Torchic

It walks behind its Trainer with uncertain little steps and never leaves their side, according to the Pokédex entry given to it in Ruby and Sapphire. That is the part people remember most, and the one that clashes with the other half: the same chick spits fireballs at 1000 °C, powerful enough to char its opponent.

Both things coexist because it does not carry the fire outside its body. It keeps a sac inside its organism where a permanent flame burns, and that flame is what keeps its body warm. Hence the detail repeated by several entries: if you hug it, you can feel the heat. The fourth one puts it bluntly: it will happily burn, and adds that it is completely covered in silky down.

It is 40 centimetres tall and weighs 2,5 kilograms. Its official category is Chick Pokémon, and the design makes no attempt to hide the starting animal: an orange chick with short wings and a three-pointed crest on its head.

It is the first stage of a line that changes silhouette quite a lot. When it evolves into Combusken, it stands upright, gains the Fighting type and loses its down; by the time it reaches Blaziken, there is nothing left of the creature that could fit in two hands. Torchic is the only one of the three forms that is pure Fire-type.

310 points badly distributed. Its peak is 70 Special Attack, followed by 60 Attack, and then everything drops: 45 HP, 50 Special Defense, 45 Speed and roughly 40 Defense, leaving it out of almost any physical exchange. That 45 Speed is the figure that matters most. Charmander and Cyndaquil have 65, Chimchar 61; among Fire starters, this one ranks last of them all.

Speed Boost, its Hidden Ability, is the reason anyone bothers using it. It raises Speed by one stage at the end of every turn, with no activation limit and no cost, so the problem of 45 solves itself if it survives for two or three turns. That is where Protect and Substitute fit, both available by TM: turns that cost no health while the Ability does the work. It also learns Baton Pass, allowing the accumulated Speed to be passed to another team member. Swords Dance is available by TM too, although it has to work with 60 Attack.

The stat spread works against it in another, more pointless way: its best figure is the special one, while its strongest moves are physical. Flare Blitz, with 120 power, comes at level 39, long after it evolves at 16, and Bounce, with 85 power, at 24. In a normal playthrough, what gets used is Ember at level 3, followed by Flame Charge at 9, which also raises Speed when it lands.

Without Speed Boost, it is a pure Fire-type: slow and made of glass. Against the early-route Rock- and Water-types, it has no answer.

Field Egg Group, one of them, the most populated in the Pokédex. The gender ratio is seven males for every female: only 12,5 % are female, so breeding starts by obtaining one or relying on Ditto. The 20 incubation cycles are equivalent to roughly 5355 steps.

Of the six Egg Moves, three are genuinely useful. Feint opens the turn with priority and makes the opponent flinch if it is the first move of the battle. Counter returns twice the physical damage received, which is an expensive gamble on a body with 40 Defense. Last Resort has 140 power and only works if the opponent has already used its move, which stops being a problem with Speed Boost. The other three are Peck, Crush Claw and Night Slash.

Evolution asks for nothing unusual: reach level 16 for Combusken and 36 for Blaziken, with no items, time of day or friendship involved. It grows at a Medium Slow rate, so it lags behind for a good part of the game.

Its recorded habitat is grassland, although in Hoenn you do not encounter one on the routes: it is chosen from Professor Birch's case, alongside Treecko and Mudkip. Its catch rate, 45, is the one shared by the starters and means it is difficult to catch, a detail that only matters if it appears in a game where it can be found in the wild.