Cleffa

On nights of meteor showers, it gathers with others of its kind and dances in a circle until dawn. Then it stops abruptly and quenches its thirst with the morning dew. This is the behaviour repeated in almost all of its Pokédex entries, with one addition in the more recent ones: anyone who witnesses the dance will have good luck.

The rest of what is said follows the same line. It is supposedly descended from a meteorite that fell to Earth, and the reason given is its five-pointed star shape; some go further and take it to be the reincarnation of a star that burned out. Its official category is the Star Pokémon. One entry adds that it looks up at the sky during meteor showers because it reminds it of home, and another says it adores Minior, which are literally stones that fall from space.

It is 30 centimetres tall and weighs 3 kilos, so it fits anywhere. It is the baby stage of the Clefairy line, and it did not exist when the Kanto games came out: it arrived in Generation II, along with the rest of the baby Pokémon, to add a stage below a species that already had two. At dawn, the Cleffa that appear with shooting stars vanish.

218 points spread across six stats give you what they give you. The highest figure is 55 Special Defense, followed by 50 HP and 45 Special Attack; Defense is left at 28, Attack at 25 and Speed at 15, which is among the lowest in the entire Pokédex. With those numbers, there is no viable offensive plan: Dazzling Gleam backed by 45 Special Attack does not take anything down.

What it has going for it is Magic Guard, which nullifies all damage that does not come from a direct attack. Poison, burn, hail, recoil, Leech Seed and entry hazards: none of them takes a single HP. It is a top-tier ability attached to a body that cannot make use of it, because any physical hit takes it out just as easily. The other interesting ability, Friend Guard, reduces the damage taken by allies and only matters in double battles, where 50 HP lasts one turn.

In Little Cup, the level 5 format where baby Pokémon are legal, Clefairy fills the line's slot: it has the same abilities and considerably better stats. The little that Cleffa can do is get in the way. Encore, learned at level 16, forces the opponent to repeat its last move; Charm, at level 20, lowers Attack by two stages, and Thunder Wave comes from a TM to leave it slow. Holding Eviolite, it survives just long enough to bring another Pokémon in safely.

In a normal playthrough, it is added to the team to evolve it, not to fight with it. Level 20 exhausts its level-up moveset, and by then friendship has usually done its job.

Its Egg Group is Undiscovered, so it cannot breed with anything: Clefairy or Clefable produce the eggs at the Day Care, and Cleffa hatches from them. Its ten incubation cycles work out at around 2805 steps, making its eggs some of the quickest to hatch.

It inherits four moves from its father that do not appear in its level-up moveset: Wish, Present, Tickle and Heal Pulse. Wish is the only one that changes anything — it heals two turns after being used, so it restores the Pokémon that switches in. Present deals damage or heals at random, and is as unreliable as it sounds.

The gender ratio is three to one in favour of females, or 75 %, which is standard for the entire line. It evolves into Clefairy when it levels up with friendship at 160 or higher, without an item, a time-of-day requirement or anything else to look for. With a base friendship of 140, the distance left to cover is short: walk around, do not let it faint and little else. It grows at the Fast experience rate, so it levels up sooner than almost anything else on the team.

Its habitat is the mountains. Its catch rate, 150, puts it halfway between trivial and difficult: a regular Poké Ball with some damage already dealt will usually do the job. Wild specimens may be holding a Moon Stone —the same stone needed later for the final step of the line—, a Leppa Berry or a Comet Shard.