What's the difference between PTU and PTA?

What's the difference between Pokemon Tabletop United and Pokemon Tabletop Adventures?

Full disclosure, the author of this comparison is a former PTA and PTU dev, currently working on Pokemon Journeys. I have extensive experience with both systems as both an insider and as a player/GM. I'm not going to pretend to be a neutral, unbiased account because that is impossible for someone who's worked on the inside in both systems. However, this is probably the most informed and useful write-up you'll find of the differences between the systems.

~TLDR VERSION~

PTA is a system that looks on-face similar but has far more pervasive problems with balance and incoherent mechanics, down to even the basic attributes in the system (you roll Special Defense, as in the Pokemon stat, to persuade someone. Pokemon Breeders use Defense and Special Defense as Feature prerequisites, meaning all Breeders are going to be tanky, and Ace Trainers use Attack and Special Attack, meaning anyone who wants to play a League archetype also has to be very good at punching for some reason). The gap between good and bad Classes is very high. Damage numbers make combat very swingy and prone to rocket tag, and the AOE sizes on many attacks make them either nukes or very difficult to use without hitting allies, depending on the situation.

PTU is more complicated to learn but is generally more comprehensive and more intuitive once you understand it. Balance is not perfect, but by being careful with Supernatural Classes and following a simple mantra of "either everyone takes direct combat Classes or no one does", you can be assured of relatively good game balance. Combat is generally better balanced, and more Pokemon are viable or interesting to use due to the introduction of new Abilities.

~Attributes and Skills~

PTA uses the Pokemon video game stats as its attributes for both Trainers and Pokemon - Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed, and HP and derives modifiers from these attributes much in the same way you would in Dungeons and Dragons (ex: a 16 in an Attack means you have a +3 Attack attribute). Aside from HP, these can be used to make challenge rolls of 1d20+modifier. Attack is associated with physical strength, as you might expect, and Speed is associated with agility. Less intuitively, Special Attack is associated with intelligence and Special Defense with charisma and awareness, for example. A short list of skills is also attached to each attribute, such as Jump to Attack and Streetwise to Special Defense, which give bonuses to challenge rolls.

--

PTU has a list of skills roughly sorted into physical, mental, and social categories, such as Athletics, Acrobatics, Perception, Charm, and Intuition. Skills are ranked from 1 to 6, and Skill rolls are Xd6, where X is the rank of the Skill in question. PTU also uses the Pokemon video game stats, but only for combat purposes. Both Trainers and Pokemon have Skills as well as combat stats.

~Class System~

Both PTA and PTU are Class-based systems with enforced multi-classing. In both systems, you can take up to 4 Classes.

In PTA, Classes are organized into 7 Base Classes, each associated with a pair of Attributes (ex: Ace Trainer, the league battler archetype, requires Attack and Special Attack) and then Advanced Classes that require the Base Class and then additional prerequisites to acquire. In addition, there are a byzantine set of Cross-Class Prerequisites that allow you to take Advanced Classes without the associated Base Class.

All Classes for PTA are included in the player handbook, and not all Classes may be suitable for all campaign types. For example, some Mystic, Researcher, and Ranger Advanced Classes assume you're using Legendary Pokemon and also using them in a particular deity-like way, meaning characters taking those Base Classes have fewer natural options than others if the campaign does not use Legendary Pokemon or treats them differently.

PTA tends to turn some elements that would be a character's background or fluff into concrete Features or Classes. For example, being a Gym Leader requires a certain Feature that imposes very specific requirements on what they must then do. The Ranger Base Class is entirely designed around Stylers and the mechanics thereof, but the Survivalist and Detective Classes are Advanced Classes for it, meaning it is difficult to do character concepts that involve those but that don't use a Styler.

--

In PTU, there is no base and advanced Class distinction. There are only Classes with Skill requirements and sometimes small additional requirements, which can be mixed and matched freely and tend to have simpler sets of prerequisites.

Classes are separated into the core book (usually good for most campaign settings), a fantasy book, a sci-fi book, and a book that deals explicitly with the idea of Legendary Pokemon as deities.

For the most part, PTU tries to avoid tying specific items to Classes. Snag Machines and Stylers both exist with no association or requirement of a specific Class, for example. Exceptions include Classes that explicitly wield weapons in combat and Classes that are good at manipulating and using Poke Balls, or that craft and use other consumables. All such items are usable without a Class, however, though some have Skill requirements or take a Skill check to use.

~Pokemon~

Both PTA and PTU heavily derive Pokemon stats from the video games, using the same formula to translate video game stats to the base stats you see in the Pokedex and using the move lists the games as well. However, where PTA sticks strictly to existing Pokemon Abilities, PTU takes liberties with introducing new Abilities, especially where it gives a lesser-used Pokemon species a unique trait to help them stand out.

~Combat~

Both systems use the same basic combat system. Accuracy is a d20 roll, aiming to hit a target number based on the Move being used and the target's Evasion. All Moves have a damage base reflected as a dice roll, that is to say, generally Moves of the same power in the video game will have a standardized damage roll. For example, Flamethrower, Ice Beam, and Thunderbolt all have a roll of 4d12+16 in PTA and are Damage Base 9, or 2d10+10 in PTU. PTA does not outright state this equivalence with a Damage Base system, whereas PTU makes it transparent and includes a chart of every Damage Base in the game.

On the whole, PTA damage rolls are both higher and swingier than PTU's, and combat tends more towards rocket tag.

--

Compared to PTA, PTU adds more mechanics to combat, such as Flanking, Struggle Attacks that can be used even if the user has no usable Moves, Attacks of Opportunity, and various combat maneuvers.

~Balance~

Neither PTA nor PTU is particularly balanced.

In PTA, Class power is all over the place. Psychics and all of their Advanced Classes tend to break the game, while some Researcher Advanced Classes have Features that just let you draw and sketch really well and really fast. Some Classes, like Godspeaker, have powerful combat nukes that take multiple days to refresh. There are lots of Features that range from merely annoying for a GM and jarring to the game world (ex: the Ranger can make a Pokemon with a Skill such as Firestarter or Freezer appear anywhere they would like - yes this includes the former in the arctic or the latter in a volcano) to flat out game-warping, such as Hex Maniac's Mind Control or Bodysnatcher's ability to act as a Ditto but for humans.

As noted above, the damage numbers are higher and swingy, and compounding that, AOE attacks tend to be large in the game (Water Pulse, a fairly common low-ish Level Move, hits all targets within 3 meters of the user) making them difficult to use without hitting allies but also very powerful in certain circumstances in a way that makes encounter and map design difficult.

--

In PTU, Classes can generally be sorted into two tiers - those that participate in combat directly (ex: Martial Artist, Ninja, etc) and those that don't (ex: Duelist, Ace Trainer, etc). Direct combat Classes are stronger than Classes that don't participate in combat directly, and you can get a fairly well-balanced game. Supernatural Classes are also an iffy proposition but to a far lesser degree than the problems with all Psychics in PTA and some of the Mystic and Martial Artist Advanced Classes.

~Final Commentary~

Feel free to ignore my opinion, but it's clear where I stand on this already. PTU is a far better system to get into at this point, especially because there is still a burgeoning Discord community around it (if you somehow got here without knowing about our Discord server, you can join it at https://discord.gg/p4hr3bb), meaning you can find people to discuss the system with and get help from as well as more easily find players to join a game you run. Back when the other PTU devs and I left PTA, the system was at a point of stagnancy where long-standing problems simply couldn't be addressed due to bureaucracy and the number of arbitrary pet issues that other devs had taken as their own sacred cows.

After we left, the rest of the dev team quickly collapsed, leaving just Dr Mr Stark to maintain the system. He's taken the stance of not making major changes and leaving in a lot of the problematic elements of the system (ex: Psychic's superiority, the existence of Mind Control and Bodysnatcher, the current damage numbers), and has no plans on making major adjustments. If you're still interested in PTA, then by all means get a group together and play! All of us on the PTU team had fun with the system back in the day, after all. But I think it'd be downright disingenuous at this point to pretend like the consensus is anything but in favor of PTU. We had a lot of people angry at us for "abandoning PTA" when we left the team, and for the most part those people who were skeptics or upset swapped over to PTU because they found it suited their needs better. Before you ask, no we don't know if there are any big PTA communities out there now.

If I can sneak in a final bit of shameless promotion, we're working on another system called Pokemon Journeys that's even further removed from PTU than it was from PTA. It's a much more streamlined game system than either of the two and tries to make combat even tighter and more tactical. It's currently in active development and playtesting, so stop by our Discord server sometime and chat about it!