- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
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So if a definition of "baby" is all you need, why not, "any Pokémon that immediately hatches from an egg incapable of breeding entirely (including Ditto) as is"?
Since Legendaries can't breed, they can't produce eggs, so aren't babies. Since Phione can breed with Ditto, a Legendary or not, it's not a baby.
Since Nidorina and Nidoqueen are not '1st stage' pokémon that hatch without hacking, they aren't babies.
If it's based on breeding inability and simply 'evolution upon happiness', Wynaut is suddenly not a baby (evolves at level 15), despite needing an item to enduce said breeding.
Pikachu makes Pichu despite needing no item. Lucario makes Riolu despite needing no item. Both evolve on happiness. Breeding with items on Gen II pokemon doesn't happen until Gen III, when the idea was to conquer how said Pokémon could evolve yet again when breeding was first introduced. You'll notice item-breeding goes from Gen II->Gen III, Gen III->Gen IV, and Gen I->Gen IV, but all Gen I->Gen II don't need items to make their baby stages.
There is no way to summarize babies under a united definition: some need items attached to their parents, some don't; some evolve by level, most evolve on happiness, and four evolve from external pressures (movesets, held item, specific pogey in the back seat of the party). Use any one and you exclude others that are still defined as "pre-evos", which everything but Togepi and Riolu fall under and are considered 'babies' by the majority of the community.
Riolu/Lucario is the one break from item breeding, simply because it's the only evo-line /since/ Gen II to not backtrack its established evo-lines (or lack thereof) with a pre-evo.
What's important is that they cannot breed with anything~ Ditto won't even tap that, and it'd whore itself across the board if someone let it.
The whole Stage 1/Basic thing? I never played the TCG. Not everyone does. Regardless of it being a BIG group, they shouldn't be the ones we cater to when trying to label evolutions and lack thereof, because this is about the video game, not the card game. What the card game labels their cards isn't what we necessarily should label our sprites, since it's the lesser media.
Calling things basic/intermediate/final are misnomers, since any two stage basic/final line (Ponyta/Rapidash for example) is capable of becoming a basic/intermediate/final line in future generations and saying 'basic/final' without indicating 'well, it was true previously' is pretty much a cop-out. So I think Stage 1/2/3 works fine, since it makes future evolutions less 'finalized' and more 'open to eventual additions'.
Sounds petty, but calling Munchlax a 'base' when I can choose to never breed for one supersedes its place as a 'base'. Same with most Gen IV and all of Gen III's pre-evos.
In the same line, I believe anything that was the start of its evo-line in the first Gen is appeared in should be the so-called 'base', regardless. And only when Game Freak throws us a future pre-evo of an existing evo-line that can breed...well, then I'll think differently.
Since Legendaries can't breed, they can't produce eggs, so aren't babies. Since Phione can breed with Ditto, a Legendary or not, it's not a baby.
Since Nidorina and Nidoqueen are not '1st stage' pokémon that hatch without hacking, they aren't babies.
If it's based on breeding inability and simply 'evolution upon happiness', Wynaut is suddenly not a baby (evolves at level 15), despite needing an item to enduce said breeding.
Pikachu makes Pichu despite needing no item. Lucario makes Riolu despite needing no item. Both evolve on happiness. Breeding with items on Gen II pokemon doesn't happen until Gen III, when the idea was to conquer how said Pokémon could evolve yet again when breeding was first introduced. You'll notice item-breeding goes from Gen II->Gen III, Gen III->Gen IV, and Gen I->Gen IV, but all Gen I->Gen II don't need items to make their baby stages.
There is no way to summarize babies under a united definition: some need items attached to their parents, some don't; some evolve by level, most evolve on happiness, and four evolve from external pressures (movesets, held item, specific pogey in the back seat of the party). Use any one and you exclude others that are still defined as "pre-evos", which everything but Togepi and Riolu fall under and are considered 'babies' by the majority of the community.
Riolu/Lucario is the one break from item breeding, simply because it's the only evo-line /since/ Gen II to not backtrack its established evo-lines (or lack thereof) with a pre-evo.
What's important is that they cannot breed with anything~ Ditto won't even tap that, and it'd whore itself across the board if someone let it.
The whole Stage 1/Basic thing? I never played the TCG. Not everyone does. Regardless of it being a BIG group, they shouldn't be the ones we cater to when trying to label evolutions and lack thereof, because this is about the video game, not the card game. What the card game labels their cards isn't what we necessarily should label our sprites, since it's the lesser media.
Calling things basic/intermediate/final are misnomers, since any two stage basic/final line (Ponyta/Rapidash for example) is capable of becoming a basic/intermediate/final line in future generations and saying 'basic/final' without indicating 'well, it was true previously' is pretty much a cop-out. So I think Stage 1/2/3 works fine, since it makes future evolutions less 'finalized' and more 'open to eventual additions'.
But you also can't call a baby poké a 'base' pokémon when a good chunk of babies, by game breeding mechanics and regardless if you can catch them in the wild or not, need an item to be created. You can still get a Snorlax without needing to evolve a Munchlax. Thus a Snorlax can be its own 'base' as well as an 'evolutionary level 1'. And if Snorlax preceeds Munchlax in Gens, shouldn't Snorlax's place be cemented as 'base' since it came first anyway?
Sounds petty, but calling Munchlax a 'base' when I can choose to never breed for one supersedes its place as a 'base'. Same with most Gen IV and all of Gen III's pre-evos.
In the same line, I believe anything that was the start of its evo-line in the first Gen is appeared in should be the so-called 'base', regardless. And only when Game Freak throws us a future pre-evo of an existing evo-line that can breed...well, then I'll think differently.
;
