, increased from 1 minute

Attribute Changes

Oddish.

• HP 10 (3d4 + 3) 7 (2d4 + 2)

Parasect.

• CR 2 (450 XP) 3 (700 XP