What constitutes an attack: Difference between revisions

If a trainer issues movement such as:

This, in my book, is fine. The Pikachu is being told to get as near to the opponent as possible, and this in my book is perfectly legitimate, as this is not going to effect the outcome very much at all, and may only do a little extra damage under certain circumstances. I would handle this situation as normal.

Another example:

Once again, fine. The trainer is not gaining anything from this, and if an attack which had widespread attack was being used, natural instinct would come into play and the Spearow would probably keep its distance. But, the Spearow will still take some damage unless the attack being used against it misses, or was a poor decision.

Here is another one:

This one is not so good to do. Running away in my eyes, as I see it, is not the best thing to do unless the Heracross was in mortal danger. If that is the case, Heracross would be perfectly within its rights to flee, and I would happily allow it, although Heracross still taking damage, for example. However, if it was not necessary to run away, I would frown upon this act, and most of the time would not let it work, and backfire on the user, in some way, shape or form.

This is another example:

This is another worse one, as the Pokémon, Cyndaquil here, is being told to directly dodge the attack. As I don't count any movements as attacks, I would not let it work very well. I would maybe allow one hit to miss, possibly two depending on which Pokémon were involved, and the others to hit, and probably cause any appropriate after effects, such as paralysis.

This is one that has only recently come in, and is important too. It caused this whole argument in the first place:

This is a difficult one to say what happens. Although Elekid could be told to move closer, like I said in my first example, in this case the trainer is trying to get a harder hit. Though the trainer misjudged the properties of Thunder (Many, after having seen the Smash brothers game, believe it comes straight down. This is not true. Thunder arcs towards its opponent starting from the Pokémon who used it.), this sort of scenario can happen with attacks that could be enhanced by certain actions. Now, there are two views on this. The first is that it is an attack, but I do not fall into that group. I fall into the other group, which is making the move not work completely properly, because of whatever reason, or by getting Pidgey to instinctively move away, in this case. If I was reffing the battle involved, I would either allow Elekid to not make the attack properly, or cause Pidgey to move away. In these circumstances, it is dependent on other factors, such as Pidgey's ordered attacks, the health and energy levels of each Pokémon, and so on.