Project Metagame Workshop

[Schpoonman]

[Shufflemons/Draftmons - open to name suggestions!]

Something in the back of my mind tells me that this has already been invented, but I looked and couldn’t find anything. If someone can correct me then I’ll delete this post and try to revive the old OM instead.

Premise: Teams use a shared pool made from the natural learnsets and abilities of all six Pokémon, freely shuffling and swapping these moves and abilities among teammates, with each individual move and ability usable by only one Pokémon at a time

Metagame Explanation ​

In this metagame, your team’s moves and abilities function as a shared resource rather than something locked to individual Pokémon. All six abilities and all 24 moveslots from your team form a single communal pool that can be freely redistributed among teammates. Any Pokémon may inherit any number of moves as long as a teammate originally learns them, and may also inherit one ability from the pool. However, every move and every ability can only be claimed once: once a move is given to a Pokémon, no other teammate may use that move, and once an ability is assigned, no other Pokémon may take it. These swaps effectively reshuffle your team’s entire movepool and ability pool, allowing you to build creative, synergistic combinations while respecting strict one-time drafting limits.

@ Choice Band
Ability: Drizzle < From Pelipper
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- U-turn < From Pelipper
- Liquidation
- Close Combat
- Knock Off < From Pelipper

@ Life Orb
Ability: Swift Swim < From Barraskewda
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hurricane < From Gyarados
- Ice Beam < From Barraskweda
- Thunder
- Volt Switch

@ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Intimidate < From Gyarados
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Roost
- Flip Turn < From Pelipper
- Scald < From Gyarados
- Hurricane

@ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Volt Absorb < From Thundurs-Therian
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Earthquake
- Waterfall
- Brave Bird < From Pelipper


In this example, each Pokémon takes moves and abilities from teammates, with every option usable only once. Barraskewda claims Pelipper’s Drizzle, U-turn, and Knock Off; Thundurus-T takes Barraskewda’s Swift Swim, plus Hurricane from Gyarados and Ice Beam from Barraskewda’s movepool; Pelipper picks up Intimidate & scald from Gyarados and Flip Turn from Barraskewda, and Gyarados grabs Volt Absorb from Thundurus-T and Brave Bird from Pelipper. Every move and ability appears exactly once, showing how the team’s learnsets and abilities can be freely shuffled into new, creative combinations. You can also choose to keep your abilities and moveset if you want as well, you don't have to swap.

This format offers the creativity of move- and ability-swapping metas without the usual chaos, because every option can only be used once. You’re constantly balancing power and opportunity cost—yes, you can run Comfey just to give Primarina Triage Draining Kiss, but doing so means your Comfey becomes a dead slot without its signature ability. Building a team becomes a puzzle: how do you shuffle your shared pool of abilities and moves to maximize synergy without wasting resources? The result is a highly strategic, combinational metagame where smart drafting, clever role compression, and imaginative set design are rewarded.

Potential bans and threats.
- OU banlist, alongside the usual suspects that get banned in OMs where abilities and moves are changed around, such as and ".
- Abilities like Huge Power, Pure Power, Water Bubble, Imposter etc.

Questions:
- Has this been invented already?
- I was also considering being able to swap type combinations around as well. For example, by nicknaming your pokemon to that of your teammate you could swap around their typing. It could be a bit too much though.

I posited this a few gens back as "Melting Pot" without the Ability swapping (I myself got the idea from a chatter on Showdown), and while I do think the teambuilding element offers merit, we're getting pretty dense on OMs.

Also Mew and Smeargle would need to go.

 

[Clas]

[Shufflemons/Draftmons - open to name suggestions!]

Something in the back of my mind tells me that this has already been invented, but I looked and couldn’t find anything. If someone can correct me then I’ll delete this post and try to revive the old OM instead.

Premise: Teams use a shared pool made from the natural learnsets and abilities of all six Pokémon, freely shuffling and swapping these moves and abilities among teammates, with each individual move and ability usable by only one Pokémon at a time

Metagame Explanation ​

In this metagame, your team’s moves and abilities function as a shared resource rather than something locked to individual Pokémon. All six abilities and all 24 moveslots from your team form a single communal pool that can be freely redistributed among teammates. Any Pokémon may inherit any number of moves as long as a teammate originally learns them, and may also inherit one ability from the pool. However, every move and every ability can only be claimed once: once a move is given to a Pokémon, no other teammate may use that move, and once an ability is assigned, no other Pokémon may take it. These swaps effectively reshuffle your team’s entire movepool and ability pool, allowing you to build creative, synergistic combinations while respecting strict one-time drafting limits.

@ Choice Band
Ability: Drizzle < From Pelipper
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- U-turn < From Pelipper
- Liquidation
- Close Combat
- Knock Off < From Pelipper

@ Life Orb
Ability: Swift Swim < From Barraskewda
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hurricane < From Gyarados
- Ice Beam < From Barraskweda
- Thunder
- Volt Switch

@ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Intimidate < From Gyarados
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Roost
- Flip Turn < From Pelipper
- Scald < From Gyarados
- Hurricane

@ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Volt Absorb < From Thundurs-Therian
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Earthquake
- Waterfall
- Brave Bird < From Pelipper


In this example, each Pokémon takes moves and abilities from teammates, with every option usable only once. Barraskewda claims Pelipper’s Drizzle, U-turn, and Knock Off; Thundurus-T takes Barraskewda’s Swift Swim, plus Hurricane from Gyarados and Ice Beam from Barraskewda’s movepool; Pelipper picks up Intimidate & scald from Gyarados and Flip Turn from Barraskewda, and Gyarados grabs Volt Absorb from Thundurus-T and Brave Bird from Pelipper. Every move and ability appears exactly once, showing how the team’s learnsets and abilities can be freely shuffled into new, creative combinations. You can also choose to keep your abilities and moveset if you want as well, you don't have to swap.

This format offers the creativity of move- and ability-swapping metas without the usual chaos, because every option can only be used once. You’re constantly balancing power and opportunity cost—yes, you can run Comfey just to give Primarina Triage Draining Kiss, but doing so means your Comfey becomes a dead slot without its signature ability. Building a team becomes a puzzle: how do you shuffle your shared pool of abilities and moves to maximize synergy without wasting resources? The result is a highly strategic, combinational metagame where smart drafting, clever role compression, and imaginative set design are rewarded.

Potential bans and threats.
- OU banlist, alongside the usual suspects that get banned in OMs where abilities and moves are changed around, such as and ".
- Abilities like Huge Power, Pure Power, Water Bubble, Imposter etc.

Questions:
- Has this been invented already?
- I was also considering being able to swap type combinations around as well. For example, by nicknaming your pokemon to that of your teammate you could swap around their typing. It could be a bit too much though.

Despite OMMs and Convergence existing, I think this just barely stands out enough. HOWEVER, this really needs examples via custom game to be shown off. I'm down to showcase this throughout the next 2 weeks or so, since the teammate restriction definitely helps solidify this idea as unique. The idea feels like a successor to Chimera 1v1, something without representation this gen, which is cool.

Testing in CG also helps test if this is actually a good idea haha, usually restrictions don't work too well so we'll see :)

 

[Imperator Romanum]

Despite OMMs and Convergence existing, I think this just barely stands out enough. HOWEVER, this really needs examples via custom game to be shown off. I'm down to showcase this throughout the next 2 weeks or so, since the teammate restriction definitely helps solidify this idea as unique. The idea feels like a successor to Chimera 1v1, something without representation this gen, which is cool.

Testing in CG also helps test if this is actually a good idea haha, usually restrictions don't work too well so we'll see :)

Thank you!

I've made a team, hit me up on ps and we can get some examples. Preliminary banlist of all ubers, usual broken abilities (huge power, imposter, water bubble) and pokemon (smeargle/mew)!

 

[Cuddly]

Almost Every Ability​

Metagame Premise: Almost every single ability is active at once, except for banned/restricted abilities and you can remove 6 abilities from your opponent by nicknaming your Pokemon the ability you want to restrict.

Details:
-Restricted abilities are abilities that will not apply to all Pokemon. Only Pokemon using that ability will have that effect. So for instance, Huge Power will be restricted for obvious reasons, but any Pokemon like Azumarill can put Huge Power in their ability slot and get the effect of Huge Power.
-Banned abilities will be entirely absent from the meta. They won’t be applied to every Pokemon and can’t be used on native Pokemon. So a Gothitelle using Shadow Tag will not be allowed.

Bans:

Right off the bat, all the usual suspects are being banned outright.
Restricted:

To make the metagame actually playable, all the actively hindering abilities will be restricted. A metagame where all your Pokemon have Truant and Slow Start would be miserable to play.
This is a rare moment where Truant gets restricted on a metagame.
Abilities like Dry Skin, Fluffy, No Guard could also be restricted if they end up being too hindering, even though they are mostly positive abilities.


The remaining “usual suspects” that in most metagames get restricted will also be restricted here too. These are your Huge Powers, your Mold Breakers, your Magic Guarders. This isn’t a comprehensive list but these abilities will definitely be restricted.


To make things simple, all abilities override each other like Weather or Terrain will also be restricted. This is so that we don’t have to decide which weather/terrain gets set when switching in.


Also all immunity abilities are going to be restricted. Eliminating multiple types for every Pokemon would be pretty bad to say the least. Weaknesses and the type chart are a core part of Pokemon. Allowing type immunity abilities would break the type chart.

Questions:
-Is the nickname restriction rule necessary?
-How should abilities that are identical interact?
-What are some other changes you’d want to see?

 

[chartung17]

Almost Every Ability

Metagame Premise: Almost every single ability is active at once, except for banned/restricted abilities and you can remove 6 abilities from your opponent by nicknaming your Pokemon the ability you want to restrict.

Details:
-Restricted abilities are abilities that will not apply to all Pokemon. Only Pokemon using that ability will have that effect. So for instance, Huge Power will be restricted for obvious reasons, but any Pokemon like Azumarill can put Huge Power in their ability slot and get the effect of Huge Power.
-Banned abilities will be entirely absent from the meta. They won’t be applied to every Pokemon and can’t be used on native Pokemon. So a Gothitelle using Shadow Tag will not be allowed.

Bans:

Right off the bat, all the usual suspects are being banned outright.
Restricted:

To make the metagame actually playable, all the actively hindering abilities will be restricted. A metagame where all your Pokemon have Truant and Slow Start would be miserable to play.
This is a rare moment where Truant gets restricted on a metagame.
Abilities like Dry Skin, Fluffy, No Guard could also be restricted if they end up being too hindering, even though they are mostly positive abilities.


The remaining “usual suspects” that in most metagames get restricted will also be restricted here too. These are your Huge Powers, your Mold Breakers, your Magic Guarders. This isn’t a comprehensive list but these abilities will definitely be restricted.


To make things simple, all abilities override each other like Weather or Terrain will also be restricted. This is so that we don’t have to decide which weather/terrain gets set when switching in.


Also all immunity abilities are going to be restricted. Eliminating multiple types for every Pokemon would be pretty bad to say the least. Weaknesses and the type chart are a core part of Pokemon. Allowing type immunity abilities would break the type chart.

Questions:
-Is the nickname restriction rule necessary?
-How should abilities that are identical interact?
-What are some other changes you’d want to see?

Effectively, everything has:

1. Speed Boost
2. Battle Armor
3. Sturdy
4. Damp
5. Oblivious
6. Cloud Nine
7. Color Change
8. Own Tempo
9. Suction Cups
10. Clear Body
11. Magnet Pull
12. Soundproof
13. Pressure
14. Thick Fat
15. Pickup
16. Hustle
17. Sticky Hold
18. Liquid Ooze
19. Overgrow
20. Blaze
21. Torrent
22. Swarm
23. Rock Head
24. Rivalry
25. Heatproof
26. Download
27. Iron Fist
28. Adaptability
29. Skill Link
30. No Guard
31. Technician
32. Aftermath
33. Anticipation
34. Forewarn
35. Unaware
36. Tinted Lens
37. Filter
38. Scrappy
39. Solid Rock
40. Reckless
41. Pickpocket
42. Sheer Force
43. Contrary
44. Unnerve
45. Cursed Body
46. Weak Armor
47. Multiscale
48. Regenerator
49. Analytic
50. (Probably about 50 more)

I'm only halfway through the ability list and I don't feel like finishing it, but already you've eliminated way too many aspects of the game, including critical hits, status conditions, secondary effects, weather, the type chart (Tinted Lens and Filter + Solid Rock effectively negate everything but x4, x1/4, and x0 effectiveness), and stat boosts (apart from speed). Also, you're not even living up to the name of the meta; about two thirds of the abilities are either banned, redundant (e.g. Big Pecks is useless when you have Clear Body), or neutralized by other abilities (e.g. several abilities give immunity to Intimidate). This does not sound like a fun meta.

 

[Hiusi guy]

Cheerleadermons (WIP) ​

Premise: Everytime a pokemon switches (manual or pivot) or faints, they give the incoming pokemon their 2 highest raw stats (excluding hp) and their ability. Stats higher than ones passed aren’t replaced, switches don't stack.

Examples:

:cheers:

(Colors denote what would be passed)

If mew were to switch into jirachi, jirachi’s Atk and Spe would be replaced by mews and it would gain synchronize until it switches out

Ability: Synchronize
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe [341 / 299 / 236 / 212 / 237 / 328]
Jolly Nature
- U-turn


Ability: Serene Grace + Syncronize
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD [404 / 299 / 237 / 212 / 328 / 328]
Careful Nature
- U-turn
If jirachi then Switched to celebi, celebi would gain serene grace and have it’s def and spdef replaced

Ability: Natural Cure + Serene Grace
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe [341 / 184 / 237 / 328 / 328 / 299]
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- U-turn

Moving away from the pixies, if a pokemon has a higher raw stat than the pokemon passing the stat, the stat isnt passed

Ability: Wonder Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe [1 / 279 / 189 / 86 / 159 / 196]
Jolly Nature
- Wave Crash
- Flare Blitz
- Volt Tackle
- Wood Hammer


Ability: Multitype + Wonder Guard
EVs: 252 Atk [381 / 372 / 276 / 248 / 276 / 276]
Adamant Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Healing Wish

(Unrefined) Initial Banlist: Ubers, Huge / Pure Power, Shadow Tag, Arena Trap, Moody, Baton Pass, Shed Tail, Last Respects. Restrictions: Magnet Pull, Neutralizing Gas
Possible Bans / Restrictions: Blissey, Chansey, Hoopa-U, Regenerator, Unburden, Weather Speed / Weather Rock, prolly some others i haven't thought of yet

Meta Prediction: The meta id assume would lean towards being bulky due to bulk being more applicable to every pokemon as apposed to offense's which could require using up a move slot to abuse. A possible later restriction could be regen for the fact that it can be very easily chained when built around, and create games that last forever or are oppressively in favor of the regen user

FAQ (probably):
Q: How do restrictions work?
A: Only Abilities are restricted, restricted abilities can’t be passed any teammate

Q: What if multiple stats are the highest?
A: Whichever stat comes first, similar to how beast boost works, as shown with arceus

Q: What happens if a passed ability is the same as the new mons ability?
A: Preferably this would result in the ability activating once when applicable

Questions for community:

• Is this too similar to other om(m)s? Closest i can think of is Godly Gift and Shared Power, but stat / abilities aren't permanent.
• Any other things that are possibly broken?

That’s all, bye

 

[Lectrys]

Almost Every Ability​

Metagame Premise: Almost every single ability is active at once, except for banned/restricted abilities and you can remove 6 abilities from your opponent by nicknaming your Pokemon the ability you want to restrict.

Details:
-Restricted abilities are abilities that will not apply to all Pokemon. Only Pokemon using that ability will have that effect. So for instance, Huge Power will be restricted for obvious reasons, but any Pokemon like Azumarill can put Huge Power in their ability slot and get the effect of Huge Power.
-Banned abilities will be entirely absent from the meta. They won’t be applied to every Pokemon and can’t be used on native Pokemon. So a Gothitelle using Shadow Tag will not be allowed.

Bans:

Right off the bat, all the usual suspects are being banned outright.
Restricted:

To make the metagame actually playable, all the actively hindering abilities will be restricted. A metagame where all your Pokemon have Truant and Slow Start would be miserable to play.
This is a rare moment where Truant gets restricted on a metagame.
Abilities like Dry Skin, Fluffy, No Guard could also be restricted if they end up being too hindering, even though they are mostly positive abilities.


The remaining “usual suspects” that in most metagames get restricted will also be restricted here too. These are your Huge Powers, your Mold Breakers, your Magic Guarders. This isn’t a comprehensive list but these abilities will definitely be restricted.


To make things simple, all abilities override each other like Weather or Terrain will also be restricted. This is so that we don’t have to decide which weather/terrain gets set when switching in.


Also all immunity abilities are going to be restricted. Eliminating multiple types for every Pokemon would be pretty bad to say the least. Weaknesses and the type chart are a core part of Pokemon. Allowing type immunity abilities would break the type chart.

Questions:
-Is the nickname restriction rule necessary?
-How should abilities that are identical interact?
-What are some other changes you’d want to see?

I expect you're going to do something about these abilities you didn't mention?

• Stall (hindering)
• Mycelium Might (Stall + Mold Breaker for status moves...more benefit than hindrance?)
• -Ates (all override each other)
• Normalize (net negative)
• Defeatist (hindering)

On another note, Prankster and Gale Wings (and Triage to a certain extent) vs. Dazzling and friends will be...interesting.

 

[AintTellingUNothing]

Wait do moves get transferred as well? (also why are you giving recoil moves to a mon with 1HP?)

Ability: Wonder Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe [1 / 279 / 189 / 86 / 159 / 196]
Jolly Nature
- Wave Crash
- Flare Blitz
- Volt Tackle
- Wood Hammer