Pikachu

The two red pouches on its cheeks aren’t a colour marking: they’re where it stores electricity. According to Pokédex entries, they recharge at night while it sleeps, and sometimes, freshly woken and still half-asleep, it lets off a discharge by accident. If too much time passes without letting it out, the accumulated charge causes it stress.

Forty centimetres, six kilos, and the behaviour of a young, nervous animal. It raises its tail to keep watch over its surroundings, a posture that leaves it exposed: that’s exactly how lightning strikes it. And when it encounters something it doesn’t know, the first thing it does is electrocute it. The scorched Berries found lying around the forest are its work; it doesn’t always gauge the intensity of what it releases. One entry seriously mentions a project to gather lots of specimens and use them to set up a power station.

Its official category is Mouse Pokémon, although its silhouette and puffed-up cheeks point more towards a squirrel. It occupies the middle link in a three-stage line: below it is Pichu, the baby that hurts itself every time it discharges, and above it is Raichu, where that control problem has already been solved.

Three hundred and twenty base stat points and one figure that stands out: 90 Speed. The rest is made of tissue paper — 35 HP, 40 Defense, 50 Special Defense — with 55 Attack and 50 Special Attack that do no damage to anything on their own.

What changes everything is the Light Ball, the item wild specimens sometimes carry, which doubles both Attack and Special Attack. That 50 hits as if it were 100, and the 90 Speed, which would be middling in an evolved format, is enough to move first among Pokémon that haven’t fully evolved. That’s exactly the niche it occupies in Smogon’s NFE format: a fast, fragile pivot with Thunderbolt, Volt Switch for escaping bad matchups, Knock Off to remove the opponent’s Eviolite and Surf as an answer to Ground types, which completely ignore its Electric-type attack.

Of its two abilities, Static paralyses anything that touches it, while Lightning Rod, its Hidden Ability, absorbs Electric-type moves aimed at a teammate and raises its Special Attack, something that only makes sense in doubles.

What holds it back is predictable. With 35 HP, it can’t switch into anything, not even a hit it resists, and any priority move takes it out before it gets to attack. Volt Tackle adds power at the cost of recoil that its health bar can’t afford to pay twice.

It belongs to the Field and Fairy Egg Groups, a broad combination that lets it breed with a good part of the Pokédex. The gender split is even, 50% female, so there’s no need to fight probability to get the mother. The 10 Egg cycles work out at around 2805 steps, making them some of the quickest eggs around. In this game it has no exclusive Egg Moves: everything it learns comes from levelling up or TMs.

Its evolution has two different conditions, and neither depends on level. It evolves from Pichu when it levels up with a friendship of 220 or higher, and evolves into Raichu as soon as a Thunder Stone is used on it, whenever you choose. That second part is worth thinking about: its level-up moves stop the moment you use the stone, and it doesn’t learn Thunder until level 44.

Its habitat is the forest and its catch rate is 190, high enough that it goes down to a normal Poké Ball with half a turn’s patience. It grows at a Medium Fast rate, without the bumps and slowdowns of the stranger curves. Wild specimens may be holding an Oran Berry or, much less frequently, a Light Ball.