Characters / Pokémon - Special Types

Main Character Index > Pokémon Types > Physical Types | Special Types | Later Types

Pokémon come in 18 different types, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. When the franchise began, these types were little more than gameplay elements, but over the years, Game Freak and the fandom have added more than enough depth to the types to make them characters in their own right. This page is for types that were introduced in the first-generation games and were considered to be special types in those games.

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Fire

Fire-Type / Flame-Type (ほのおタイプ Honō Taipu)

Pokémon with power over fire, lava, and all forms of heat. Most of them are Glass Cannons, but surprisingly, the type has a lot of resistances (Bug, Grass, Ice, Steel, Fairy, itself). Most Fire-Type moves are also capable of inflicting the Burn status, which causes damage while also halving the afflicted Pokémon's physical attack. Fire types are immune to the Burn status themselves, which is handy for the physical attackers among them. They are based on fantastical animals that can breathe fire, but there are a few, such as Magmar and Chandelure, which are more esoteric. Fire is also one of the three starter types.

They tend to live in particularly hot areas, like volcanoes, but as not every game has that kind of environment, they can be just as comfortable in caves or urban areas. Due to fire being one of the less naturally common elements, non-starter Fire-types tend to be rare and few in number.

Offensively, they are strong against Bug, Grass, Ice, and Steel, but weak against Dragon, Fire, Rock, and Water. Defensively, it's strong against Bug, Fire, Grass, Ice, Steel, and Fairy, but weak against Ground, Rock, and Water.

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• Attack! Attack! Attack!: There are only 2 Fire-type attacks that aren't offensive; Will-O-Wisp and Sunny Day. Even then, Will-O-Wisp inflicts Damage Over Time, and Sunny Day raises the power of Fire-type moves.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The entire offensive typing in Red and Blue. Sure, having a giant fire-breathing dragon lizard is really cool, but Steel-types don't exist yet, the only Ice-types not to have Water as a secondary type to cancel out the Fire weakness are Jynx (who you only encounter once as an enemy, on Lorelei's team) and Articuno, and all of the Bug and Grass-types can be disposed of equally well by the ubiquitous Flying-types (who can also use HM02 and kill Fighting-types).
  • Blast Burn is a Fire-type clone of Hyper Beam, meaning you're exposed to retaliation for 1 turn after using it (and you could do more damage by just using Flamethrower twice).
  • Inferno always inflicts a burn when it hits and has high power, but only has 50% accuracy.
  • Burn Up has a base power of 130, but the user loses its Fire typing after using the move. Furthermore, it fails when used by a non-Fire-type Pokémon, so It Only Works Once.
• Breath Weapon: Most of the attacks of this type are depicted as this; of course, some Fire-type Pokémon^note Braixen & Magmortar mainly have other methods of expelling fire.
• Boring, but Practical: Flamethrower isn't the most damaging attack out there, but it still does good damage, reliably hits its target, and has a respectable amount of PP.
• Cast from Hit Points: Flare Blitz is a powerful move, but does damage to the user equal to 1/3 of the damage dealt to the target.
• Color-Coded Elements: Fire is represented as an orange-red.
• Counter-Attack: Shell Trap, Turtonator's Secret Art, blows up opponents that hit Turtonator with a physical attack.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • Overheat deals incredible damage, but lowers the user's Special Attack by two stages with each use, preventing it from hitting nearly as hard on repeated uses (and weakening the user's other Special moves as well).
  • V-create is the third strongest move in the series that isn't a Z-move and the strongest one that isn't sacrificial, but each use lowers the user's defenses and Speed by one stage each.
  • Flavor-wise, Burn Up is this, as it completely consumes the user's flames. In practice, whether losing one's Fire-typing is a boon or a bane depends on what moves the opponent is capable of using.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Eruption's Power is directly proportional to how much HP the user has left, boasting a large 150 (same as Blast Burn) if the user is at full health. If you can keep the user healthy, it's far more useful than Fire Blast due to higher Power, 100% accuracy, and the ability to hit multiple opponents in Double and Triple Battles.
• Elemental Punch: The moves Fire Punch and Blaze Kick. Fire Punch has slightly above-average power and wide distribution, while Blaze Kick is a bit stronger and has a higher crit chance at the cost of some accuracy. Both also have a 10% chance of causing a burn.
• Elemental Rivalry: The obvious one would be Fire and Water, but there appears to be a lot of pairs of Fire-types with Electric-types. The Magmar and Electabuzz families and the Houndoom and Manectric families are version counterparts, there's a rivalry between Volkner and Flint in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, and then there's Reshiram and Zekrom.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors
  • Offense
    • Strong: Bug, Grass, Ice, Steel
    • Weak: Dragon, Fire, Rock, Water
  • Defense
    • Strong: Bug, Fire, Grass, Ice (Gen II-Forward), Steel, Fairy
    • Weak: Ground, Rock, Water
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: A very popular motif seen frequently in the series — Ember, Powder Snow, Thunder Shock; Fire Punch, Ice Punch, Thunder Punch; Fire Fang, Ice Fang, Thunder Fang; Flamethrower, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt; Fire Blast, Blizzard, Thunder; Magmar, Jynx, Electabuzz; Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres; Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem; and so many more. There isn't much of an Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors usually seen with this kind of arrangement compared to other games — the only type in this triad that has an advantage over another is Fire over Ice.
• Fire Is Red: Zig-Zagged. Several Fire attacks tend to be more realistically shaded, including blue flames for the more potent attacks, but most of the Pokémon themselves have red as their primary body color.
• Flaming Hair: This design feature is popular among Fire-types, notably the Ponyta line and Infernape.
• Glass Cannon: Fire has many common weaknesses and tends to be frail defensively, but hits a lot super effectively. Ironically, the Fire-type has the highest number of resistances after Steel, at 6.
• Goomba Stomp: Heat Crash, the Tepig line's signature move (until Pokémon Sword and Shield made it a TR). It deals Fire-type damage, with the power depending on how heavy the target is compared to the user. Like many other Goomba Stomp-like attacks, it gains perfect damage and deals double damage on a target that has used Minimize.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: During Double and Triple Battles, Lava Plume hits everything but the user, while Eruption, Heat Wave, and Incinerate only hit enemy Pokémon.
• Kill It with Water: Almost all Fire-types are weak to Water-type attacks, though they can learn Sunny Day to reduce the damage taken from Water-type attacks.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: The Fire type only has three weaknesses, but they're practically ubiquitous and counter it quite well. Good physical attackers of almost any type can learn Ground- and Rock-type attacks via TM, and most Fire-types have poor physical bulk with which to take these attacks. Meanwhile, Water is the most common type in the game, and most Fire-types will be stuck with the unwieldy Solar Beam when dealing with them. ^note Many Fire-types can learn weak, situational, and/or impractical coverage moves to handle Water-types, like Thunder Fang, Thunder Punch, Grass Knot, and Wild Charge. However, the more powerful Grass- and Electric-type moves are limited to just a few legendary Pokémon, Magmortar, and the Vulpix, Litwick, and Larvesta lines.
• Last Disc Magic: Fire Blast is usually available to buy as a TM late in the game or can be learned naturally by many Fire-types during the late- or post-game.
• Light 'em Up: Diamond and Pearl gave a lot of Fire-types access to Solar Beam, which gives them an attack to use against Water-, Rock-, and Ground-types. It also benefits from Sunny Day removing the charging time.
• Like Cannot Cut Like: Fire-type Pokémon resist Fire attacks.
• Limit Break:
  • The Fire-type Z-Move is Inferno Overdrive, a burst of fire which causes a massive and devastating explosion.
  • The Fire-type Max Move is Max Flare, a massive tongue of flame which activates harsh sunlight.
  • Gigantamax Cinderace's G-Max Move is G-Max Fireball, an enormous Pyro Ball that it kicks towards its enemy. This ignores Abilities such as Filter and Flash Fire.
  • Gigantamax Charizard's exclusive G-Max Move, G-Max Wildfire, sees it launch a dragon-shaped flame at the opponent, which explodes on impact and deals additional damage on non-Fire-types for several turns after.
  • G-Max Centiferno, the G-Max Move of Gigantamax Centiskorch, is a massive blast of fire that traps opponents in a swirling inferno akin to Fire Spin.
• Magma Man: Invoked in certain magma-related attacks like Lava Plume and Eruption.
• Mundane Utility: The Flame Body and Magma Armor abilities have the secondary effect of causing Pokémon Eggs to hatch in half the time they usually would, making Pokémon with these abilities incredibly useful for hatching lots of eggs quickly. The Slugma line notably have both of these abilites.
• Playing with Fire: Naturally, the Fire-Type wields incendiary abilities.
• The Power of the Sun: They get the move Sunny Day, which enhances their attacks by 50% and weakens Water-Type attacks by the same amount.
• Required Secondary Powers: It's only natural that Fire Pokémon are immune to burn effects.
• Ring of Fire: The move Fire Spin invokes this, as the target is both trapped (unable to flee or switch out) and progressively damaged over several turns. Heatran's signature Magma Storm is much the same, only with magma.
• Secret Art:
  • The following abilities are exclusive to Fire-types:
    • Blaze increases the power of Fire moves when the user is at 1/3 or less health.
    • The Flame Body ability has a 30% chance to burn opponents who use physical contact attacks on the user. It also makes eggs hatch faster.
    • The Flash Fire Ability gives the user a 50% boost to their own Fire-type attacks should they be struck by one. The boost doesn't stack, but the user remains immune to Fire-type attacks even after the boost.
    • Magma Armor prevents the user from becoming Frozen. It also makes eggs hatch faster.
    • White Smoke prevents the user from having their stats lowered by opponents, but doesn't prevent moves like Overheat from lowering the user's stats.
  • The following moves can only be learned by Fire-types:
    • Eruption's damage depends on the user's current HP, and taking damage will reduce the power.^note Groudon is a partial exception, as it can learn Eruption despite not being Fire-type outside of its Super Mode.
    • Lava Plume hits all Pokémon around the user and has a good chance to inflict a burn.
    • Fire Pledge, exclusive to Fire-type starters and monkey, can be combined with Grass Pledge or Water Pledge to deal extra damage and create a special secondary effect.
    • Blast Burn, exclusive to fully-evolved Fire-type starters, is a clone of Hyper Beam. It deals a large amount of damage, but forces the user to stay in the next turn to recharge.
    • Burn Up can only be used if the user is a Fire-type, to the point that due to its side effect, it can only be used once until the user is switched out.
• Situational Damage Attack: Heat Crash's power depends on the user's weight compared to the target's weight. It's a paltry 40 power if the target is over 50% of the user's weight, but a whopping 120 if the target is below 20% of the user's weight.
• Status Buff: Flash Fire increases the power of the user's Fire-type moves by 50% when hit by a Fire-type move. Since it's not considered a stat boost like for Storm Drain and Lightning Rod, it doesn't stack with itself.
• Status Infliction Attack: Heavily associated with the Burn status.
• Super Mode: Charizard, Houndoom, Blaziken, and Camerupt are capable of Mega Evolution, with Charizard notably being one of two Pokémon to boast two Mega Evolutions. Groudon gains the Fire-type upon undergoing Primal Reversion. Charizard, Coalossal, Centiskorch, and Cinderace are also all capable of Gigantamax, though Coalossal's G-Max Move focuses on its other type (Rock).
• There's No Kill like Overkill:
  • While almost impossible to set up, prior to Forest's Curse being removed in Gen 9, a Fire-type attack could reach a damage multiplier of x54.^note With STAB (x1.5), during harsh sunlight (x1.5) and while having Flash Fire or Blaze activated (x1.5), attack a non-Grass-type dual-type Pokémon whose types are both weak against Fire (x4) that has been given the ability Fluffy (x2) after it has been afflicted with Forest's Curse to give it an additional Grass-typing (x2). Without Forest's Curse, they can still manage a x36.^note With a Fire-type using Fire Terastal to increase their STAB to x2.
  • On the opposite end, before Water Sport's removal in Gen 8, a Fire-type attack also had the lowest attainable non-zero multiplier, a pitiful x0.020625.^note This is done by attacking, without STAB, a dual-type Pokémon whose types both resist Fire-type attacks (x0.25) under rain (x0.5), with Thick Fat or Heatproof as its ability (x0.5) while Water Sport is in effect (x0.33). This becomes "only" x0.0625 without Water Sport.
• Too Awesome to Use: Fire Blast has high power and reasonable accuracy compared to similarly powered special moves, making it an excellent move for one-off battles. However, it has a very low PP count at 5 and thus is not very practical for extended sojourns without a way to restore PP.
• Turns Red: Blaze boosts the power of Fire-type moves by 1.5x when the user is at 1/3 of their max health or less. It's exclusive to Fire-type starter Pokémon (and Pansear and Simisear).
• Underground Monkey: Alolan Marowak is part Fire-type.
• Useless Useful Spell: The ability Magma Armor is exclusive to Fire-types and makes the owner immune to being Frozen, but getting Frozen is incredibly rare due to each move that inflicts it only having a 10% chance to do so. (And since Fire resists Ice, and Ice is weak to Fire, Ice-types aren't likely to be sticking around to fight Fire-types in the first place.) One of its users, Camerupt, can also use Flame Wheel to thaw itself out.
• Weather Manipulation: Sunny Day summons intense sunlight which strengthens Fire-Type moves by 50% and weakens Water-Type moves by the same percentage for five turns. The ability Drought, which is only found on Fire-Types with the exception of Groudon, has the same effect without a turn limit, though starting in Generation VI, Drought had the five-turn time limit as well. Desolate Land, the exclusive ability of Primal Groudon, summons even more intense sunlight, which causes damaging Water-Type moves to fail entirely as well as suppressing any other weather-changing move or ability save for Primal Kyogre's Primordial Sea or Mega Rayquaza's Delta Stream.
• Wreathed in Flames: Invoked with the Fire-type exclusive ability, Flame Body. Also used for some physical Fire-type moves.

Water

Water-Type (みずタイプ Mizu Taipu)

With 70 percent of the Earth covered by water, it isn't difficult to imagine that Water Pokémon are the most common type. It is one of the seven types to be paired with every existing type at least once.^note The others being Flying, Psychic, Grass, Fighting, Electric, and Dark. Most Water-types are based on aquatic animals, both marine and freshwater, and is one of the three starter types. They can be found on every aquatic route, and some of the more amphibious types can be found in wetlands. They can also be fished out using various fishing rods.

Offensively, they are strong against Fire, Rock, and Ground, but are resisted by Grass, Dragon, and other Water-types. Defensively, they resist Fire, Ice, and Steel and are only weak to Electric- and Grass-types (but most Grass-types don't want to hang around them willingly), making them pretty hard to wear down.

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• Action Initiative: Aqua Jet. Water Shuriken, despite being a multi-hit move, has boosted priority as well.
• Aquatic Mook: Several wild Water-type Pokémon are fought while on water, underwater, or fished up.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Hydro Cannon is a Water-type clone of Hyper Beam, meaning that your opponent will have a free turn to wash you up after you use it. (Also, you could do more damage by spamming Surf, so… yeah. Don't use it unless you like losing.)
• Battle in the Rain: Rain Dance summons a rainstorm that rages on for several turns of battle and empowers Water moves, as well as causing several other effects (such as giving 100% accuracy to Thunder and Hurricane). The abilities Drizzle and Primordial Sea are automatic versions that activate as soon as the user enters battle.
• Breath Weapon: A weird one in that the water they use is often depicted as coming from their mouths in most adaptations.
• Bubble Gun: The moves Bubble and its big sister Bubble Beam, both of which cause damage in addition to possibly lowering the target's speed.
• Com Mons: They serve as the main encounters on aquatic routes, though they aren't exceptionally powerful. Tentacool in particular are very common in the seas of Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Alola, and in the games that feature Magikarp, it tends to be available in every single body of water you could possibly fish in.
• Color-Coded Elements: Water Is Blue, as are most Water-types' color schemes.
• Coup de Grâce: Brine deals double damage to targets who have less than half their health left.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Water Spout's Power is directly proportional to how much HP the user has left, boasting a large 150 (same as Hydro Cannon) if the user is at full health. If you can keep the user healthy, it's far more useful than Hydro Pump due to higher Power, 100% accuracy, and the ability to hit multiple opponents in Double and Triple Battles.
• Elemental Baggage: Brine? Dive? Muddy Water? Surf? Waterfall? Whirlpool? Doesn't matter, your Pokémon can always summon enough water from nowhere to enable these moves, even if you're fighting in the middle of the desert or at the edge of space!
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors
  • Offense
    • Strong: Fire, Ground, Rock
    • Weak: Dragon, Grass, Water
  • Defense
    • Strong: Fire, Ice, Steel, Water
    • Weak: Electric, Grass
• Flying Seafood Special: Practically all Water-types based on fish just seem to float in midair when battling on land, except, as of Gen VI, Magikarp, who just flops around helplessly. The anime averts this; fish-based Pokémon are usually just as useless on land as you'd expect them to be.
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: Surf, ubiquitous both as a mandatory field move and as a potent and reliable attack, involves the user surfing toward the opponent on a huge crest of ocean water. Muddy Water is also depicted as this.
• Grimy Water: The move Muddy Water uses Surf's animation, but with the water shaded a sickly brown instead of blue. It has a chance to lower the target's accuracy, an effect borrowed from the Ground-type's wheelhouse.
• Heal It with Water:
  • Aqua Ring confers a Leftovers effect, healing the user 1/16 of its max HP at the end of each turn.
  • Life Dew is a "group heal" technique that restores 25% HP to the user and adjacent allies.
  • A few abilities are based on this concept. Rain Dish causes a Pokémon to regain some HP when it's raining, Water Absorb will heal Pokémon hit with water-type attacks instead of damaging them, and Hydration will cure status effects (eg. burn, freeze, poison) in rain.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Bubble, Muddy Water, Water Spout, and Origin Pulse hit all enemy Pokémon, while Surf and Sparkling Aria hit everyone but the user^note although Surf hit enemies only in Generation III.
• Ice Magic Is Water: Every Water-Type (except Magikarp, Rotom Wash, and Pyukumuku) has access to an Ice-Type attack (usually from Technical Machines or Move Tutors), giving them a solid chance at beating Grass-types and Dragon-types.
• Jack of All Stats: Water is useful offensively and defensively, and most Water-types are capable of serving as any of the competitive archetypes.
• Last Disc Magic: Hydro Pump isn't a TM like Fire Blast, Thunder, or Blizzard, but can be learned naturally by many Water-types during the late- or post-game.
  • As of Pokémon Sword and Shield, Hydro Pump is now a TR.
• Like Cannot Cut Like: Water moves do not do much against Water-types.
• Limit Break:
  • The Water-type Z-Move is Hydro Vortex, a powerful Mega Maelstrom, and while the foe is trapped in it, the attacker rams into them repeatedly.
  • The Water-type Max Move is Max Geyser, a huge torrent launched at the opponent, the cascading aftermath of so much water flying about causing heavy rain to fall for five turns.
  • Primarina's personal Z-Move is Oceanic Operetta, in which it forms an enormous sphere of water and drops it on the target.
  • G-Max Cannonade, Gigantamax Blastoise's G-Max Move, is a series of short, pressurized blasts of water from its cannons followed by a single large blast. The resulting vortex continues to damage non-Water-types over the next several turns.
  • Upon Gigantamaxing, Rapid Strike Style Urshifu gains access to G-Max Rapid Flow, a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of watery punches that completely ignores all protection moves.
  • Gigantamax Inteleon's G-Max Hydrosnipe is a blast of water from its harpoon-like sniper rifle that explodes upon impact. This ignores the target's Ability (such as Water Absorb or Storm Drain).
  • The G-Max Move of Gigantamax Drednaw is G-Max Stonesurge. Drednaw fires a sphere of water from its mouth that, upon hitting the ground, spreads large stones around to activate a Stealth Rock effect.
  • G-Max Foam Burst, exclusive to Gigantamax Kingler, is a jet of water that explodes into a torrent of bubbles, surrounding the target and decreasing its speed.
• Logical Weakness: It has been noted several times in the anime that Water-types are weak against Electric-types because water is conductive to electricity. ^note Specifically water with impurities and dissolved electrolytes, at least, like salt water, which is what sea water is. Deionized pure water doesn't conduct electricity.
• Making a Splash: Naturally, the Water-Type's arsenal revolves around all things water-based, mostly focusing on moving around large quantities of water, shooting streams of water (sometimes heated) and bubbles at the opponent, and traveling around in the element itself. Some Water-type moves involve more magical/precise control of their shape, though, turning water into blades (Liquidation) or throwing stars (Water Shuriken).
• Mega Maelstrom: Hydro Vortex pulls the enemy under and unleashes one of these.
• Rain Dance: A Water-type move that makes it rain. See Battle in the Rain above.
• Required Secondary Powers: As explained above, nearly all water Pokémon have access to at least one Ice-type attack.
• Sea Monster: Many of the more powerful Water-types have a place in the in-game lore as one of these, especially Gyarados, a vicious sea serpent whose rages can lay whole coastal cities to waste; Wishiwashi, an individually small and weak fish that can school in large groups to take the form of a giant, powerful, and widely feared monster that even the aforementioned Gyarados is terrified of; and Kyogre, a massive leviathan and the primordial god of the sea.
• Secret Art:
  • The ability Drizzle gives an instant Rain Dance effect when the user switches into battle if there is no weather or another weather in play. It lasts for 5 turns unless the user is holding a Damp Rock, in which case it lasts 8 turns. If Rain is already active, it does not reset or stack with the current turn limit. Prior to X and Y, the effect was permanent unless it was overridden by another weather activating.
  • Primal Kyogre has an enhanced version of Drizzle called Primordial Sea. It has the same Water-boosting effects, cannot be overridden by normal weather abilities or weather moves (only Desolate Land and Delta Stream), and makes it so that all Fire-type moves except for Will-O-Wisp will always fail. Unlike Drizzle, it will not persist when the owner switches out or if it is suppressed by Gastro Acid or replaced with another Ability.
  • The ability Mega Launcher increases the power of Aura Sphere, Dark Pulse, Water Pulse, Dragon Pulse, Heal Pulse, and Terrain Pulse by 50%.^note It boosts Origin Pulse as well, though this is more a curiosity than anything, as Kyogre doesn't get Mega Launcher naturally and changing its ability mid-battle requires several steps.
  • The ability Torrent increases the power of Water moves by 50% when the user is at 1/3 or less HP.
  • Water Pledge and Hydro Cannon, which are special moves only tutorable to Water-type starter Pokémon.
  • The move Water Spout deals damage depending on the percentage of the user's current HP, with a higher percentage meaning higher damage.
  • The ability Water Veil makes the owner immune to burns.
  • The ability Water Bubble not only makes the owner immune to burns, it also reduces Fire-type damage by half, and doubles the power of the user's Water-type attacks.
  • Walking Wake's signature move, Hydro Steam, is a special move that increases in power under intense sunlight, rather than being weakened by it.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Surf has no additional effects in battle aside from hitting everything around the user, and all it does is attack with a giant wave of water. But, it's vital for getting around and is strong enough that it's actually a legitimately good move, unlike other Hidden Machines.
  • Waterfall is another Water-type Hidden Machine (and like Surf, eventually became a TM), and it's every bit as useful as Surf. While Surf is the more powerful move, Waterfall has a chance to cause flinching, and it's decently powerful and runs off the Attack stat, making it a common option for physical attackers like Gyarados.
  • Scald is a decently powerful Water-type move ^note on par with Waterfall at 80 power with 100% accuracy and also has a 30% chance of inflicting the burn status, which deals damage over time and halves the afflicted Pokémon's attack. It's been a TM since its debut in Gen V, which was also the generation that TMs first became usable repeatedly. Because of this, it's pretty much assumed that any Pokémon that can have Scald probably will, especially if it uses its Special Attack stat for attacking. Scald also has the nice ability to thaw out the user when used, though it will also thaw a frozen target.
• Sixth Ranger: Lugia, a Psychic/Flying Legendary Pokémon, is very heavily associated with water and has far more emphasis placed on its aquatic qualities than its psionic ones, to the point that it was depicted as a Water-type in the TCG for a brief period.
• Spam Attack: Water Shuriken hits the target 2-5 times on each use, with each hit dealing weak damage.
• Status Buff:
  • Withdraw increases the user's defense by 1 stage.
  • Swift Swim doubles the user's speed during Rain.
  • Storm Drain gives immunity to Water attacks and increases the user's Special Attack by 1 stage whenever hit by one. In a Double or Triple Battle, single-target Water-type moves used by an opponent or ally will be forced to target the Pokémon with Storm Drain.
• Super Mode: Blastoise, Slowbro, Gyarados, Swampert, and Sharpedo are capable of Mega Evolution. Kyogre can undergo Primal Reversion to become Primal Kyogre, while Greninja is capable of transforming into Ash-Greninja if it has the Battle Bond ability. Blastoise, Kingler, Lapras, Inteleon, Drednaw, and Urshifu (in its Fighting/Water Rapid Strike style) are all capable of Gigantamax (though Lapras's G-Max Move is not Water-type).
• Stone Wall: Water types are often lauded as one of the best defensive typings in the game with only two weaknesses and four resistances. On top of that, quite a few Water-types also favor high HP and defensive stats, but their speed tend to be fairly low.
• Switch-Out Move: Flip Turn inflicts damage by ramming into the target while propelled by water like a surfer, then switches the user out (again, like a surfer quickly changing direction).
• Truth in Television: Scald and Steam Eruption have a 30% chance to burn, which is higher than most Fire-type moves. There's a reason for that: water and steam transfer heat by direct contact instead of by radiation, making hot water and steam burns more painful (and sometimes fatal) than the common burns you get when you touch something hot, like a flame or a hot stovetop. Water also has a very high specific heat, which means the particles of steam carry huge amounts of damaging energy.
  • Water's high specific heat also explains its resistances to both Fire and Ice — it takes a lot of thermal energy to change water's temperature.
• Turns Red: Torrent boosts the power of Water-type moves when the user is at low health. It's exclusive to Water-type starter Pokémon, Panpour, and Simipour.
• Water Is Blue: While not quite to the extent that Fire-types play into Fire Is Red, the majority of Water-types have blue coloration to them.
• Weather Manipulation: Rain Dance summons rain that increases the damage of Water-type moves by 50% and reduces the base damage of Solar Beam and Fire-type moves by the same percentage for five turns. Drizzle, an ability found only on Pokemon that are at least part Water-type, used to summon rain without a turn limit prior to Generation VI, getting a five-turn limit as well in that generation. The special ability of Primal Kyogre, Primordial Sea, summons heavy rain which causes damaging Fire-type moves to fail entirely, as well as suppressing any other weather-changing move or ability save for Primal Groudon's Desolate Land or Mega Rayquaza's Delta Stream.

Grass

Grass-Type (くさタイプ Kusa Taipu)

Grass-type Pokémon is a misnomer. The type is associated with all plant life, autotrophic protista, even heterotrophic crinoids and fungi. They tend to be Mighty Glaciers, strong and sturdy like a tree, but slow to move, though there are several outliers, such as Jumpluff, Sceptile, Whimsicott, and Kartana, who are particularly speedy. It's one of the three starter types. As the name implies, they can generally be encountered wherever tall grass is found, but a few, like Cacturne and Abomasnow, can be found in places that seem inhospitable to plant life, proving their resilience.

Grass-types can be difficult to use effectively in battle, as they are heavily disadvantaged in many different ways. They have FIVE weaknesses (Fire, Flying, Ice, Poison, and Bug), their attacks are resisted by seven types (Fire, Flying, Poison, Bug, Grass, Dragon, and Steel), and their movepools tend to be poor, with many Grass-types lacking options other than Grass, Normal, and other attacks/moves from their secondary types. Despite this, they are good at spreading around status effects and passive damage through Leech Seed and the like. Grass-types are also good at blocking such status effects themselves, as they're immune to powder moves and Leech Seed. Lastly, their positive defensive matchups can still be relied upon, as Grass is one of only three types to take less-than-neutral damage from Ground and Electric — and, as exemplified in the starter type triangle, also resists the ubiquitous Water type, although its access to Ice moves makes handling Water-types themselves much riskier than taking a Water-type move.

As of Gen IX, Grass has been paired with every other type at least once.

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• Action Initiative: Grassy Glide has increased priority if Grassy Terrain is in effect.
• Always Accurate Attack: Magical Leaf bypasses accuracy and evasion checks when it's used.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Solar Beam and Solar Blade are strong attacks, but they have a charge turn that telegraphs what you are doing to your opponent. Averted in Sunny weather, where the charge turn is negated, but played straighter in Rain, Sandstorms, Hail, or Strong Winds, which halve their power.
  • Frenzy Plant is a Grass-type clone of Hyper Beam, which means you're a sitting duck after using it. Also, you can do more damage by spamming Energy Ball.
• Boring, but Practical: Energy Ball isn't the most damaging Grass-type move, but it is accurate, has a good amount of PP, deals fairly good damage, and has a 10% chance to lower the target's special defense by 1 stage. This trope also applies to Seed Bomb, which has slightly less (but still decent) base damage than Energy Ball, but does physical damage, has 5 additional PP, and has no secondary effects.
• Bullet Seed: The Trope Namer. It's an attack which shoots seeds at the opponent to hit 2-5 times.
• Cast from Hit Points: Wood Hammer does damage to the user equal to 1/3 of how much it deals to the target.
• Charged Attack: Solar Beam and Solar Blade require a turn to gather sunlight before the attack executes on the second turn. If the weather is sunny, however, the charge turn is not required.
• Color-Coded Elements: Grass-typing is represented as Green, and many Grass-types are varying shades of green and yellow.
• Critical Hit Class: Razor Leaf and Leaf Blade have high critical hit ratios.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Leaf Storm deals heavy damage to the target, but lowers the Special Attack of the user by two stages. Serperior is well-known for its Contrary ability, which raises its stats after using the move instead of lowering them.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Considering Kryptonite Is Everywhere, why would anyone use a Grass-type? Because their resistances also happen to be among the most commonly used attacking types in the game, which get used precisely because not much else resists them, let alone all at once. This makes certain Grass-types surprisingly effective in Stone Wall or Mighty Glacier roles. It helps that they have near-exclusive access to reliable sleeping moves and Leech Seed.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors:
  • Offense
    • Strong: Ground, Rock, Water
    • Weak: Bug, Dragon, Fire, Flying, Grass, Poison, Steel
  • Defense
    • Strong: Electric, Grass, Ground, Water
    • Weak: Bug, Fire, Flying, Ice, Poison
• Energy Ball: An attack of this name is under the Grass type. The flavor text describes the attack drawing its power from nature, which could explain the Grass-type (and the attack animation in Generation VI has little leaf particles). Oddly, it's often found in Bug, Psychic, and Ghost-types' movepools.
• Fantastic Flora: Just going by its attacks, the Grass-type includes plants whose seeds can plant themselves into other beings to cause insomnia or leech away health (Worry Seed and Leech Seed), and spores that can induce sleep and paralysis (Spore and Stun Spore).
• Fungi Are Plants: Despite its name, the Grass-type includes several Pokémon, such as the Paras, Shroomish, Foongus, and Morelull lines, that are either animal/fungus mixes or simply ambulatory toadstools.
• Garden Garment: Bellossom and Lilligant both have the appearance of wearing dresses fashioned out of petals, while Leavanny, Roselia, and Roserade have a leaf-based "cape".
• Green Thumb: Naturally, the Grass-type specializes in plant-related combat.
• Heal Thyself:
  • The Morelull line's signature move, Strength Sap, heals the user by the same amount of HP as the target's Attack stat, as well as lowering the target's Attack by one stage^*it's flavored as a Life Drain attack, but technically doesn't qualify for that trope since it doesn't deal any damage.
  • The move Synthesis immediately restores half of the user's HP. Like several other Grass-type moves, it's more effective in sunny weather; however, like Solar Beam and Solar Blade, it's hindered by rain and sandstorms.
  • The move Jungle Healing heals both the user and its ally while curing them of status effects.
• Healing Winds: Aromatherapy, where the user releases a soothing scent that cures all status effects.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Razor Leaf hits all opponents, while Petal Blizzard hits everyone but the user.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Grass-types have the most weaknesses of all types, at five (tied with Rock), and their attacks are resisted by seven types (tied with Bug). Several Grass Pokémon, like Exeggcute, Exeggutor, Celebi, Snover, and Abomasnow, are notorious for having the most weaknesses of any Pokémon at six normal weaknesses and one double weakness each. Come Generation VI, we can add Grass/Dark-types Nuzleaf, Shiftry, and Cacturne to the list.
• Life Drain: Several Grass moves, like Absorb and Mega Drain, deal damage while healing the user for 50% of the damage dealt. Leech Seed acts as a sort of continuous Life Drain.
• Like Cannot Cut Like: Grass moves do half damage against Grass-types. Leech Seed will also fail on opposing Grass-types.
• Light 'em Up: The move Solar Beam is a beam of charged sunlight.
• Limit Break:
  • The Grass-type Z-Move is Bloom Doom; after the Pokémon turns the area into a flowery meadow, it releases a devastating flower explosion.
  • The Grass-type Max Move is Max Overgrowth, which causes huge mushrooms to grow and damage the opponent with bursts of energy from them, also turning the ground into Grassy Terrain for five turns.
  • Gigantamax Venusaur's exclusive G-Max Move, G-Max Vine Lash, has it spawning huge vines from its back and lashing the opponent with them and, for four turns, continuing to damage non-Grass-type Pokémon with residual vines.
  • Gigantamax Rillaboom's exclusive G-Max Move, G-Max Drum Solo, has it play a tune on its massive drum that causes large plant roots to impale the target from below. This ignores the target's Ability, such as Sap Sipper or Wonder Guard.
• Logical Weakness: Grass' resistance towards Electric is explained in Tree's a Crowd, as Grass-types diffuse electricity into the trees or ground.
• Mushroom Man: Though not plants, mushrooms are always associated with the Grass-type in this franchise. In terms of actual humanoid fungi, there are Amoonguss, a hopping toadstool with a face on its stem and a sort pair of arms ending in smaller mushroom caps, and Shiinotic, a diminutive humanoid with short legs, thin and spindly arms and fingers and a broad purple cap growing from its head. They evolve from more borderline examples of this trope that put more emphasis on "mushroom" than "man", Foongus — much like Amoonguss, but with only a pair of fingerless arms for limbs — and Morelull — an ambulatory cluster of hyphae with eyes and three mushrooms sprouting from its top. Breloom has a similar bipedal build, but more closely resembles a kangaroo.
• Petal Power: Petal Dance and Petal Blizzard are damage-dealing moves presented as their user buffeting its target with a flurry of razor-sharp petals.
• Planimal: By definition, any Pokémon that has the Grass-type must be at least part plant (or fungus), and as such most Grass-types that aren't outright Plant Persons or Nature Spirits of some sort will end up being this. Exactly how this works can vary: in some cases, the Pokémon is a "normal" animal in symbiosis with a plant or fungus (like the Paras line and their parasitic mushroom, or the Bulbasaur line, whose plant the Pokédex describes as growing from a seed planted in their back at birth). Others, like Sawsbuck, simply appear to be individual creatures with characteristics of both plants and animals.
• Poisonous Person: Many have a secondary Poison-typing (especially in Gen I) and usually have access to Poison attacks.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: Grass-type Pokémon tend not to learn too many moves outside of STAB, Normal-type, and Poison-type attacks. This is especially prevalent in the earlier generations; later ones give some Grass-types better coverage, as well as moves like Weather Ball that can change type.
• The Power of the Sun: Just like real plants, some Grass-type abilities involve sunlight, like Synthesis, Solar Beam, and the abilities Chlorophyll and Leaf Guard.
• Secret Art:
  • Chlorophyll doubles the user's Speed in sunny weather.
  • Effect Spore has a 30% chance of inflicting paralysis, sleep, or poisoning on Pokémon that make contact with the possessor of the Ability. All Pokémon who have this Ability as a standard Ability are mushroom-based.
  • Harvest has a 50% chance of recreating a consumed berry each turn (100% chance during sunny weather).
  • Leaf Guard makes the user immune to Status Effects during sunny weather.
  • Overgrow increases the power of Grass moves when the user is at 1/3 or less health.
  • Leech Seed deals percentage-based Life Drain damage to the opponent until the seeds are removed by Rapid Spin or switching out.
  • Grass Pledge and Frenzy Plant, which are special moves only tutorable to Grass-type starter Pokémon.
  • Spore makes the target fall asleep, but unlike most sleep-inducing moves, it has 100% accuracy. Others have much worse accuracy. Only mushroom-based Pokémon can learn this.
  • Forest's Curse is a move that gives a Pokémon the Grass type on top of their existing typings, which, given Grass's many weaknesses, is usually advantageous. Kyurem in particular has 10 weaknesses when afflicted with Forest's Curse, while the combinations Ground/Flying, Ground/Dragon, Dragon/Flying, Ice/Steel, Bug/Steel, Bug/Fighting, Dark/Psychic and Ice/Bug each gain an 8x weakness.
  • Grassy Terrain creates a Geo Effect which gives all Pokémon on the ground Regenerating Health and increases the power of their Grass-type moves, while also weakening Earthquake, Magnitude, and Bulldoze for good measure.
• SI Prefix Name: The Life Drain move Mega Drain, itself a stronger version of Absorb, has an even stronger version named Giga Drain.
• Situational Damage Attack: Grass Knot's Power is dependent on the target's weight. For the lightest of targets, it's a pathetic 20, but for the heaviest, it's a very strong 120.
• Spam Attack: Bullet Seed hits the opponent with a barrage of 2-5 weak hits on each use.
• Stealth Pun: Leaf Blade. It's often depicted as a blade of green energy in the anime, but in the games it's a green slash. But it's a blade used by Grass-type Pokémon. It's a literal blade of grass.
• Support Party Member: Although their offensive and defensive matchups are a little shaky, Grass-types tend to get many support/utility moves like Poisonpowder, Sleep Powder, Stun Spore, Spore, Leech Seed, Aromatherapy, and such, while also soaking up the first five.
• Super Mode: Venusaur, Sceptile, and Abomasnow are capable of Mega Evolution, and Venusaur, Rillaboom, Flapple, and Appletun are capable of Gigantamax, with the latter two notably sharing an appearance while doing so.
• Turns Red: Overgrow boosts the power of Grass-type moves when the user is at 1/3 of their total health or lower. It's exclusive to Grass-type starter Pokémon (and Pansage and Simisage).
• Useless Useful Spell: Petal Blizzard is tied with Leaf Blade as the strongest physical Grass-type move without any downsides, and even hits multiple opponents in Double, Triple, and Horde Battles. Everything capable of learning it has below-average Attack at best, making it largely worthless.
• Vine Tentacles: Vine Whip and the stronger Power Whip.
• Weak to Fire: As part of the core Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, Grass-type starters always maintain a weakness to the Fire-type (when not counting Mega Sceptile, who is Grass/Dragon and is thus neutral to Fire).

Electric

Electric-Type (でんきタイプ Denki Taipu)

Electric-types are known for their ability to control electricity. Most of them are known for extraordinary speed stats. They are also capable of inflicting the paralysis status (though this ability isn't exclusive to electric-type moves). Paralysis cuts the affected Pokémon's speed, and there's also a chance that it can't move at all. Electric types are immune to Paralysis themselves. A lot of them are electricity-generating animals, but a number of machines are among the ranks. Electric rodents appear to be particularly common.

Offensively, it is effective against two of the most common types in the game (Water and Flying), while it is resisted by Grass-types, Dragon-types, and other Electric-types, with Ground-types being immune. Defensively, it resists Flying, Steel, and itself, and is only weak to Ground. To balance this, most Electric-types have weak defenses.

They mostly make their homes in urban regions, but some take up residence in caves and forests, the latter most memorably being where Pikachu are found.

In the Trading Card Game, the Electric-type is referred to as the Lightning energy type.

As of Gen IX, Electric has been paired with every other type at least once.

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• All Webbed Up: Electroweb, which inflicts damage while lowering the target's Speed stat.
• Always Accurate Attack: Shock Wave bypasses accuracy and evasion checks when used. Thunder confers the same effect during Rain, with the added bonus of hitting the target when they're in the middle of using Fly, Bounce, or Sky Drop.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: In Diamond and Pearl, Thunder had a 30% chance to bypass Protect during Rain due to a glitch.
• Anti-Air: One of the few types that are effective against Flying-types. Thunder bypasses the target's semi-invulnerable phase when they are using Fly, Bounce, or Sky Drop.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Thunder is the strongest widespread Electric attack in the game, but it has a less-than-perfect accuracy of 70%. Averted during Rain when its accuracy is perfect, but played straighter in sunny weather, which reduces its accuracy to 50%.
  • Zap Cannon is tied with Volt Tackle as the strongest Electric move that's available to non-Legendaries and always inflicts Paralysis on its target, but its accuracy is worse than Thunder's at 50%.
• Boring, but Practical: Thunderbolt isn't the flashiest or strongest Electric attack, but it has above-average power (90 as of Gen VI) and 100% accuracy.
• Cast from Hit Points: Wild Charge and Volt Tackle deal damage to the user equal to a fraction of the damage they deal to their targets; 1/4 and 1/3, respectively.
• Chain Lightning: Discharge and Parabolic Charge damage all adjacent Pokémon in Double and Triple battles.
• Color-Coded Elements: The Electric-type icon is Yellow, as are a majority of Electric-types themselves.
• Death or Glory Attack: Supercell Slam is strong, but the user takes damage equal to half of their max HP if it misses or fails. Unfortunately, this includes when using it against a Ground-type Pokemon.
• Elemental Punch: Thunder Punch and Zeraora's Secret Art Plasma Fists both qualify for this trope. Thunder Punch is an Electric-type variation of Fire Punch and Ice Punch, boasting slightly above-average power, 100% accuracy, and a 10% chance of causing paralysis, while Plasma Fists is a powerful attack that also changes a Normal-type move being used by the target to an Electric-type move.
• Elemental Rivalry: There appear to be a lot of pairs of Electric types with Fire types. See Fire-types for examples.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors:
  • Offense
    • Strong: Flying, Water
    • Weak: Dragon, Electric, Grass
    • Can't Hit: Ground
  • Defense
    • Strong: Electric, Flying, Steel
    • Weak: Ground
• Fast as Lightning: Several Electric-types tend to have high speed, with Regieleki being the fastest Pokémon of all time. There are a few slower Electric-types that subvert this.
• Fragile Speedster: They tend to have above-average or high Speed, but are not very durable. In Gen VI, they even gain immunity to paralysis, which would otherwise terribly slow them down.
• Harmless Electrocution:
  • In Real Life, electrocution can be extremely dangerous or even fatal. In-game, the worst it'll ever do is cause a Pokémon to faint.
  • Electrify (the Secret Art of Helioptile and Heliolisk) causes the target's next attack to register as Electric damage, with the flavor being that the user of Electrify was able to infuse the target with electricity without actually harming them at all. Ion Deluge is a somewhat less effective version, as it only converts Normal-type moves, but it's available to more than one evolutionary line.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Electroweb hits all opponents, while Discharge and Parabolic Charge hit everyone but the user.
• Improvised Lightning Rod: The ability Lightning Rod draws all Electric moves toward the user, confers immunity to those moves if they don't already have it, and gives a free boost to Special Attack each time they are hit by them (unless they're a Ground-type). It's mostly Electric-types themselves who have this ability, but a few Ground-types gain it as well (such as Rhydon). It's also possessed by Mega Sceptile (its tail acts as the lightning rod), and most notably, one pair of Water Pokémon (Goldeen and Seaking — it's the horn that acts as the makeshift lightning rod).
• Kid-Appeal Character: Every generation has an Electric-type rodent with generally low stats, meant to replicate the appeal of Pikachu.
• Last Disc Magic: Thunder is usually available to buy as a TM late in the game or can be learned naturally by many Electric-types during the late- or post-game.
• Life Drain: Parabolic Charge damages every Pokémon around the user, then heals the user for 50% of the damage dealt.
• Light 'em Up: Many Electric-type Pokémon can learn Signal Beam. Some Electric-type Pokémon are themselves strongly associated with light, such as Luxray, Lanturn, and Ampharos.
• Like Cannot Cut Like: Electric-types resist themselves, and are also immune to the paralysis that many Electric-type moves carry as a secondary effect.
• Limit Break:
  • The Electric-type Z-Move is Gigavolt Havoc, a spear-like bolt of devastating lightning.
  • Pikachu's unique Z-Move is Catastropika, in which it surrounds itself with electricity and crashes into the opponent. Pikachu with a hat (obtainable from special events) have another unique Z-Move, 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt^note The Japanese name for Thunderbolt is "100,000 Volts", so this is supposed to be 100 times as powerful, which has a high critical hit rate.
  • Alolan Raichu's exclusive Z-Move is Stoked Sparksurfer, which has it ride a giant Thunderbolt. It always paralyzes any foe it doesn't knock out, as long as they aren't immune to paralysis or already have a status condition.
  • The Electric-type Max Move is Max Lightning, which turns the ground into Electric Terrain.
  • Gigantamax Toxtricity's exclusive G-Max Move is G-Max Stun Shock, which causes Toxtricity to slam its tail on opponents like a guitar, and randomly either poisons or paralyzes them.
  • Gigantamax Pikachu's exclusive G-Max Move is G-Max Volt Crash, which summons a heavy blast of lightning to paralyze all foes not already afflicted with a status condition or immune to paralysis as well as dealing heavy damage to one opponent.
• The Paralyzer: Thunder Wave is the series’ bread-and-butter example, and Electric-types in general are strongly associated with paralysis. Their immunity to the Paralyzed status condition past Generation VI can likewise be attributed to their innate control over electricity and instinctual knowledge of how paralysis works making it impossible to keep the electricity that moves their muscles from working properly.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: Electric types usually have fairly limited movepools on the special side, with many historically having to rely on Hidden Power for type coverage in the games that gave them access to it, or generational gimmicks in later games to expand their type coverage. Electric types on the physical side historically have it just as bad or even worse in a sense. That is, while they often do have a wider range of type coverage with their physical moves, their STAB moves were very limited when it comes to good choices. The only widespread physical Electric type move of above average power was Wild Charge, which does recoil damage, something the often frail Electric types don't necessarily appreciate (whereas on the special side they have the equally powerful Thunderbolt which has no downsides) and is much weaker in power than the well-regarded recoil moves like Flare Blitz and Brave Bird. All of the other options were notably weaker (Thunder Fang, Thunder Punch) or are moves restricted to one or two Pokémon (Fusion Bolt, Bolt Strike, Aura Wheel, Bolt Beak, Plasma Fists, Zing Zap). This at last — that is, after literal decades — changed when Generation IX introduced Supercell Slam as a overall superior option for physical attack-oriented Electric types (trading Wild Charge's inherent recoil for Earthquake-level power and a slight chance to miss and take a lot of recoil damage from that, similar to the Fighting moves Jump Kick and Hi Jump Kick). Admittedly, this is still inferior to the options most other types have, especially since Electric-absorbing abilities and type immunity count as a "miss", thus adding an unwanted gamble to the move.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: Zap Cannon is one of the strongest Electric-type moves and will always inflict paralysis if it hits, but it only has 50% accuracy.
• Recurring Element: In each Generation, there's always at least one Electric-type rodent that has a design similar to Pikachu.
• Secret Art:
  • The ability Static inflicts Paralysis 30% of the time to opponents that use contact moves on the user.
  • The ability Motor Drive makes the user immune to Electric attacks and increases their Speed by 1 stage whenever hit by one.
  • The ability Volt Absorb also gives immunity to Electric attacks and heals the user by 25% of their max HP when hit by one.
  • The move Electro Ball is a move that deals more damage the faster the user is compared to the target.
  • The move Volt Tackle is exclusive to the Pikachu line and has high power at the cost of dealing damage to the user.
  • The move Electric Terrain is a field move that lasts for 5 turns (8 if the user holds a Terrain Extender). It prevents grounded Pokémon from falling asleep and increases the power of Electric moves used by grounded Pokémon by 50%.
  • The move Nuzzle is a very weak attack learned only by the Pikachu line and its Kid-Appealing successors^note except in Gen VIII, where it's learned by Yamper instead of Morpeko, but it will always inflict Paralysis on the target.
  • The move Parabolic Charge is somewhat weak, but hits all opponents in Double, Triple, and Horde Battles and has a Life Drain effect.
• Shock and Awe: The Electric-type's specialty, of course.
• Situational Damage Attack: Electro Ball's damage is dependent on the difference between the user's and target's Speed; the faster the user is than the target, the more damage it will do.
• Static Electricity: The ability Static adds a chance of causing paralysis every time the owner is hit by a physical move and increases the chances of finding Electric-type Pokémon in the wild.
• Status Buff:
  • Charge doubles the power of the next Electric-type attack used and increases the user's Special Defense by 1 stage.
  • Magnetic Flux raises the Defense and Special Defense of all allies with the Plus or Minus abilities.
  • Plus and Minus give a 50% Special Attack increase when an ally on the field with either ability is present. This isn't considered a stat boost, meaning this stacks on a multiplier instead of additively with stat bonuses from Status Buff moves like Nasty Plot.
  • Lightning Rod increases the user's Special Attack by 1 stage whenever they are hit with an Electric-type attack, unless they are already immune to Electric; it also draws in and nullifies Electric-type attacks.
• Status Infliction Attack: Most Electric attacks have a 10%-30% chance to paralyze the target, which lowers their speed by 50% and causes them to lose a turn from being "fully paralyzed" 25% of the time. The move Thunder Wave inflicts it 90% of the time without doing damage, while Nuzzle and Zap Cannon inflict damage in addition to always causing it (though Zap Cannon has 50% accuracy).
  • Since Generation VI, Electric-types are now immune to paralysis themselves.
• Super Mode: Ampharos and Manectric are capable of Mega Evolution, while Pikachu and Toxtricity are capable of Gigantamax.
• Switch-Out Move: Volt Switch, which inflicts damage before forcing the user to switch out. The user won't switch out if the target is immune to the move.
• Underground Monkey: Alolan Geodude and its evolved forms are part Electric-type.
• Useless Useful Spell: Most of the Electric Pokémon that learn Electro Ball aren't that fast to begin with.^note Only Voltorb, Electrode, Electabuzz, Mega Manectric, Emolga, Galvantula, and Regieleki are fast enough to abuse it, and even then, the opponent needs to be significantly slower for the move to outdamage Thunderbolt.
• Wonder Twin Powers: The Plus and Minus abilities, originally exclusive to Doubles-gimmicky Plusle and Minun and made available to a few other Electric-types as a Hidden Ability, increase their wielders' Special Attack stats when paired together. As of Gen V, they also activate when paired with themselves.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: Electric attacks typically have a yellow coloration (although blue is also not unheard of), while the Pokémon themselves also tend to be yellow or blue.

Ice

Ice-Type (こおりタイプ Kōri Taipu)

Pokémon with the ability to control ice, snow, and/or cold temperatures in some manner. A lot of them are based on arctic animals, animals found in cold water, or personifications of snow and ice. Many Ice moves can inflict the very debilitating Freeze status, which renders the victim virtually immobile (unless you are lucky enough for it to thaw out). Ice-types are hardy enough to be immune to Freezing themselves, and as of Generation VII, Sheer Cold. Ice is typically one of the harder types to find, as they only reside in colder areas. They also tend to appear late in the game, and Ice-type specialists are either among the last two Gym Leaders fought in the region or a member of the Elite Four. Ice is the rarest type as of Generation VII.

Ice has a tenuous status on the type chart. While Ice-type attacks are strong against many Pokémon (Grass, Flying, Ground, and Dragon, but are resisted by Water, Ice, Fire, and Steel), their defensive capabilities are much worse. Ice-type Pokémon only resist Ice-type attacks, and have a lot of weaknesses (Rock, Fighting, Fire, and Steel).

When a hailstorm is in effect, Ice-Type Pokémon take no residual damage from it.

In Generation IX, hail is replaced by snow, in which Ice-type Pokemon have their Defense boosted.

In the Trading Card Game, Ice-type Pokémon are part of the Water energy type.

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• Action Initiative: Ice Shard, as an Ice-type iteration of Quick Attack, will let the user move first.
• Always Accurate Attack: Blizzard will bypass accuracy and evasion checks during Hail/Snow.
• An Ice Person: Predictably, the Ice-type's abilities are all cryogenic in nature.
• Anti-Air: Ice is one of the few types to be super effective against Flying. Slightly downplayed in that, unlike Rock and Electric, Ice does not resist Flying.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: In Diamond and Pearl, Blizzard had a 30% chance to bypass Protect during Hail due to a glitch.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Blizzard is the strongest widespread Ice attack, but has iffy accuracy at 70%. Averted in Hail or Snow, where it always hits.
  • The Kyurem formes' Secret Arts, Freeze Shock and Ice Burn, have a charge turn that telegraph what you're doing to your opponent. This means that they will always end up hitting an Ice-resistant Pokémon if your opponent is even mildly competent.
• Boring, but Practical: Ice Beam isn't the flashiest or most damaging Ice-type move out there, but it does reliable damage and is learned by quite the array of Pokémon, making it a good choice for both Ice-type Pokémon and non-Ice-types looking to nail opponents with an Ice weakness that would otherwise walk all over them.
• Charged Attack: Ice Burn and Freeze Shock require a turn to charge before inflicting heavy damage.
• Color-Coded Elements: Ice-types are represented by light-blue, and many Ice-types share the colorization.
• Discard and Draw: Starting in Generation IX, the Ice-type move Hail and its associated weather condition was entirely replaced with Snowscape. This weather provides all the normal effects and interactions with Ice type-associated moves and abilities that Hail did aside from the once-per-turn chip damage effect, while boosting the Defense of any Ice-type on the field by 50%. This change allows the weather effect to help Ice-types handle their weaknesses more while also not harming any non-Ice-type team members. On the flip side, the removal of the chip damage also eliminates one of the few defensive niches the Ice-type had over other Pokémon types, and arguably the least situational one.
• The Dragonslayer: Before Fairy came along, Ice was the type for nailing Dragons. It was Dragon's only weakness outside itself, and up until Generation V, most fully-evolved Dragon-types had a double weakness to Ice.
• Elemental Punch: Ice Punch is the Ice-type equivalent to Fire Punch and Thunder Punch. It has slightly above-average power, 100% accuracy, and a 10% chance to freeze the target.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors
  • Offense
    • Strong: Dragon, Flying, Grass, Ground
    • Weak: Fire (Gen II-Forward), Ice, Steel, Water
  • Defense
    • Strong: Ice
    • Weak: Fighting, Fire, Rock, Steel
• Freeze Ray: The bread-and-butter Ice attack, Ice Beam.
• Glass Cannon: From a typing standpoint, Ice hits four types super-effectively and, in practice, many of the Pokémon weak to Ice are doubly weak to Ice. Adding the move 'Freeze Dry' into the mix makes it super effective on over half of all Pokémon, something no other type boasts; it is also the type that has highest access to the extremely-debilitating Frozen status. On the other hand, at least a quarter of all Ice-types have a double weakness of their own, and the type's lack of resistances makes it difficult for an Ice-type to rely on Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors to take a hit.
• Hair-Trigger Avalanche: The move Avalanche doubles in power if the user has been attacked already in that turn, capturing this trope's flavor of an avalanche being something specifically provoked by the victim, as opposed to other natural disasters. In later games, the user's attacking animation evokes this trope even further, appearing to be screaming, depending on the species.
• Harmless Freezing: In Real Life, exposure to extreme cold and freezing temperatures has a high risk of inflicting frostbite. Here, the worst it can do is make you unable to attack for the rest of the battle. That said, there's no way to freeze opponents without damaging them first. In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Ice-type moves can now indeed inflict Frostbite.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Blizzard, Glaciate, Icy Wind, and Powder Snow hit both opponents in Doubles.
• Human Snowball: Ice Ball, as the user deliberately encases itself in ice before mowing down the opponent. Oddly enough, the anime contradicts this by making it a projectile attack.
• Kill It with Ice: Their approach to battle, naturally — bombard the opponent with snow storms, ice, and blasts of chilling wind to defeat them.
• Ice Magic Is Water:
  • In Generation I, Ice-type moves actually dealt normal damage to Fire-type Pokémon rather than resisted, which the part-Flying Charizard and Moltres didn't appreciate. Additionally, some Water-types are part-Ice, and pretty much all Water-types can learn Ice-type moves.
  • Many Ice-type Pokémon that lack a secondary Water typing can still learn Water Pulse by TM.
• Late Character Syndrome: Due to most ice and snow-themed places being set later in the game than other places, Ice-type Pokémon have a tendency to be ignored since most players would have their in-game team already in place. They also tend to evolve at higher levels than other types, the earliest being Smoochum at level 30.
• Last Disc Magic:
  • Blizzard is usually available to buy as a TM late in the game or can be learned naturally by many Ice-types during the late- or post-game.
  • Ice-type Gym Leaders (who give away an Ice-type TM each) are usually the seventh out of the eight.^note Pokémon X and Y has Wulfric as the eighth and final Gym Leader, while Pokémon Shield has Melony as the sixth Gym Leader.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon effectively turns the entire type into this. You don't get access to the area where nearly all Ice-type Pokémon live (and the Z-Crystal is located) until you're ready to challenge the Elite Four, and the only Ice TMs available before you reach the final island are Hail and Aurora Veil, neither of which are direct attacks.
  • Finally averted in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, where Seaward Cave, an optional early area in Sun and Moon, became both mandatory and colder. Smoochum and Delibird are both part of the walking encounter table, and returning with Lapras Surf, itself obtained fairly early on the second island, will net you the Frost Breath TM and a chance at catching a Seel. Similarly, in Pokémon Sword and Shield, getting lucky with the weather in the Wild Area can net you a Vanillite or Snover before even tackling the first gym.
• Light 'em Up: Aurora Beam, a weaker cousin to Ice Beam (though with a different effect), involves a beam of rainbow-colored light.
• Like Cannot Cut Like: The only type Ice-type Pokémon are resistant against is themselves.
• Limit Break:
  • The Ice-type Z-Move is Subzero Slammer, in which the user drastically drops the temperature and freezes the target inside a massive ice crystal which proceeds to shatter, inflicting great damage.
  • The Ice-type Max Move is Max Hailstorm. It summons huge hailstones which crash into the opponent and break apart into millions of pieces which cause, you guessed it, a hailstorm for five turns.
  • Gigantamax Lapras's exclusive G-Max Move, G-Max Resonance, summons a huge hailstone that drops onto the opponent and breaks apart into an Aurora Veil that reduces damage taken for five turns.
• Luck-Based Mission: Wanna see a Frozen Pokémon? Good luck, since there's no move that guarantees that it will be inflicted like the other Status Effects (accuracy aside) and the highest chance of it happening normally is 10% (the move Secret Power has a 30% chance of freezing, but only when used in the few-and-far between icy areas, where a lot of the wild Pokémon are Ice-type and can't be frozen). This is likely to restrict what is arguably the most crippling status condition in the game; without items, the frozen Pokémon is completely helpless unless the equally low 10% chance of it thawing out of the ice occurs. And in Gen I, their only hope of defrosting without items is getting hit with a Fire-type move or if the opponent uses Haze; otherwise they're completely hosed.
• Mighty Glacier: Puns aside, many Ice-types have great offensive power and decent defenses but poor speed. Avalugg and Regice are literal takes on this trope, being Mighty Glaciers (Avalugg is physical-oriented, Regice is special-oriented) that are also actual animated glaciers.
• Nerf:
  • In the original Red and Green, Blizzard had a 30% chance to Freeze and 90% accuracy, and any Frozen Pokémon would stay Frozen permanently (unless you had an Ice Heal, Full Heal, or Full Restore, which you couldn't use in Player Versus Player matches, or the opponent used Haze or a damaging Fire-type move except for Fire Spin). International releases reduced the freeze chance to 10%, and Gen II onwards changed Blizzard's accuracy to 70%, made it so that a Frozen Pokémon has a 10% chance to cure itself every turn (even the same turn it was Frozen), introduced moves that could be used while Frozen that would also thaw out the user, and prevents Freeze from being inflicted during Sunny Day. Contrary to popular belief, however, if a frozen Pokémon is sent out during harsh sunlight, it will not thaw out faster.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • In Generation I, Ice-type attacks were only resisted by two types, itself and Water. Fire did not resist Ice, which meant Pokémon like Charizard and Moltres (who were half-Flying) were weak to Ice. Generation 2 changed the type chart so that Fire-types resisted Ice moves and added another ice resistance in the Steel-type.
  • Generation VI nerfed critical hits to do 1.5x damage instead of 2x. To account for this, the power of Frost Breath (and its counterpart Storm Throw) was adjusted from 40 to 60, which actually still makes it somewhat more powerful than before when factoring the crit in.^note In Generation V, Frost Breath was weaker than Ice Beam even with the crit factored in; the buff to Frost Breath (and slight nerf to Ice Beam) in Generation VI puts the two on even ground.
  • Sheer Cold was the only One-Hit KO move that could be used on any Pokémon with equal effectiveness, and could be learned by Smeargle via Sketch. In Generation VII, Sheer Cold was changed to only have 20% base accuracy when used by a non-Ice-type and Ice-types gained an immunity, meaning Smeargle no longer has a single answer for almost every possible opponent.
• One-Hit KO: Sheer Cold can instantly knock out the opponent, with an accuracy of 30% if the user and target are at equal levels. It's also the only move of this type that no Pokémon has an immunity to via Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, until Generation VII where Ice-types are immune to it. Shedinja is also immune to it because of Wonder Guard.
• Out of Focus: Perhaps to emphasize just how rare Ice-types really are, over the course of nine generations, Ice-types have by far the lowest amount of members with only 58 Pokémon with the typing. To put it in perspective, Fairy-type has amassed 69 members despite being introduced five generations after them.
• Power Equals Rarity: Ice is easily one of the best attacking types in the series. However, the Ice-types capable of getting STAB on them are rare and usually reserved for the endgame — by contrast, the Water-types that can learn Ice moves are ubiquitous, but can't hit as hard with them.
• Required Secondary Powers: They're immune to being frozen and resist their own attacks.
• Scissors Cuts Rock: Normally, Ice-type attacks aren't very effective on Water-types, but the Secret Art Freeze Dry is super-effective on them as a special property.
• Secret Art:
  • The ability Ice Body heals the owner for 1/16 of their total HP at the end of each turn during Hail.
  • The ability Snow Cloak boosts Evasion by 1 stage during Hail.
  • The ability Slush Rush doubles the owner's speed during Hail.
  • The ability Snow Warning gives an instant Hail effect when the user switches into battle if there is no weather or another weather in play. It lasts for 5 turns unless the user is holding an Icy Rock, in which case it lasts 8 turns. If Hail is already active, it does not reset or stack with the current turn limit. Prior to X and Y, the effect was permanent unless it was overridden by another weather activating.
  • The ability Refrigerate turns Normal-type moves into Ice-type moves and grants a 20% damage bonus in addition to STAB (30% in Gen VI).
  • The move Frost Breath always inflicts a Critical Hit, unless the target has the ability Battle/Shell Armor or is under the effect of Lucky Chant.
  • The move Freeze-Dry hits Water-types super effectively.
  • The move Aurora Veil creates a barrier that reduces damage from both physical and special moves, but it can only be used during a hailstorm.
• Spam Attack: Icicle Spear hits the target 2-5 times on each use. Cloyster can notably hit a target with this move 5 times every time due to having Skill Link as a possible ability.
• Square Race, Round Class: This has been a big hurdle of the Ice type, for example. It is good offensively and hits several meta-relevant types, like Dragon and Ground, for super effective, but is also saddled with a bunch of unfortunate weaknesses to common offensive types, like Fighting, Fire and Rock and only a single type resistance to itself. This means the type is best suited for a Fragile Speedster mixed with a Glass Cannon archetype. Unfortunately, all too many Ice types have been saddled with Mighty Glacier-type stats instead, which they can't properly use when their low Speed makes them too easy to annihilate with a variety of super-effective moves.
• Status-Buff Dispel: Haze is under this type, despite its animation being a thick cloud of black smoke. Mist inverts it by preventing stats from being lowered.
• Status Infliction Attack:
  • In most of the series, Ice is associated with the Freeze status, with many of their attacks having a 10% chance to inflict it (notably, there is no non-damaging move that inflicts Freeze, a la Toxic, Thunder Wave, or Will-O-Wisp). Ice-types themselves cannot be frozen (unless it's done by Tri Attack in Generation II).
  • In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Freeze is replaced with Frostbite, which causes a small amount of damage over time per turn and also decreases the Pokémon's Special Attack by 50%.
• Super Mode: Glalie and Abomasnow are capable of Mega Evolution, while Lapras alone is able to Gigantamax.
• Underground Monkey: Alolan Vulpix, Alolan Sandshrew, Galarian Darumaka, Galarian Mr. Mime, and their evolved forms are Ice-types.
• Weak to Fire: Fire resists and is super-effective against Ice-types; however, this is averted by the large sum of part-Water Ice Pokémon, the two part-Rock-types, and the icy dragons (Kyurem and the Frigibax line).
• Weather Manipulation: Hail summons a damaging hailstorm for five turns, damaging each Pokemon that doesn't possess the Ice-type for 1/16 of their max HP each turn. The ability Snow Warning, which is only found on Pokémon that are at least part Ice-type, also summoned a hailstorm prior to Generation IX, which lasted for the entire battle prior to Generation VI. Starting in Generation IX, the move was replaced with Snowscape, and the weather changed to an Ice-type Defense-boosting snow.

Psychic

Psychic-Type / Esper-Type (エスパータイプ Esupā Taipu)

Pokémon with various types of mental or magical abilities, they have a tendency to be used whenever a particular Pokémon has a vague sort of magical power that doesn't fit any of the other elemental types. They are usually found in more urban environments.

On paper, Psychic-types were supposed to be weak to Ghost and Bug, but both of those types were rare with only weak attacks (not helped by a glitch that made it outright immune to Ghost), and a quarter of all Pokémon in Gen I were part Poison (including the only Ghost-types at the time, as well as the only Bug-types with Bug-type attacks worth a quasi-significant fraction of a f#%k). Add on the facts that Psychic-types favored the Special stat, which governed Special Attack and Special Defense, that there were a lot of strong Psychic-types (including Mewtwo, one of the most powerful Pokémon in the series), and that Psychic was only resisted by itself, and Psychic was one of the best types in the game. This reign of terror ended with the introduction of two types, Dark and Steel, both of which were defensively strong against Psychic attacks (Dark-types being flat-out immune, as well as offensively strong against Psychic-types), the introduction of better Bug and Ghost moves, and splitting apart the Special stat into Special Attack and Special Defense. Furthermore, Psychic is only resistant to itself and Fighting, making it the second-worst defensive typing after Ice. Needless to say, the Psychic-type is no longer a Game-Breaker. Nonetheless, Psychic is the type with the most Legendary and Mythical Pokémon associated with it, with all generations having at least two of them being at least part Psychic, with the exceptions of Gen VI (which only had one), Gen VIII (which only had one if Galarian Articuno isn't counted), and Gen IX (which only had one). It's also the third type to be paired with every other type after Flying and Water with the introduction of Poison/Psychic Galarian Slowbro in Sword & Shield's Isle of Armor DLC.

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• Alien Among Us: Implied with at least some Psychic-types, confirmed with Deoxys, Elgyem, Beheeyem, the Cosmog line, and Necrozma.
• Always Accurate Attack: Hyperspace Hole bypasses accuracy and evasion checks when used.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Future Sight and Hyperspace Hole ignore protection moves (Protect, Mat Block, etc.) when they deal damage.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Future Sight has good power, but it takes two turns before the attack hits — more than enough time for the opponent to switch to something that can tank or nullify the attack. (Don't try using Protect against it, though. It doesn't work.) However, it's not a Charged Attack in the sense that it immobilizes the user, with the user being free to act (or even switch out or have items used on it) while the Future Sight is incoming (though additional uses of Future Sight will fail until the first one goes off). This makes it good for one-two attacks to burst down a tanky opponent.
  • Stored Power increases damage based on the amount of status buffs the user has. As it initially has a power of 20, it doesn't seem that useful, but with every single stat buffed up to maximum, the power skyrockets to 860, over three times more powerful than Explosion. Getting to that point requires an entire team with Baton Pass and stat-boosting moves or a Smeargle with Moody/Acupressure, and it takes a while to fully play out. And even if you do manage to pull off the stat boosts, your opponent could still completely nullify the attack with a Dark-type Pokémon and/or just erase your hard work with Haze or a Switch-Out Move. That said, buffing it all the way to 860 is essentially There Is No Kill Like Overkill territory. It's fully possible with the right setup to unleash a 260 power Stored Power on turn 1 in a Double Battle.
  • Necrozma's Prismatic Laser is essentially a slightly stronger Psychic-type Hyper Beam, which means using it forces the user to spend a turn sitting around doing nothing… and it could do more damage by spamming Psychic, Psyshock, Psychic Fangs, or Photon Geyser anyways.
• Barrier-Busting Blow: Psychic Fangs breaks Reflect, Light Screen, and Aurora Veil before dealing damage, unless the target is immune or if the move misses.
• Barrier Warrior: The two main screen moves, Reflect and Light Screen, are both Psychic-type — and so is the move Barrier, in fact. Mr. Mime is a particularly noteworthy example, as it is generally associated with all three moves (its original Japanese name is even "Barrierd").
• Brain Critical Mass: Many of them are said to be incredibly intelligent.
• Casting a Shadow: Many of them can learn Shadow Ball, which can help them cover their weakness to Ghosts and hit other Psychic-types.
• Color-Coded Elements: The Psychic-type icon is deep pink/magenta, though Psychic-types themselves come in a variety of colors.
• Confusion Fu: Psychic-type mythical and legendary Pokémon, like Mewtwo and Azelf, are known for having vast and varied movepools, often for both physical and special attack. As for the other Psychic-types, their movepools usually range from decent to outright barren.
• Counter-Attack: Mirror Coat, which only works against Special attacks and doesn't affect Dark-types, hits the opponent for double the damage the user took.
• Critical Hit Class: Generation 4 added several new moves with a higher-than-normal chance of landing a Critical Hit. The Psychic type got Psycho Cut, an extremely spammable physical attack with decent power and 100% accuracy that is restricted to a very small number of Pokémon, even less of whom possess the stats to effectively use it.^note By level-up: Kadabra, Alakazam, Mewtwo, Absol, Gallade, Cresselia, Inkay, Malamar, Kartana, and Necrozma. By breeding: Drowzee, Meditite, Spinda, and Pawniard. Out of all of these, Kadabra and Alakazam are flat-out incompetent as physical attackers, and while Mewtwo and Necrozma can hit rather hard with physical attacks, their Special Attack is still far superior (outside of Mega Mewtwo X, Dusk Mane Necrozma, and Ultra Necrozma). However, Absol, Gallade, the Inkay line, Kartana, the Meditite line, and the Pawniard line do favor Attack over Special Attack. Cresselia and the Drowzee line are Stone Walls who are equally lackluster with physical and special attacks, and Spinda is a Master of None. Even after Sword and Shield made Psycho Cut a TM, which expanded the number of Pokémon that can learn it, some of which have the Attack to use it well, the number of Pokémon that can learn it is still relatively small.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Deoxys's Secret Art, Psycho Boost, deals massive damage but lowers the user's Special Attack stat by two stages when it hits.
• Dream Stealer: The move Dream Eater not only damages the target, but also restores the user's HP, on the grounds that the user is devouring the target's dream; however, it only works if the target is asleep. It should be said, though, that while this is a Psychic-type move, it's at least as much associated with Ghost-types.
• Easy Amnesia: So easy that Pokémon can inflict it on themselves via the Psychic move Amnesia, sharply raising Sp. Def.^note However, the move's in-game description implies that it works moreso by discarding trivial concerns to achieve clarity of mind than by throwing out memories wholesale.
• Eldritch Abomination: Not to the extent of Ghost-types, mind you, but Psychic-types can get pretty freaking weird. Special mention goes to the Ralts line (in the Amorphous egg group despite being humanoid, capable of creating small black holes, etc.), Unown (a Reality Warping Hive Mind from another dimension that vaguely resembles the letters of the English alphabet), Wobbuffet (a living punching bag whose real body is implied to be what looks like its tail), Mewtwo (man-made monstrosity intended to be as powerful as the legendary Mew but gone horribly awry), and Necrozma (a being from Ultra Space that's made of black prisms, is violent and aggressive, steals light from worlds, and is the remains of a once-benevolent light dragon).
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors
  • Offense
    • Strong: Fighting, Poison
    • Weak: Psychic, Steel
    • Can't Hit: Dark
  • Defense
    • Strong: Fighting, Psychic
    • Weak: Bug, Dark, Ghost (Gen II-Forward)
    • Immune: Ghost (Gen I Only)
• The Empath: Many of them are skilled at sensing emotion.
• Failed Future Forecast: Prior to Gen V, the move Future Sight had 90% accuracy, meaning there was a 10% chance your Pokémon would "foresee an attack" that never actually came to pass. It's since been boosted to 100% accuracy, though that's still not failproof, especially since it's now affected by Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors (meaning that Dark-types No-Sell it).
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: The Psychic repertoire includes a number of "swap" moves in which the user exchanges some attribute with the target: Power Swap exchanges their Attack and Sp. Atk values; Guard Swap exchanges their Defense and Sp. Def values; Skill Swap exchanges their abilities; and Heart Swap exchanges their stat changes.^note However, Heart Swap can only be learned by Manaphy and Magearna, neither of which are Psychic-type.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Many Pokémon of this type have appearances inspired by genetics and biology (Deoxys, Solosis and its evolutions) or explicitly created through this method (Mewtwo).
• Green Thumb: They frequently have access to Grass-type moves, usually Energy Ball and Grass Knot.
• Gravity Master: The move Gravity, which negates the Ground immunity conferred by the Flying-type and Levitate, as well as inhibiting certain airborne moves like Bounce, falls under the Psychic banner.
• Healing Shiv: The move Heal Pulse, which restores HP but cannot target the user.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The move Healing Wish, which makes the user faint but restores the HP and status of the next Pokémon to switch in. Cresselia's Secret Art Lunar Dance is an even better version that restores PP as well.
• Infinity +1 Element: In the original games, a player would have an incredibly difficult time without at least one Psychic of their own, and would have no way to counter NPCs' Psychics except with sheer Level Grinding. This was remedied by the introduction of the Dark-type and to a lesser extent the Steel-type in Gen II, as well as making Psychic-types weak to Ghost, and giving them and Bug-types stronger moves. Even in the later games, they are still useful to have, as both of the types they are good against only have one or two other weaknesses^note Fighting is otherwise weak to Flying and Fairy, while Poison is otherwise weak to Ground.
• Light 'em Up: For the longest time, it was the closest in-game equivalent. Starting with Gen II, Pokémon associated with the sun and light were cast as this type, including angelic Pokémon like Gardevoir^note now part-Fairy as well, Cresselia, and Celebi. They were always contrasted against the traditionally "dark" Ghost and Dark types, albeit weak to them. Even after the debut of Fairy-types, the de facto sun Pokémon, Solgaleo, is Psychic/Steel, and its moon-themed counterpart, Lunala, is Psychic/Ghost. Necrozma takes it to its logical conclusion, with it absorbing light, having Prismatic Laser and Photon Geyser for Secret Arts, and having a true form made of light. Further supporting this is the fact that many of them can learn the Bug-type move Signal Beam (itself an example of Light 'em Up), which helps them deal with Dark-types.
• Light Is Good: Like Fairy-types, many Psychic-types are angelic and nice, such as Cresselia, Gardevoir (who also happens to be Fairy-type), the lake spirits (Azelf, Uxie, and Mesprit), and the Cosmog line.
• Light Is Not Good: Originally, Psychic-types were very sinister, with the likes of Drowzee, known for preying on children in particular as its evolved form Hypno, in its ranks. Mewtwo, the original "evil" Pokémon, is a mascot for the Psychic-type as a whole, contrasting strongly against more angelic Pokémon within it. Coming after Mewtwo is Malamar, a Psychic/Dark type who willfully tries to control the minds of people and Pokémon, and portrayed as one of the few "evil" Pokémon in the anime. Then there is Necrozma, who is not only an all-black prism creature that looks more robot than Pokémon (and has powers centered around light), but is also the Big Bad of Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon (and indeed the first Pokémon to be the villain of a main game).
• Like Cannot Cut Like: Psychic-types resist Psychic-type attacks.
• Limit Break:
  • The Psychic-type Z-Move is Shattered Psyche, in which the user controls the target and hurts them by hurling them around.
  • Mew has the exclusive Z-Move Genesis Supernova, derived from Psychic, which generates an array of psychic orbs, combines them into one large psychic bomb, and launches it at the opponent. It hits slightly harder than Shattered Psyche off of Psychic and sets up Psychic Terrain.
  • The Psychic-type Max Move is Max Mindstorm, in which the user sends a huge blast of pure psychic energy at the opponent which creates Psychic Terrain for five turns.
  • Gigantamax Orbeetle's signature G-Max Move is G-Max Gravitas, in which it sends out a huge beam from its underside, so powerful that it intensifies Gravity for five turns.
• Nerf: Gold and Silver introduced the Dark- and Steel-types to resist their attacks (and in Dark's case, hit Psychic for super-effective damage), and more powerful Bug- and Ghost-type moves were introduced.
• Man Bites Man: Psychic Fangs deals damage with the user's teeth and gets a power increase from the Strong Jaw ability.
• Non-Elemental: Psywave (all games) and Future Sight (pre-Generation V) do not take Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors into account or get a STAB bonus when they deal damage.
• Olympus Mons: Psychic is the most common type for legendary and mythical Pokémon combined, with a whopping 19/74 of them boasting a Psychic typing. Perhaps most notably, this includes the original strongest Pokémon Mewtwo and the entirety of Gen 7's mascot trio (which comes to five, including Cosmog and Cosmoem).
• Power Copying: Trace (an Ability) and Role Play (a Move) can copy most Abilities. Each has a few exceptions they can't copy.
• Primal Fear: Because Psychic Pokémon tend to refer to mental ability and the mind, their weaknesses are also based on common fears — Bugs, the Dark, and Ghosts.
• Psychic Powers: This is their gimmick. The Psychic-type has access to a vast array of powers, like telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, and much more.
• Psychic Teleportation: Teleport is a Psychic-type move that allows the user to escape from a Wild Pokémon and can take you back to the last Pokémon Center you visited when used outside of battle. Unfortunately, that's all it does — it's useless in battles with Trainers and is rendered obsolete outside of battle once you get Fly (and the latter isn't even doable in Gen VII thanks to field moves being cut). Generation VIII at last gave it a effect for trainer battles, namely switching out with another team member, and unlike most switchout moves, it has negative priority, allowing the user to bring in a replacement almost completely unscathed in normal circumstances.
  • Teleportation in general is often associated with Psychic-types. All the Gyms that specialize in Psychic-types have at least a few teleporters that you have to use to make your way through.
• Red Mage: If the Dragon-type is a Black Mage and the Fairy-type is a White Mage, the Psychic-type is this. The Psychic-type does tend to encompass a lot of "magical" things that don't fit the more well-defined elemental typings such as Fire, Ice, Electric, Grass, Ground, or Flying, and there is a very large array of Psychic-type status moves with a wide variety of effects, ranging from healing to all kinds of Status Buffs to protection to impairing the opponent. Psychic-type offensive moves, much like Fairy-type offensive moves, generally don't breach 100 Base Power outside of Secret Arts, and many of the damaging moves have useful secondary effects or "bend the rules" in some way. What makes the Psychic-type a Red Mage rather than a White Mage is that the Psychic-type is more offensively-oriented. Psychic-type Pokémon generally have stronger offensive stats and weaker defensive stats than Fairy-type Pokémon, the Psychic-type's defensive matchups are overall worse than the Fairy-type's^note Psychic has three weaknesses, two resistances, and no immunities; Fairy has two weaknesses, three resistances, and one immunity, and Psychic-type moves' extra effects tend to be more geared towards bypassing defenses or softening up the opponent for taking more damage rather than reducing or offsetting the opponent's damage output^note Psychic can lower the target's Special Defense by 1 stage, Psycho Cut has an improved Critical Hit chance, Psyshock is a Special move that targets physical Defense, and so on.
• Randomized Damage Attack: Psywave is an odd variant in that it inflicts a random amount of damage ranging from 50% to 150% of the user's level, making it a hybrid of this and its total opposite. Also, it doesn't inflict type damage (but Dark-types can still stop it).
• Reality Warper: Some Psychic-type moves create bizarre effects on the battlefield, as seen with the three Room attacks. Trick Room sets an effect where slower Pokémon go before faster ones. Wonder Room swaps the Defense and Special Defense stats of everyone. Magic Room negates the effects of items. A move similar to Trick Room, Speed Swap, swaps the Speed stats of the user and the target. This even goes for human psychics, such as Inver, who is able to switch all weaknesses and resistances around in Inverse Battles.
• Resting Recovery: Rest, a move which cures status conditions and restores the user's HP at the cost of falling asleep, is under this type.
• Scissors Cuts Rock:
  • Miracle Eye allows Psychic-type moves to affect Dark-types, who are normally immune to them. Downplayed in that very few Dark-types have a secondary typing of Poison or Fighting.
  • Psyshock, despite being a special type move, actually deals physical type damage, giving Psychic-types a strong move against special walls. The same is true for Psystrike.
• Secret Art:
  • Psyshock, which uses the opponent's Defense stat while using the attacker's Special Attack stat. Psystrike is an even stronger version that is the signature move of Mewtwo.
  • The ability Forewarn reveals the move with the highest power that the opponent knows. In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon spinoffs, the user will occasionally dodge attacks, even if the attack cannot miss.
  • Psychic Terrain protects all Pokémon on the ground from moves with increased priority. It also gives a 30% boost to other Psychic-type attacks (50% prior to Gen VIII).
  • Iron Leaves' signature move, Psyblade, is a physical move that increases in power under Electric Terrain.
• Seers: Some Psychic-type moves involve divining the future in some way, such as Future Sight (which has the added bonus of dealing damage). The Ability Forewarn also qualifies, as the user's powers warn it of the opponent's strongest move.
• Situational Sword: Synchronoise only works if the user and target share a type.
• Squishy Wizard: Most of them hit very hard with Special Attack, but are not good at defense (or at least not physical defense). Alakazam is a notable example: it's ludicrously fast and has Special Attack to match, but neutral physical attacks are incredibly painful, and super-effective physical attacks are likely going to take it down in one hit. They do tend to have good Special Defense, though.
• Starfish Aliens: Some Psychic-types are implied to be extraterrestrial in origin and many of these are pretty weird-looking. Deoxys, Elgyem, Beheeyem, and (if one counts extradimensional beings) Necrozma are the only ones for whom this is confirmed to be the case, but Starmie also has this suggested of it.
• Status Buff:
  • Calm Mind increases the user's Special Attack and Special Defense by 1 stage each.
  • Meditate increases Attack by 1 stage.
  • Agility increases Speed by 2 stages.
  • Reflect and Light Screen decrease the damage taken from Physical attacks and Special attacks, respectively, by all allies by 50% in Single Battles and 33% in Double or Triple Battles. They aren't dispelled by switching and stack multiplicativately with Defense/Special Defense boosts, but only last for 5 turns (or 8 with a Light Clay). (In Gen I, the note about stacking multiplicativately still held true, but they lasted indefinitely and wore off upon switching.)
  • Amnesia increases Special Defense by 2 stages. In Generation I, it increases Special by two stages.
  • Cosmic Power increases Defense and Special Defense by 1 stage.
  • Barrier increases Defense by 2 stages.
• Super-Intelligence: The abilities of many Psychic Pokémon stem from their ridiculously high intelligence. Alakazam, Slowking, Metagross, Uxie, Oranguru, and Orbeetle are some standout examples.
• Super Mode: Alakazam, Slowbro, Mewtwo, Gardevoir, Medicham, Metagross, Latias, Latios, and Gallade are capable of Mega Evolution, with Mewtwo having two potential Mega Evolutions. Necrozma can not only absorb Solgaleo or Lunala for a stronger form, but it can also Ultra Burst (effectively Mega Evolution, only not actually) from there into the stronger-than-Arceus Ultra Necrozma. Orbeetle and Hatterene are also capable of Gigantamax, though only Orbeetle has a Psychic-type G-Max Move.
• Sword Beam: Psycho Cut, one of the few Physical-category Psychic moves, which manifests as a crescent-shaped energy wave launched at the opponent. While having a physical blade is not strictly necessary to learn it, a lot of the Pokémon that do have access to it have some form of Natural Weapon to focus it through, such as Gallade's sword-like limbs, Absol's horn, Malamar's tentacles, Kartana's blades, Cresselia's crescents, etc. This also apllies to Psyblade, Iron Leaves' Secret Art, which increases in power under the effects of Electric Terrain.
• Telepathy: Most Psychic Pokémon are natural telepaths, but there is also an actual ability called Telepathy which ensures a Pokémon cannot be hit by its allies in a Double/Triple battle.
• Underground Monkey: Alolan Raichu, Galarian Ponyta, and Galarian Rapidash are part Psychic-type.
• Use Your Head: How Zen Headbutt works.
• Weaksauce Weakness: They're weak to Bug-type attacks. In Red, Blue, and Yellow, this was their only weakness due to a glitch that made Psychic immune to Ghost.

Dragon

Dragon-Type (ドラゴンタイプ Doragon Taipu)

A group based on dragons and similar monsters from around the world. They are among the most elusive types, usually only appearing in secluded areas. As such, they are the fourth-rarest type. Their elusiveness is often related to their power, and some of the strongest and most dangerous Pokémon in the series are Dragon-type. This power, combined with their mysteriousness, makes them very well-regarded in some circles. Dragon is a popular type for Legendaries. While the Dragon type covers most dragonlike Pokémon, there are a few dragonlike species that lack the typing but have similar properties and movepools; conversely, not all Dragon-type Pokémon are based on animals that can be classified as (or even resemble) dragons. The existence of Regidrago, a being made of "dragon energy", suggests that the Dragon type comes from moves or Pokémon having properties of said energy rather than strictly whether their design basis is draconic (though they coincide in most cases).

Offensively, they are only super effective against themselves, are resisted by only Steel-types, and completely ineffective against Fairy-types. They don't need to hit super-effectively to make it hurt. They resist Water, Grass, Fire, and Electric, but are weak to Ice and Fairy, giving them some nice defensive applications.

In the Trading Card Game, Dragon-type Pokémon were originally part of the Colorless energy type, but the Dragon Vault special set turned them into their own card type. However, there is no corresponding Dragon-type Basic Energy card, and no Pokémon uses Dragon Energy to attack.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • Deliberately invoked with Fairy-type Pokémon in Gen VI. Fairies are immune to Dragon-type moves and can deal super-effective damage in return. While Ice is only effective offensively, and Steel just resists Dragon-type moves (both of which Dragon-types can beat by packing Fire), Fairy is the only type Dragons have a disadvantage against both offensively and defensively. This especially affects the Dragon/Fighting Kommo-o and Koraidon, and the Dragon/Dark Hydreigon, Guzzlord, and Roaring Moon, who all come with a quadruple Fairy weakness.
  • Multiple Dragon-type Pokémon have a secondary typing that makes them quadruply weak to Ice, such as Mega Sceptile, Flapple, Appletun, and Hydrapple's Dragon/Grass, Flygon, Garchomp, and Zygarde's Dragon/Ground, and the especially common Dragon/Flying shared by Dragonite, Altaria, Salamence, Rayquaza, and Noivern.
• Action Initiative: Dragon Tail has negative priority, causing the user to go last.
• Always Accurate Attack: As of X and Y, Dragon Rush will always hit a Pokémon that is under the effects of Minimize.
• The Artifact: In Generations I and II, the Dragon type was very rare and reserved for the Dragonite line and Kingdra, in keeping with the Japanese media convention of distinguishing between mystical/ethereal dragons like them and more animalistic/bestial dragons like Charizard and Gyarados.^note This can be seen in series like Monster Hunter, and how the bestial "wyverns" and rare "Elder Dragons" are different classifications of dragons, especially in Japanese where they're described using different kanji for "dragon". Later generations gave the Dragon type to more common and less "mystical" dragon Pokémon like Salamence, Garchomp, and Haxorus, causing many players to question why Charizard and Gyarados (and to a lesser extent, Lugia) weren't Dragon-type in the first place, and by proxy, why there were so few Dragon-types in those generations.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Almost all Dragon-type moves are attacks. Only three Dragon-type move are status moves (Dragon Dance, Dragon Cheer, and Clangorous Soul), and the first two are offensively-minded StatusBuffs while the third is an all-around stat boost that's Cast from Hit Points.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • In the TCG. Possibly to give the type an "ultimate element" feel, Dragon-types almost always require two different Energy types to attack (or, on rare occasions, three different types of Energy). Players of similar Collectible Card Games, such as Magic: The Gathering, should be all too familiar with the woes of simultaneously depending on multiple flavors of the game's core resource to take an action.
  • Dialga's Secret Art, Roar of Time, is a Hyper Beam clone. The same goes for one of Eternatus' Secret Arts, Eternabeam, except it's very slightly stronger. You should know by now why both are bad if you've read the rest of this page.
  • Dragon Rush is as powerful as Stone Edge and Earthquake, but has less than perfect accuracy at 75% accuracy.
• Black Mage: While it's not the core focus of the type (that would be, y'know, being a dragon and doing dragon stuff), fans such as Lockstin have observed that the Dragon-type involves controlling raw and primal magical forces to do one's will, much like a sorcerer in Dungeons & Dragons. Much like the classical Black Mage of Final Fantasy fame, Dragon-type moves tend to be geared towards demolishing the opponent as quickly as possible. This is backed up by the very high power and accuracy of high-tier Dragon-type moves, like Outrage and Draco Meteor^note which respectively have power and accuracy parameters of 120/100% and 130/90%; since Outrage is physical and Draco Meteor is special, both are among the best options available for their category to the Pokémon that can learn them, to the point of rivaling some Secret Arts in terms of viability, that are not restricted to a small handful or single species of Pokémon, but can be learned in one way or another by the majority of Dragon-type Pokémon — though both of those moves also carry substantial drawbacks that make using them somewhat risky or inconvenient.^note Outrage locks the user into using it again for the next one or two turns (for a total of two or three turns), and while this doesn't consume extra PP (thus giving the user a longer period of time that they can fight before being forced to resort to Struggle), it makes the user's next move extremely obvious to the opponent, making it easier to play around, and prevents other actions that might be more tactically sound at the moment, such as switching Pokémon, buffing or healing oneself, or debuffing or status-afflicting the opponent. On top of that, once Outrage's locked-in period ends, it afflicts the user with confusion, meaning that they have to either switch out or take the risk that their next several moves will fail to happen and result in self-inflicted damage instead until the confusion finally wears off. However, Outrage does immediately end without confusing the user if it misses or is blocked (by a move such as Protect or a Fairy-type Pokémon switching in to No-Sell it), though that carries the usual problems of a wasted turn and, in the case of facing a Fairy-type Pokémon, a bad matchup. Draco Meteor lowers the user's Special Attack by 2 stages, making itself and the rest of the user's special moves less effective until the user switches out, buffs its Special Attack back up, or otherwise resets its stats through moves such as Haze or certain Z-Powered status moves (the latter only being an option in Gen VII and only once per battle). Once again, the Special Attack drop doesn't happen if Draco Meteor misses or is blocked or no-sold, but you've still wasted your turn entirely in that case. The next-lower-tier, more Boring, but Practical Dragon-type options, such as Dragon Claw and Dragon Pulse^note Dragon Claw is a physical move with 80 power, while Dragon Pulse is a special move with 85 power, have no added effects, meaning that they can only deal damage and cannot otherwise benefit the user or impair the opponent. All of this can be contrasted with the Fairy-type, which is more of the White Mage counterpart (see that type's folder for more details).
• Black Magic: Heavily downplayed example, but as previously mentioned, Dragon-type moves tend to have a mystical, arcane feel to them, and the number of Dragon-type status moves is hilariously small — for the most part, Dragon-type moves are all about hitting the opponent until they drop, which does fit the "designed to inflict suffering and death" definition of Black Magic (though the "death" part doesn't apply to Pokémon battling). As of Gen IX, there's a grand total of three Dragon-type status moves, one is a Secret Art, and all are offensively-oriented Status Buff techniques^note Dragon Dance increases Attack and Speed by 1 stage, Dragon Cheer increases the ally's critical hit rate by one (or two if they're a Dragon-Type), while Clangorous Soul (the Secret Art) boosts all stats, but is Cast from Hit Points, which offsets the benefits of the defensive boosts.
• Breath Weapon:
  • Dragon Breath and Dragon Rage are depicted as traditional fire-based ones (of various colors depending on the adaptation), while Dragon Pulse is more energy-based.
  • Also, half of them can use Flamethrower.
• Cast from Hit Points: Kommo-o's Secret Art, Clangorous Soul, damages the user by 33% of their max health, but raises all stats. It replaces the Z-Move Clangorous Soulblaze, but adds the health drawback as it isn't a one-use Z-Move.
• Color-Coded Elements: A bright, vivid violet, though it's also been represented by a mix of blue and red. In the TCG, the Dragon-type is represented as gold.
• Confusion Fu: Their movepools range from "better than most" to "I have no idea what this thing is going to do to me, but it's probably going to suck".
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • Draco Meteor is almost as strong as Hyper Beam and doesn't have the recharge turn, but it lowers the user's Special Attack by 2 stages each time it's used.
  • Outrage is very strong, but forces the user to stay in battle without the option to switch out for 2-3 turns and inflicts Confusion on them when it finishes.
• Death from Above: Draco Meteor calls down a rain of meteors upon the target.
• Delightful Dragon: There are plenty of friendly and adorable dragons. Dratini and its evolutions are cute as a button, and its final evolution, Dragonite, is known for saving people from drowning or getting lost at sea^note just don't piss it off unless you enjoy pain. Goomy gets cuter the more it evolves, and its final evolution, Goodra, loves hugging its trainers^note though the middle evolution, Sliggoo, does have some Nightmare Fuel Extreme Omnivore tendencies. Altaria looks like a fluffy bird with cloud wings rather than an actual dragon, but it sings in a beautiful soprano that makes you feel like you're in a dream, and it also hugs its trainers with its fluffy wings. While Haxorus isn't exactly cute, Axew absolutely is. The Normal/Dragon type Drampa is a grandfatherly Pokémon that's kind towards children and protects them from harm^note though it is also known for its over-the-top reactions to bullying. Finally, while the Legendary Koraidon and Miraidon are powerful and fearsome, they're^note specifically, the ones that accompany you in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet also very friendly and endearing, with very expressive faces and a love of sandwiches.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Many Dragon-types have characteristics of dinosaurs, most notably Tyrunt and Tyrantrum, the definitive Tyrannosaurus rex Pokémon. Haxorus is stated to be based on herbivorous dinosaurs, though it also seems to be a bit of a Mix And Match Critter; Baxcalibur and Duraludon/Archaludon, likewise, seem to be ambiguous theropods, likely inspired by Godzilla and Mechagodzilla respectively. Jangmo-o and its evolutions, Hakamo-o and Kommo-o, are said to be a cross between theropods and ankylosaurs. Gabite and Garchomp generally resemble dromaeosaurids, and the Dreepy line is a variation in that it's based on a prehistoric amphibian (Diplocaulus) often mistaken for a dinosaur and even lived in prehistoric times. Four out of the five Dragon-type Ancient Paradox Pokémon — Koraidon, Walking Wake, Gouging Fire, and Raging Bolt — have traits of various dinosaurs, while the fifth (Roaring Moon) inverts this trope by being a Western dragon that behaves like a dinosaur. If you choose to get technical, then the birdlike Dragon-types such as Latios, Latias, Altaria, and Reshiram also qualify for this. Also inverted with Pokémon who resemble dinosaurs or other prehistoric reptiles learning Dragon-type moves but not being Dragon-types themselves. Archeops, Aerodactyl, and Tyranitar are good examples.
• Disc-One Nuke: Pokémon that know Dragon Rage at a low level have a great time if obtained early on, as the attack's guaranteed 40 damage will one-shot most Pokémon. As time passes and Pokémon increase in HP counts, the move will start to fall behind in damage output and will be shelved for stronger and more reliable moves.
• Draconic Abomination: This is what the legendary dragons fall into. Between a mediator for a pair of world-destroying monstrosities^note Rayquaza, universal concepts made flesh^note Dialga and Palkia, an extradimensional guardian of reality which also embodies antimatter^note Giratina, three fragments of a god that may or may not have been an alien^note Reshiram, Zekrom, and Kyurem, a guardian of the land that balances the powers of avatars of life and death^note Zygarde, an extradimensional being fixated on consuming light to repair itself^note Ultra Necrozma, an alien monstrosity responsible for the phenomenon of gigantic Pokémon^note Eternatus, and prehistoric and robotic relatives of Cyclizar that should not exist in the modern era^note Koraidon and Miraidon, the type's legendaries get awfully eldritch.
• Dragons Are Demonic: The Ghost/Dragon Giratina and the Dark/Dragon Hydreigon, Guzzlord, and Roaring Moon are often depicted as antagonistic creatures with sinister designs. Dragapult is also a Ghost/Dragon type, but is depicted more as creepy by default rather than malevolent. Mega Charizard X has a demonic design, although it's of the Dark Is Not Evil variety. Eternatus looks malevolent and even nearly brings about The End of the World as We Know It, though it's Ambiguously Evil or possibly Obliviously Evil.
• Dragons Are Divine: Even outside of Legendaries, the type is revered as sacred by many groups of people.
• Dragon Rider: Many of them can learn transport-based HM moves, and Latios, Latias, Koraidon, and Miraidon (along with Charizard) act as mounts of various types in certain games.
• Dragon Variety Pack: The Dragon type includes creatures such as Western dragons (Salamence), Eastern dragons (Drampa), serpents (Dragonair), general dinosaurs and reptiles (Tyrunt and Jangmo-o), and even birds (Altaria) and mammals (Noibat). The Dragon breeding group expands it further to basically anything reptilian.
• Elemental Dragon: Some are pure Dragon-types while others are mixed with another type. For example, Kingdra is seahorse-like Pokémon that is Dragon/Water type.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors
  • Offense
    • Strong: Dragon
    • Weak: Steel
    • Can't Hit: Fairy
  • Defense
    • Strong: Electric, Fire, Grass, Water
    • Weak: Dragon, Fairy, Ice
• Fixed Damage Attack: Dragon Rage inflicts 40 damage to anything that isn't a Fairy-type. This was the only Dragon-type move in Generation I, meaning there was no way to inflict Dragon-type damage.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Pulled off by Dragalge, Naganadel, Duraludon/Archaludon, and Hisuian Sliggoo/Goodra against Fairy-types, which are normally the bane of dragons. The first two are Poison/Dragon types, with Dragalge being a specialized Mighty Glacier and Naganadel being a specialized Glass Cannon. The last four are Steel/Dragon type Mighty Glaciers. As such, the five can melt almost any Fairy that so much looks at them funny. The only other dragons that can do something similar are the legendaries Eternatus, another Poison/Dragon, and Dialga, another Steel/Dragon.
• Informed Attribute: Zigzagged. Dragon-type was considered very rare in the first two games, with only a very rare Pokémon ever having the typing^note Dratini line and Kingdra, but has since then steadily increased their numbers to be the fourth rarest type in the game, so while not nearly as common as the likes of Fire, Water or Grass, they can't be considered as rare a find anymore.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Of the "pseudo-legendary" Pokémon^note Pokémon with base stat totals of 600, a three-stage evolutionary line, and require 1,250,000 EXP to reach level 100, seven (out of nine) of them are Dragon-typed, the only exceptions being Tyranitar and Metagross. They're not legendary, but they're sure as strong as — or stronger than — some of them.
• Infinity +1 Element: They were intended as this in the earlier games; Dragon-type Pokémon were rare and hard to find in the first place, and also hard to train due to having low stats until they fully evolved and they evolved at much higher levels than other Pokémon; however, in exchange, they were resistant to some of the most common types of attacks, could learn a large variety of moves, nothing resisted Dragon-type attacks except for Steel-types, and they had no type weaknesses except for Dragon and Ice. Even those shortcomings, however, were negligible, since most Dragon-types could learn Fire-type attacks, which were super-effective against Steel and Ice. As Lance sums up in the Gen I games, "they're hard to catch and raise, but their powers are superior". This is a major reason the Fairy-type was introduced in Gen VI: Dragon-type Pokémon had become widespread and had maintained their position as among the best Pokémon competitively, and many of them dominated the metagame.
• Kaiju: While no non-Dynamaxed Pokémon is quite Kaiju-sized (aside from Eternatus, itself incidentally a Poison/Dragon-type), this type tends to be pretty close in spirit, with many species being both physically imposing and able to deliver highly destructive attacks. The fact that, outside of Fairy-types, their best counter is another Dragon-type is also reminiscent of Kaiju-on-Kaiju combat. Some are even directly reminiscent of specific Kaijus, like Baxcalibur, based on Godzilla, Hydreigon, based on King Ghidorah, and Duraludon, based on Mechagodzilla.
• Kamehame Hadoken: Dragon Pulse resembles both trope namers in the anime; in Diamond & Pearl and Black and White, it's depicted as a light green ball of energy, while in XY and Sun & Moon, it's depicted as a beam of energy shaped like a dragon.
• Last Disc Magic: Draco Meteor is only available during the late- or post-game, and can only be taught to Dragon-types with a maximum friendship rating.
• Lightning Bruiser: They lean towards this, having brutal offensive power on top of generally good stats and awesome type effectiveness. Their main status move (Dragon Dance) enhances the "lightning" and "bruiser" aspects of its wielder by boosting Attack and Speed.
• Limit Break:
  • The Dragon-type Z-Move is Devastating Drake, in which the user attacks the target with a huge, dragon-shaped aura that causes a massive explosion on impact.
  • The Dragon-type Max Move is Max Wyrmwind. This forms a huge tornado of Dragon-type energy around the opponent; said tornado has huge dragon wings made of energy swirl about in it to hit and cut into the opponent. This lowers the Attack stat of the opponent and any of its allies.
  • Gigantamax Duraludon's exclusive G-Max Move is G-Max Depletion, which a huge tornado of Dragon-type energy around the opponent, which decreases the PP of the move the opponent last used by two.
• Magic Knight: After dragons evolve into their final stage, most of them have almost equally high Attack and Special Attack stats, and their movepools usually expand to include an even ratio of physical and special attacks, while the previous stages are usually limited to mostly physical attacks.
• Magikarp Power: Dragons evolve very late, are pretty weak in the first and second stages, and have limited movepools. By the time they reach their final stage (usually in the 40s or 50s), they become very powerful and gain many more options. Special mention goes to Deino, which evolves into Zweilous at level 50 and later into Hydreigon at level 64, later than any other Pokémon that evolves through leveling up.
• Meteor Move: Gen VI's animation for Dragon Rush shows the user jumping in the air before slamming onto the target in a fiery crash. This is because the Japanese name of the move is Dragon Dive.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Being dragons, a lot of them end up in this category if their design basis is whimsical enough, such as Garchomp,^note a landshark dragon that flies like a jet plane Noivern,^note a bat wyvern with speakers for ears and Miraidon.^note a robotic dragon that can be ridden like a bike
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Outrage, a move with a power of 120 that locks the user in for 2-3 turns and causes them to become confused.
• Nerf: Most Dragons were hit by the introduction of the Fairy-type, which was the point of them in the first place. They can learn Steel-type and Poison-type moves to hit Fairies super-effectively, however, though they rarely have occasion to due to the otherwise poor coverage of these attacks.
• Non-Elemental: Not in terms of the attacks themselves, which tend to fall under Technicolor Fire, but their offensive type matchups. Dragon is strong against one type (itself), weak against another (Steel), and ineffective against a third (Fairy). This ties it with Normal for having the fewest non-neutral offensive matchups of any type and with Ghost for having the fewest negative matchups, and Dragon-type attacks instead force foes to rely on high defensive stats instead of favorable Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors to take a hit.
• Olympus Mons: From Generation III onwards, Dragon has been a pretty common type among newly introduced Legendary Pokémon; most notably, Sinnoh's and Unova's legendary trios are all part Dragon-type. In addition, in all of Hoenn, Kalos, Alola, Galar, and Paldea, the strongest Legendary is a Dragon-type.
• Our Dragons Are Different:
  • Dragon-types have all sorts of inspiration and basis, from classical Eastern or Western dragons^note such as Mega Charizard X, Dragonite, Salamence, Rayquaza, and the Tao trio to weirder but still recognizable dragons^note such as the creation trio, Kommo-o, Ultra Necrozma, Duraludon, base Eternatus, and Miraidon to real-world reptiles^note such as Mega Sceptile, Tyrantrum, and Turtonator to Mix-and-Match Critters with aspects of dragons^note such as Flygon, Garchomp, Naganadel, Dragapult, Koraidon and Walking Wake to "out there" concepts that only vaguely resemble dragons^note such as Mega Ampharos, Altaria, Alolan Exeggutor, Guzzlord, all of Zygarde's forms, and Eternamax Eternatus. Regidrago is unique in that its Dragon typing doesn't come from the kind of creature it is (a golem), but rather its theming (it's made of crystallized dragon energy and has dragon jaws for arms).
  • In the first two generations (and to a lesser extent, the following two), the Dragon-type was mostly used for dragons that gave off a "mystical" feel — Dragonite, Kingdra, Flygon, Altaria, and various Legendary Pokémon. This seems to be due to a distinction between different types of dragons in Japanese media and culture, where such "mystical" dragons are distinguished from more "bestial", non-magical typically Western dragons such as Charizard and Gyarados^note while Eastern in appearance, it is very ferocious and animalistic and behaves more like a Western dragon (who lack the Dragon type). Salamence and Garchomp began to break the mold before the Dragon-type came to encompass a more universal concept of what dragons are.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Some of the "weaker" Dragon types, like Flygon or Druddigon, are generally overlooked; they're still very strong and versatile Pokémon, but they just can't stack up against heavyweights like Garchomp or Haxorus.
• Playing with Fire: Since dragons are traditionally associated with fire^note at least in Western folklore, the majority of Dragon-types get Fire attacks, letting them bypass Steel-Types, the only thing that could wall them before the introduction of Fairies, and Ice-Types, the only other Type that hit them hard. Kingdra, Mega Sceptile, Latias, Latios, Zekrom, Kyurem^note except for White Kyurem, Haxorus^note beginning in Sun & Moon, and Dragalge are the only Dragons that can't learn Fire attacks besides Hidden Power. Despite this, there are only four Fire/Dragon dual-types: Reshiram, Turtonator, Gouging Fire, and Mega Charizard X, the latter of which is the only one based on archetypical Western dragons (although Reshiram has features of a wyvern and an Eastern dragon). Koraidon is not a Fire-type, but is well-suited to use the Fire-type attacks in its movepool thanks to its ability of Orichalcum Pulse, which sets up sunlight.
• Secret Art: Draco Meteor, which has a very high damage of 130 (140 prior to Gen VI), but lowers Special Attack by two stages per use. It can only be taught by special tutors to Dragon-types (and Arceus and Silvally), although Mega Charizard X, Mega Ampharos, Mega Sceptile, and Ultra Necrozma can't learn it because they can only be accessed in battle.
• Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Scale Shot fires the user's scales at the enemy, which lowers the user's defense but increases their speed.
• Shoulder-Sized Dragon: Plenty of the first-stage Dragon-types are small enough to qualify, such as Dratini, Bagon, Gible, Axew, Deino, Goomy, Jangmo-o, and Dreepy.
• Sixth Ranger: Charizard and Gyarados, despite not being Dragon-type in most of their forms,^note except for one of Charizard's Mega Evolutions are treated as dragons and sometimes grouped together with Dragon-types, with both of them being in the Dragon egg group and learning most non-exclusive moves of the type. Most notably, Lance uses Gyarados on most of his teams and Charizard on his Johto and Let's Go teams, as does his cousin Clair with Gyarados,^note except in the Pokémon World Tournament where type specialist restrictions are much stricter and the Dragon-type GO Rocket Grunt in Pokémon GO sometimes uses a Gyarados on their team (the only "off-type" Pokémon that can be found on a Grunt's team). In the TCG, the Dragon Majesty expansion depicts Charizard as this even more blatantly, with one of its promotional booklets labeling it as an "honorary Dragon type". The Paradox Pokémon Iron Jugulis is a futuristic descendant of the Dark/Dragon Hydreigon, and learns most of the Dragon-type moves of its ancestor but is instead a Dark/Flying-type. There are other Pokémon treated as this, such as Aerodactyl, Tyranitar, Lugia, and Salazzle, but to a much lesser extent.
  Lance: Haha, not all dragons are Dragon-type Pokémon!
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Spacial Rend is described as tearing apart reality, and its Gen VI animation shows reality cracking like glass. In practice, it has 100 power and its only special effect is an increased chance to land a critical hit — strong, but nowhere near the destructive power it implies.
• Space Master: Downplayed. Generation IV did most of the heavy lifting, creating Dragons with literally cosmic significance in Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina, and further introducing the ultimate Dragon-type move (barring Dialga's Secret Art) Draco Meteor. In Generation VI, using Camouflage in space will give the user the Dragon type. Rayquaza is a singular example tying all this together, as it's associated with outer space in addition to the sky in general.
• Status Buff: Dragon Dance raises the user's Attack and Speed by one stage. In Generation VI, using the Camouflage move in space will change the user into a Dragon type.
• Super Mode: Altaria, Salamence, Latias, Latios, Rayquaza, and Garchomp are capable of Mega Evolution. Additionally, three non-Dragon-type Pokémon — Charizard, Ampharos, and Sceptile — become Dragon-type through Mega Evolution, while Necrozma also gains the type upon Ultra Bursting. Flapple, Appletun, and Duraludon are also capable of Gigantamax (but only Duraludon has a Dragon-type G-Max Move), though Eternatus is fought in its similar powered-up Eternamax form that boasts a base stat total around four hundred points higher than Arceus, which is (perhaps thankfully) not accessible to trainers. Koraidon and Miraidon's most well-known forms are technically their Super Modes (Apex Build and Ultimate Mode, respectively), while they spend most of the game alongside you in a de-powered state.
• Switch-Out Move: Dragon Tail goes last, but forces the target to switch out when it hits.
• Takes One to Kill One: Dragon is one of the two types that is weak to itself, the other being Ghost. Before the introduction of Fairies, the best counter to a Dragon was (and still is, in some cases) usually a stronger and faster one, due to how incredibly powerful they tend to be.
• Technicolor Fire: A lot of Dragon-type moves consist of green, blue, or purple colored fire.
• Tornado Move: Twister, which is a weak whirlwind attack. It may seem odd to be a Dragon-type move, but that's because the move's Japanese name contains tatsu (dragon). It can cause targets to flinch and strike targets in the semi-invulnerable turn of Fly (doing double damage in the process), but overall, there's practically no point to using it instead of Dragon Pulse or Draco Meteor.
• Ultimate Life Form: Most of them have Pokédex entries that focus on how badass they are.
• Underground Monkey: Alolan Exeggutor is part Dragon-type.
• Uniqueness Decay: In earlier games there was only a small handful of Dragon-types and they were exceptionally hard to find. Dragon-types were also emphasized as the "mystical" type of dragons from Japanese legends, represented by Dragonite and Kingdra, who are sea-based creatures with gentle dispositions and the power to control the weather; this may be why the likes of Charizard and Gyarados, despite have dragon-like traits, weren't actually Dragon-types. As time went on Dragon-type Pokémon became more common and began to get members based in European depictions of dragons as ferocious, fire-breathing monsters.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Most Dragon-type moves don't have secondary effects, but hit extremely hard (especially off of the Dragon-types' high stats) and are resisted by only 2 types to compensate for their lack of super-effective coverage.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • The Dragon-type has not one but two techniques emblematic of this — each the most powerful move of the type in its debut generation.
    • In Pokémon Red and Blue, it was Dragon Rage, a move that completely ignores the target's type and defenses and is all but guaranteed to wipe out weak Pokémon in a single shot.
    • Pokémon Gold and Silver introduced Outrage, which causes the user to go into a powerful frenzy for two to three turns, and then confuses them out of exhaustion.
  • In-character, many Dragon-types are prone to this — even the friendly ones, like Dragonite, Goodra, and Drampa, are prone to wrecking everything in their way if they get pissed off. Drampa's Pokédex entry even states that it goes into a rage when children are harmed and has borderline-psychotic Bully Hunter tendencies.
• Useless Useful Spell: Dragon Hammer is a straight upgrade over Dragon Claw, dealing 10 more damage and still having no secondary effects, and seems like a contender for the best physical Dragon-type attack in the game. Too bad the only Dragon-types to learn the move are Alolan Exeggutor and Raging Bolt — both special attackers with comparatively poor Attack — while the only other Pokémon to learn it, Tropius, is a Grass/Flying Master of None.
• Weaponized Offspring: Dragapult, the final form of the Dreepy line, is a motherly Pokémon that can fly at 120 mph and carries several baby Dreepy within the holes on its head. It also uses the Dreepy as ammo for its Dragon Darts move, which the babies look forward to eagerly for some reason.
• You Need a Breath Mint: Dragon Breath is a 60-power Dragon-type move that apparently smells so bad it has a 30% chance of causing paralysis.

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