Nidoran♂

The official category is Poison Pin Pokémon, and the design promises nothing else: three rows of spines along its back, a horn in the middle of its forehead, and disproportionately spiky ears for half a metre of animal. Nine kilos, four legs, rodent teeth.

The curious thing is that the Pokédex entries talk quite a bit more about those ears than about the poison. It raises them above the grass to scout the area, points them in any direction with muscles developed specifically for that purpose and can pick up even the faintest sound with them. The horn comes later, once it has heard something. If it senses danger, it attacks with its spines or injects a potent toxin through the horn on its forehead.

Only one entry steps outside the descriptive register: “Small but brave. It would risk its life in battle to protect its mate.” It is the only one that attributes an intention to it, and casts a sideways glance at Nidoran♀, the twin species with which it shares a name, ear size and little else.

It occupies the first step of a three-stage line, and it is the short step: at level 16 it is already Nidorino. The big jump, the one that leads to Nidoking, does not depend on level but on a stone.

273 points spread across 46 HP, 57 Attack, 40 Defense, 40 and 40 in the two Special stats, and 50 Speed. Attack is the only thing that rises above the rest, and not by much. With those defenses, any neutral hit takes half its health bar.

What pulls it out of the crowd is Hustle, its Hidden Ability: it boosts Attack at the cost of the accuracy of physical moves. That is why Smogon analyses it in Little Cup, where a first-stage Pokémon multiplying its 57 Attack hits quite a bit harder than its stat sheet suggests. The other two Abilities matter less. Poison Point poisons on the slightest contact, while Rivalry increases damage against targets of the same sex, which in a species with no females means hitting males harder and everything else less.

Its movepool backs up the numbers better than you might expect. Poison Jab arrives at level 50 as a same-type attack, Sucker Punch comes from an Egg and gives it priority, and Head Smash—also an Egg move, with 150 power—is the kind of attack that wins exchanges it had no business winning, provided recoil and accuracy, already shaky before Hustle, do not ruin it. Double Kick, at level 25, exists precisely because Poison cannot deal with Steel.

The ceiling is set by its type. Offensively, Poison only hits Grass and Fairy for super effective damage, the list of types that resist it is long, and Steel is completely unfazed. Defensively, Ground and Psychic tear it apart. And Earth Power, which it learns at level 55, is a Special move on a body with 40 Special Attack: it arrives late and is no use.

There are no females. The 0% gender ratio is literal, so producing Eggs requires Ditto or a female from one of its Groups, Monster and Field. That is the family’s oddity: Nidorina and Nidoqueen are listed in the Undiscovered Egg Group and cannot breed, meaning the Eggs for the entire line always come from Nidoran♀ or Ditto.

There are 20 incubation cycles, around 5355 steps, an ordinary figure for a first-stage Pokémon. It gets more interesting things from the Egg than from levelling up: Head Smash with its 150 power, Sucker Punch with 70, Counter, Poison Tail and Horn Drill, the instant knockout move, which in the hands of something this slow is more anecdote than plan. Amnesia is on the list too, and with 40 base Special Defense it does not fix much.

Evolving is the easy part of this line: reach level 16 and it is Nidorino. The next step does not come from experience, but from using a Moon Stone on Nidorino.

It lives in grasslands, and its catch rate, 235, sits at the trivial end of the scale: the first ball thrown at it will usually do the job. It gives one Attack effort point, awards 55 base experience and grows at a medium-slow rate, which means the early levels feel like hard work.