Smeargle

The official category calls it the Painter Pokémon, and for once the label describes the whole job. Its tail ends in a tuft that works as a brush: from the tip, it releases a bodily fluid that it uses to mark the boundaries of its territory, and the color of that liquid changes with its mood. More than 5000 different kinds of marks have been catalogued. The walls of the cities where it lives are covered in them, which is why its habitat is listed as urban rather than forest or grassland.

Underneath the job description is a beagle standing on two legs. One meter twenty, 58 kilos, white-and-brown fur, floppy ears, and a sort of beret on its head. Once it reaches adulthood, it usually lets its companions stamp their pawprints across its back, so the mark it carries there wasn't painted by itself.

It doesn't evolve, it doesn't come from anything, and it has no alternate forms: its entire line is a one-piece affair. Its level-up move list also runs out after a single entry, Sketch at level 1. That has to be taken literally—it doesn't learn anything else by leveling up, or through TMs, tutors, or egg inheritance. Everything it ever knows has to be copied from someone else.

The spread is 55 HP, 20 Attack, 35 Defense, 20 Special Attack, 45 Special Defense, and 75 Speed. They add up to 250, the lowest total of any Pokémon that doesn't evolve. The two stats sitting at 20 mean its own attacks do nothing, while 55 HP and 35 Defense leave it dropping to almost anything that reaches it.

The only thing that stands out is that 75 Speed, and it's there to give it time to use Sketch before dying. The move has a maximum of 1 PP, permanently copies the last move used by the target, and disappears from the list when it does so: the slot is occupied forever by whatever was copied. That's why it's the only species capable of ending up with any combination of four moves.

Its three Abilities don't help much. Own Tempo prevents confusion. Technician powers up weak moves, which is useless with 20 Attack. Its Hidden Ability, Moody, raises one stat by two stages and lowers another by one at the end of every turn, and since Generation VIII it no longer affects accuracy or evasion—the same cut suffered by Bidoof and the rest of its users.

Being pure Normal gives it an immunity to Ghost, a single weakness to Fighting, and no resistances. Since it can't hit hard, its place is on turn one of a Baton Pass battle: it comes in, leaves something stuck on the opponent's side—hazards, a sleeper—and gets out. In a normal playthrough, it's a mascot; it can't even survive a Gym.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Field, and the gender split is perfectly even: 50% female. Its 20 incubation cycles amount to roughly 5355 steps, putting it among the longer hauls. It has no Egg Moves, and that's not a mistake in the table: since it can only learn Sketch, there's nothing a parent can pass down to it. It hatches knowing exactly what its father knew at level one hundred.

There's no evolution condition to explain either, because it doesn't evolve in any direction or under any circumstances. It grows at the Fast rate, which in practice means it reaches high levels quickly without getting much out of them. Defeating it yields 1 Speed effort point, and gives 88 base experience.

Its catch rate is 45, a difficult-Pokémon figure that's awkward for something with no way to defend itself: with 55 HP, it's hard to weaken without knocking it out. In the wild, it's listed as urban, and across the games it has appeared only in dribs and drabs—the Ruins of Alph in Generation II, Route 212 with the Poké Radar in Generation IV, and in Scarlet and Violet only in areas from the downloadable content. It's completely absent from Let's Go, Sword and Shield, and Legends: Arceus.