PTU - Removing BSR

Why You Should Remove Base Stat Relations

Since PTU 1.05 was released, the dev and community opinion on BSR has changed, and the current recommended house rule is to remove Base Stat Relations entirely, as it just doesn't work. The thing to keep in mind with BSR is that there are, in fact, Good Pokemon and Bad Pokemon, and BSR strictly enforces these two categories.

Good Pokemon: have HP and their preferred attack stat (based on level up Moves) as their highest two stats, or can get there with just Natures

Bad Pokemon: have HP trapped under low value stats (especially Speed) and/or have their preferred attack under their non-preferred attack

As you might expect, Good Pokemon includes a lot of traditionally very good Pokemon - Blaziken, Lucario, Greninja, Charizard, etc. A lot of Pokemon sit at the lower end of Good, but then you get to truly Bad Pokemon. Dugtrio has Base 4 HP trapped under EVERY OTHER STAT. The Mimes have similarly pitiful HP trapped under everything. Fan favorite Gastly's 3 HP is tied at the bottom, making it even worse at low levels than its Typing and Moves suggest.

Strictly enforcing BSR means that Good Pokemon are completely unaffected, because they are already able to invest primarily in attack and HP. Bad Pokemon MUST invest in stats they might not want or even be able to use effectively, increasing the gap between Good and Bad every level.

Then, consider how much system space is spent on tools that alleviate BSR problems: Vitamins, Anti-Vitamins, Natures, Pokemon Caretaking, Stat Aces, Attack Conflict, etc. Players can dig Pokemon out of their naturally Bad status by investing huge amounts of resources in them, which is great, right? Good Pokemon use those resources, too, and maintain the gap.

If you cut BSR, Good Pokemon are completely unaffected. Bad Pokemon can now spend points where they need to immediately, which will make your players happy. Stat values across the board will also stay closer, which will make you as the GM happy, because you won't need to over or undertune based on specific targets.

"But what if my players put all their points in Attack! That's OP and BUSTEDEDED!!!"

a) Good Pokemon can already do this with BSR strictly enforced, and at bad tables, they do so with frequency. Keeping BSR does not fix this, it just prevents a subset of (usually still bad) Pokemon from doing it.

b) If your players are the kind of people who will 100% Attack invest, feel free to remove BSR and put in a new rule: 'a Pokemon can't have more than 50% of its total stat points invested into a single stat'. Problem actually solved.

One final note - if you remove BSR, as recommended, Enduring Soul's base feat no longer does anything. Let your players who want ES take another low end ES feat and count it as the base feat.