Traditionally, one catches a wild Pokémon by battling them and throwing an empty Pokéball at them. Read on for some special edge cases.
Regular Battles
During the Trainer phase of Battling with a wild Pokemon, the Main Character throws an empty pokéball. The Trainer then rolls their Empathy stat and the Pokémon rolls HP. The GM also adds the Pokémon's Bond with the trainer to that trainer's empathy roll. If the empathy roll beats the HP roll, the Pokémon is captured.
A Bond of 3 or higher will always succeed.
Stealing Pokémon
A Pokémon may only be registered to one Pokéball at a time. To break this registration, a special device is needed. Only The Evil Team Members (PCs or NPCs) can obtain these devices, and they cannot start with them at character creation.
- Use your connections to get a capture device: Roll Grunt.
- On a 6 or less, they can't hook you up, and you've made local authorities suspicious.
- On a 7-9, you get a one-time-use Pokéball that can be used on Pokémon that are already owned. It can only be used once (even if it fails) unless a Pokémon is present with the ability Ball Fetch
- On a 10+, you get a device that will convert any Pokéball to one that can override Pokémon ownership. Don't lose it.
For any other playbooks, you must find these sorts of devices through Roleplaying.
You could also capture Pokémon in other ways, like cages, nets, etc. Get creative and don't get caught!
Legendaries
Attempts to capture Legendaries will always fail unless you have a Bond of 10 or higher, or if you use a Master Ball. Master Balls are not available at character creation and must be found through Roleplaying. Try hitting up Silph Co.