Psyduck

The riverside is its place: shallow water, riverbanks, the edge you pass without looking. In the Kanto games, it appeared on Routes 24 and 25, in Cerulean City, inside the Gym itself and in the Safari Zone, always close to water and always wearing the same expression of not knowing what it was doing there.

What defines the species is a headache that never goes away. Pokédex entries return to it again and again: it suffers from constant headaches, and when they reach unbearable levels it unleashes extraordinary psychic power. Afterwards, it does not remember using it. One entry says that it produces brain waves identical to those generated during sleep, a discovery that caused controversy among scholars; another finishes the explanation by saying that it cannot record the attack in its memory because while carrying it out, it is effectively asleep.

The design points in the same direction. Eighty centimetres, 19.6 kilograms, both hands pressed to its forehead and an expression of bewilderment that never changes from sprite to sprite. It is listed as the Duck Pokémon, although its body looks quite a lot like a platypus. It is the first stage of a two-stage line: at level 33 it evolves into Golduck, its opposite in almost every respect, slender and clear-eyed.

It has 320 base stat points and not a single figure to support a game plan: 65 Special Attack is the highest value on the sheet, followed by 55 Speed, 52 Attack, 50 HP, 50 Special Defense and 48 Defense. It takes hits poorly and deals little damage.

Its Abilities do not solve the problem. Damp prevents anyone on the field from self-destructing, which matters against a very specific handful of opponents. Cloud Nine nullifies weather effects while it is out, and until Generation V this line was the only one to have it; it is an answer to sun or rain teams, and does nothing else. Swift Swim, its Hidden Ability, doubles its Speed in rain, but you have to summon the rain yourself by spending a turn on Rain Dance.

Smogon considers it unviable in Little Cup: Staryu and Wingull do the same job with better numbers, and those 55 Speed points are not enough even with Choice Scarf to outspeed the format’s fast threats.

Being a pure Water type gives it resistances to Fire, Water, Ice and Steel, with only two weaknesses: Grass and Electric. The price is attacking with a single type from a Special Attack stat of 65. Where it does perform is in the opening stages of a normal playthrough, especially because of its unusual movepool: Confusion at level 6 and Zen Headbutt at 18 are Psychic-type moves, allowing it to take down Fighting- and Poison-type opponents that no other early Water type can touch. Aqua Tail arrives at 24 with 90 power, but it is physical, and that is where its 52 Attack hinders it more than it helps.

It belongs to the Water 1 and Field Egg Groups, a broad combination that lets it breed with almost anything from a waterside or grassland environment. The gender ratio is 50% and 50%, so a pair of the species itself is enough to get started. Its 20 Egg Cycles amount to roughly 5355 steps, an average figure within the first generation.

It gets seven Egg Moves, and two of them completely change what it can do with those mediocre stats: Hypnosis, which puts the target to sleep, and Yawn, which puts it to sleep on the following turn and forces the opponent to switch. The other five are Psybeam, Confuse Ray, Cross Chop, Simple Beam and Clear Smog. With Hypnosis and Confuse Ray on top of each other, a creature that wins no exchanges through raw power becomes awkward to face.

The evolution has no trick to it: reach level 33 and that is all, with no items, time of day or friendship involved. It grows at the medium rate, the standard one.

In the wild it inhabits the riverside, and its catch rate is 190. That puts it in the easy bracket, very close to the trivial end of the scale: a regular Poké Ball at half health is enough most of the time. Defeating it yields 1 Special Attack EV.