How Strong are Pokemon?

[Jcogginsa]

How strong are pokemon, in general? Be it the Anime, Manga, or game variations, what level do they tend to operate at, and what are there high ends?

[The Arbiter]

How strong are pokemon, in general? Be it the Anime, Manga, or game variations, what level do they tend to operate at, and what are there high ends?

It really depends on how you interpret feats. Also do you mean in general? Or high end evolutions or Legendarys?

The 3 Legendary birds were threatening to cause irreparable environmental harm to the planet as a side effect of their battle. Lugia could almost fight the 3 of them evenly.

Mewtwo was again causing near global catastrophe simply by waving his fist about and generating a super storm that threatened huge loss of life if left unchecked.

[Jcogginsa]

It really depends on how you interpret feats. Also do you mean in general? Or high end evolutions or Legendarys?

The 3 Legendary birds were threatening to cause irreparable environmental harm to the planet as a side effect of their battle. Lugia could almost fight the 3 of them evenly.

Mewtwo was again causing near global catastrophe simply by waving his fist about and generating a super storm that threatened huge loss of life if left unchecked.

What I'm most interested in is the kidn of pokemon you'd see in an ordinary episode, to see what kind of scale they operate. For example, could we comfortably say that Pokemon are generally bullet proof?

Another factor is speed. We know that Ash's Pikachu's electricity travels at speed comparable to lightning, since we see him counter Lightning with his own in one of the pre-movie shorts. In the same short, we see a wild Elekid using lightning that's just as fast as Pikachu's. So from that evidence, could we say that electric pokemon in general can shoot lightning speed electricity. And if another pokemon dodges that electricity, are they then considered to be lightning timers?

[The Arbiter]

Ok. The safe average of most Pokemon in any given episode is like hand grenade damage output and even more durability just judging by the typical explosions we see. Smashing up rock, trees and concrete is not uncommon.

I like to think most dodging in Pokemon is like aim dodging, but that's me.

[Alan2099]

For example, could we comfortably say that Pokemon are generally bullet proof?

I wouldn't.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

I wouldn't.

Cthulhu can confirm they ain't knifeproof neithers.

[Jcogginsa]

Ok. The safe average of most Pokemon in any given episode is like hand grenade damage output and even more durability just judging by the typical explosions we see. Smashing up rock, trees and concrete is not uncommon.

I like to think most dodging in Pokemon is like aim dodging, but that's me.

There's a give going around of Pikachu obliterating a building's worth Rock with a sinlge shock, which from what I can tell isn't amped. So that seems to imply a level of destructive power greater than a grenade

I wouldn't.

Why?

[Dawn Quixotic]

As far as offensive capabilities, you could comfortably say a Pokémon has the potential to be a truck-buster, and the stronger ones something like a tank-buster.
Even accounting for the questionable quality of Team Rocket vehicles, there are still plenty of examples of Pokémon blowing them up or otherwise trashing them.
Probably some have chucked such vehicles around too.

Speed is a tough one. Any time they do "Agility" they do like a typical "flash step" type thing, but I don't think there's ever any real reference for that. After-image type stuff, flurries of strikes, that sort of thing. You could say a lot of them move faster than human perception, but nothing really specific.

You can't take dodging lightning blasts or beams as evidence because it isn't consistent. They never show a level of speed that is overwise consistent with that (since those are such ridiculously fast things, it's a common occurrence in fiction to not get it right).
You could maybe get away with comparing a Blastoise's attacks to an actual water cannon. Lightning though, definitely not.


Defense, it's hard to say. Obviously they can handle attacks from other Pokémon, but that can get kind of vague and I can't think of anything off the top of my head.
Bulletproof, probably not. I don't think tanking bullets or anything comparable is something that really happens in Pokémon. Something like a Steelix, you could probably spot such durability due to having actual metal skin, but, that'd be generous without an actual feat for it...



That's for the anime. Various mangas might be different. The Pokémon Adventures manga (which I really need to read) might be a good place to look for benchmarks since it's probably more consistent than the anime and I think the fights involve actual injury (and sometimes death), so it might be easier to gauge things.

Video games, well... hard to gauge and Pokédex entries are blatant lies.



This is all just off the top of my head, so perhaps if I poke around I can find some more specific things.

[The Arbiter]

You can't say they are "somewhere between truck and tank busting" but also say "they aren't bulletproof" in the same post.

[Dawn Quixotic]

I'm saying I've seen them blow up big vehicles, and I've not seen them take bullets Superman-style (which I figure is what most people mean when they say bulletproof).

edit: I mean, if it's happened, great, I didn't want to infer too much without having a specific feat to show.