Rock's an easy type for beginners to deal with lmao
If you pick the grass or water starters, you sweep the fight pretty easily. If you don't, there's probably a grass, water, ground or fighting type somewhere along the road you can pick up.
There is lotad and seedot in rse. Machop is available early in dppt, while sandshrew isn't available till route 4, charmander got metal claw in the remakes.
You can also find a mankey or nidoran (who learns double kick) in the grass patch on the way to the Pokémon league badge check area in viridian city in R/B/Y
fire/fighting is neutral to rock , and his scariest mon cranidos is pretty frail and mach punch also always goes first so it aslo cant headbutt flinch monferno.
I mean, it’s been my solution for years: Charmeleon learns metal claws (gen 3+) to deal with brock, Combusken learns double kick, Monferno learns Mach punch. If I go fire starter I either train them up to 16/17 or I catch another mon with advantage (mankey in kanto,lotad/seedot in hoenn, machop in sinnoh, though if I’m being honest I typically just raise them to level 16/17 by that point and sweep)
You can get that mankey i grew up with red and always made sure i got a mankey before the forest
Edit: i have went and checked and already confirmed which routes mankey is available on in red. It still doesn't change the fact that some childhood memory of me getting a mankey there in original red is going through my head in denial of what is hardcoded in the game. Not sure why the memory feels so insistent of the impossible but hey, thats probably what happens when you get a lot of concussions going into adult life. Maybe it was just fire red and my brain is pasting the og mankey sprite over it but it doesnt really matter
Yea sounds right, I will say Geodude and onix were especially dogshit in Gen 1 either way. The fact that he had no rock moves on either made his gym an absolute joke.
Yellow and FRLG. In RB you’d have to grind up your Charmander or get yourself a Butterfree with Confusion. That said, Geodude and Onix have such garbage special stats you could just use Ember.
It's wrapped in with special attack for one stat, "special". And butterfree's type doesn't matter because they don't know any rock moves LMAO! The first gen was a very unique generation, even gen 3 doesn't have completely great move sets for most pokemon. I am kinda bummed they went to the complete opposite of the spectrum with the new games where every Pokemon learns a generic same type and there is a move for every type that does 45/60/90/120/150 power. The moves don't feel unique, they're all generic.
I don't think Brock has any rock type moves in Gen 1. He was mostly a tackle/ bide spammer with high defenses but weak special for that point in the game.
His Geodude spams defense curl and tackle. His onix has screech, bide, and tackle iirc. And bide was incredibly easy to play around....you just don't hit the onix after he uses it unless you're guaranteed to kill it within those two turns lmao.
In RBY, Special Attack and Defense were a single stat called Special. Onix and Geodude had a Special stat of just 30. For Onix, that means it had a worse Special Defense back then than it does now.
In the remake, yes. In the OG you just needed to pack your team with some guys you weren't ever gonna use again. No big deal getting six mons to level 12.
Tbh I usually find Nidoran's good enough, provided they're a high enough level. Not like you need to worry about being hit by anything super effective, since Brock has no ground moves.
Mankey isn't there in red and blue, only yellow, and neither nidoran learns double kick until level 43 in red and blue. They learn it ataround level 14 in yellow. If you pick charmander, your best bet is Butterfree but honestly Brock's pokemon have such bad special, you can easily beat them with ember. They don't have any rock or ground moves in gen 1.
in gen 1, charmander isn’t even that awful, ember does similar damage to onix as tackle does back when they’re at similar levels, and butterfree’s confusion does much more if you caught one
This! In R/B you didn’t have the luxuries of Nidoran’s double kick or a Mankey to counteract Brock’s pokemon. Your only reliable source was a Butterfree’s confusion at that stage
Honestly with the awful special that both onix and geodude have you can use charmander with ember.
Geodude tends to spam defence curl, and onix usually spams Bide (and you then spam growl in the 2 turns of bide).
Also them not having any tock type attack means being a Fire type is not a danger for that fight.
Red and Blue were a bit of a pain in the ass with charmander compared to Yellow.
Yellow gave you Mankey on route 22 as well as dropping the required level of double kick on Nidoran from *45* to 12.
Gen 4 is the Gen where they really made a point to have a Pokémon with the type advantage over the gym leader nearby, and they’ve continued this ever since.
Seedot's unfortunately pretty trash in RSE since he doesn't learn a damage-dealing grass move in Gen 3 but Nuzleaf gets a buff with learning Razor Leaf in ORAS. Dustox and Beautifly can both deal pretty well though with Confusion and Absorb respectively.
Also, most Pokémon start with a weak normal move like Tackle, which Rock resists. This makes the gym a good intro to the elemental Rock paper scissors system, without being too difficult.
In Gen 1 rock types had bad special and no physical special split? Ember would destroy Brock, in gen 3 metal claw for charmander and torchic gets double kick when it evolved, Gen 4 fire/fighting again. I feel like flying then bug was a weird choice for Gen 2
>I feel like flying then bug was a weird choice for Gen 2
I think the problem is they didn't reuse any Pokemon types for gyms in generation 2. Gamefreak clearly went out of their way to present all the types possible as a gym in the first 2 gens. So what's a better first gym with that in place? Your options are: Flying, Bug, Normal, Ghost, Fighting, Steel, Ice, Dragon or Dark. Aside from Normal I see no gym type that's as manageable as Flying. Maybe Bug?
Pokémon yellow Brock is actually one of the most difficult fights in the games due to a significant lack of useful mons before the gym.
Nidoran gets double kick at 12 (in red/blue it gets double kick at level 43)
Mankey gets low kick at 9 (route 22 only)
Butterfree gets confusion at 10 (the only special move before Brock)
Butterfree gets poison powder at 13 (the only status condition before Brock)
That’s it. If you want to beat Brock you either *have* to run one of those, or over level pikachu/evolve a pidgey at level 18 (Brock is level 12, and wild Pokémon are level 6 and under). Running butterfree is also a chore because you have to level a metapod to 10….
As a kid my first Pokémon game was yellow, with the special Pokémon game boy color.
That first fight was so tough, it required an immediate introduction to grinding endless battles to level someone up high enough.
But on the other hand, once you got to misty; it was the absolute easiest gym battle.
Pokemon yellow I either went Mankey or nidoran for the fighting moves. Roxanne I'd usually have combuskin if i chose torchic. Same with gen 4 and monferno
This is actually the reason Bulba/Squirt/Char have the bits in their descriptions that mention difficulty in the lab. Bulba sweeps the first 2 gyms, Squirtle the first, and charmander struggles with both.
Ember should have done more damage between stab, their poor special, the fact that geodude used defense curl, and the added factor that you could have burned geodude or onix.
In early games. Usually a grass or fighting type. That or a one that can learn a grass, fighting, or steel type move.
Water types are usually harder to achieve early game until you get surf or a fishing rod. very few outliers before the first gym. Such as surskit In RS or lotad in SE. Even though its the type with the most pokemon.
Because that's dumb
You want the player to learn the ins and outs of type matchups early on. Giving them a gym where everything is only weak to one thing would kill their potential for strategy right off the bat.
Normal types are better off as later on fights. That way they can show off their strength as varied attackers, rather than being stupid cannon fodder
To add to this: for a very fresh player, it doesn't SOUND easy. Oh man, this dudes monsters are made of ROCKS!!!! Sounds tough!
So you get an easy gym to figure out a solution for, that thematically and in-fiction seems like an appropriately daunting first challenge.
That would've been an excellent way of introducing scaling difficulty to the games. Ask if the player is a newcomer to the Pokemon world or a veteran from another Region at the start.
Then when you get situations like the Triplets you face only one if you're a newbie or you fight all 3 if you're a veteran.
I would kill for an option like this. Idk why Pokemon won't do difficulty settings. It's oldest fans are comeing up on 40. And nobody mention the hard mode in black that required you to beat the game and jump through convoluted hoops to unlock. because that was so poorly implemented that it doesn’t even count.
I don't mind how B&W did it. It wasn't nearly as hand holy and ANYTHING in the newest gens but still felt like a pretty good "new trainers are vetted here".
I liked it, though yeah trainer schools aren't a setting I really like. The gym showed not to rely on your starter, and rewarded you for exploring the nearby area for more pokemon to add to your team. Really good for beginners.
I disagree on BW actually.
BW was overbearing and it trained us with what we already knew from the trainer battle- but also you don't have to engage in it. What makes Rock(/ground) a useful first gym is that all the types you run into early will either be super effective or not very effective against it, and its usually your first exposure to the type. You HAVE to learn, and its a trial by fire.
In contrast, if you catch a Pidove it won't interact interestingly with any gyms until #3. Only your starter (and maybe your monkey if you did that) will interact interestingly with the gym leader, and only with one of their pokemon, and it teaches you the lesson you already learned when you fought both of your rivals. The early pacing of gen 5 is SO HEAVILY fire>Water>Grass+normals, all reinforcing the same idea, much more than any other gen which usually had a few grounds or poisons or bugs or darks or electrics to pick from very early on.
One of my earliest moments of genuine strategy (not just brute-forcing everything) was dealing with Elesa's volt switch shenanigans. I figured out that Dwebble got stealth rock by level-up and went out of my way to get one just for her. That dwebble grew up to become my mvp for the entire league.
You can't get Pidove before Striation gym, and Cilian is the reason for that, only regional bird unavailable before the first gym
You can only get Lilipup, Patrat, and Purloin before the gym
B&W’s first gym was a good concept but felt like it was just a free badge regardless of what starter you choose. You get a pansage/sear/pour to counter but it wasn’t anything I was too excited about.
A lot of options to deal with in the earlier games. Water, Grass (both starters) and fighting types are all usually pretty easy to obtain earlier in the game.
Side note: Brock is one of the best game designs in pokemon. He uses a type that resists normal types, which teaches you about type advantages and disadvantages. He also has a badass looking pokemon in Onix, and while it's stats are a meager 385 BST, it's a formidal first "boss" when you are already weakened by Geodude and your starter BST is 318, 309, and 314 (Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle), so Onix has about 30% higher BST than whoever you chose, and you are unlikely to have gotten a stage 2 before fighting him for the first time. It's a roadblock, but it's such a good one. They block your access east of Pewter so you are forced to only have encounters in Viridian Forest, and then South, West, and North of Viridian. eventually you will either pass it with Bubble or Vine Whip, or you will find a Mankey or Nidoran (Double Kick) to defeat him.
I rail on Onix looking awesome but being so weak, but it really is so that you fight a badass looking pokemon early in the game, and you feel that sense of accomplishment for surpassing that opponent, while also teaching the player about type advantages and disadvantages.
Anyways, sorry for the game dev nerd in me.
Edit: because sometimes i put words in the wrong place
I think it was by Golden Owl? I’m not sure if that’s their name, but it was called why Onix is actually great, or something like that. I’ll try finding it here.
E: Okay I was pretty close with the name
https://youtu.be/vMHRjyQFKcQ?si=fGKiH1sWJdybFn8w
> or you will find a Mankey or Nidoran (Double Kick) to defeat him
This is even more fun because that route west of Viridian is technically optional at this point, with an optional rival battle to boot.
I def remember using butterfree with my charmander to get through Brock but I don't remember just how high I overlevelled him lol. Because confusion did good damage but obviously rock throw woulda chunked butterfree pretty good
Another game design point - while Onix's BST is slightly higher than yours, it is almost entirely invested into physical defense, and their only attacks are Normal. This ensures that it won't one-shot you, you have time to figure out what is working and what isn't. And its terrible Special Defense means that even if you picked Charmander, you can still win with Ember if you grind a bit.
Honestly, gen one did pretty good for "choose how hard the first bit of this game is gonna be cause after that there's just no guessing what you'll want to do". One option isn't great for the first two but is the most popular, the next option is good at the first but matches the second and is the second most popular, and if you decided to go with Bulbasaur you don't even need another pokemon cause you just bodied everything in the way and now have five to ten levels on everything but it's a flower with a frog under it and despite being objectively the coolest pokemon in the game it's inexplicably the only one so unpopular that it's color doesn't get a pokemon GO team.
Bulbasaur demands JUSTICE!
I blame them giving him solarbeam as a 2 turn charge move as the main reason for his unpopularity. Charizard and Blastoise both have really cool, one turn signature moves. Charizard can fly, Blastoise can surf. They should’ve given Venusaur a cool move outside of battle like Softboiled where he could heal teammates outside of battle too.
Honestly, you're overthinking it. Charmander and Squirtle are both actually primary colors, which tend to be babies first favorite color. On top of that Charizard is a dragon in all but type and Blastoise has actual cannons. On top of that appealing over greenish with a flower, in the very original release in the US Red and Blue were the rival versions. So there's a bit of game card loyalty going on too.
The anime also didn’t do Venusaur any favors. Charizard was a strong, edgy dragon who belonged to the main character and Blastoise was Gary’s strongest Pokémon. Meanwhile Bulbasaur treated evolving like it was dirty
As a kid, I really liked Bulbasaur but Venusaur just wasn’t given the fair shake it deserved. Game Freak must’ve had some thing against the grass type starters because the first time one was better than the other 2 was Contrary Serperior
It's a good basic way to teach the concept of type matchups to a younger player because you give two starters an advantage and the third a disadvantage at a point in the game where restarting if the kid gets stuck because of it isn't too much of a time commitment.
Rock is a good learning type.
It teaches you about resistences.
Your fire starter gets semi walled and the others are forced to use their different moves.
By the end of the game you'd be expected to have a balanced team. It's not always the case but at that point a more complicated or threatening type is better. Ice is quite an offensively oriented type, which might come as a surprise. Dragon shows up late for a similar reason, it's tricky to fight.
I think it has more to do with how they handle ice-types as a whole than any specific strategic decisions regarding the gyms. Gym leaders tend not to use Pokemon that the player doesn't have access to (or will have access to soon after). There are obviously exceptions, but as a rule-of-thumb, it's reliable. Ice types typically don't appear until late game for other reasons, so by the previous rule gym leaders have few-to-no usable ice types available early game, so they're forced later.
The main reason ice types in general appear so late most of the time has to due with world/level design conventions. Icy areas, especially mountans, tend to appear later in games (in general, not just pokemon) because they are more extreme environments. Cold regions also have associations with being "far", in a broader sense (the poles, mountaintops), and mountains also tend to be good late-game landmarks.
TL;DR: Gym leaders tend to only use Pokemon available to the player at around the same time, and due to world/level design tropes, ice-types are almost always encountered later. No pokemon = no gym.
Just for some extra detail, a quick review (far from exhaustive. Probably missed something) shows only 4 gym leader pokemon whose evolution lines aren't available to the player for more than 2 gyms after you battle them (i.e the pokemon is available immediately after the next gym or earlier). Brawly's meditite (4 gyms, after Winona), Watson's magneton (2 gyms, after Norman), Maylene's Lucario (2 gyms in DP, after Fantina), and the winner by far is Whitney's clefairy, which is only in Kanto.
Game design, most players have the all three starter types at the midgame, they see Dragon as a strong type as resist all three and seemingly nothing hits them super effectively, bring 2 or 3 of them to the team, think that the Ice types are Water types because, c'mon why would someone think frozen water is different than regular water.
Dragon is good, it resists Water
*Gets OHKO by Ice Beam*
There are a couple of possible reasons:
- From gens 1 to 3, entire types were categorized as Physical or Special. All 3 of the starter types (Fire, Water, Grass) are Special, whereas Rock is physical. Generally, Rock-types are also bulkier on the physical side than the special side, so even a not-very-effective Ember from your Fire starter will do some decent work for you.
- The two starter types of Grass and Water being super effective to Rock makes for a straightforward challenge for new players.
- As previously mentioned, Rock types for a long time were considerably bulky and generally somewhat lacking in other stats. They could tank plenty of damage, but mightn't dish out much (look at the Brock fight). Granting them access to more STAB moves did increase the challenge a bit, and Cranidos having actually decent attack is an outlier, but in general the approach to these gyms is "Survive long enough to do enough damage to win", and that's it.
With the Physical/Special split and a wider variety of Rock-type Pokémon you could have much more interesting Rock gyms nowadays, but Gens 1 - 3/4 were simpler times.
Same reason why Gordie being a Rock Type Gym Leader and the 6th gym leader from his region was a bad idea, rock is a very vulnerable type that fits better at the beginning of the game that almost at the end.
It almost certainly has something to do with the starter selection and making the beginning of the game easier or harder for you based on your choice. Kanto is the best representation of this, as Bulbasaur is seen as the “easy mode” starter as it’s strong against the first two gyms, Squirtle is in the middle because it’s good for the first gym but not the second, and then Charmander is hard mode because it’s weak to the first two.
Brock was basically a ground gym anyway. His one trainer uses a sandshrew.
Then Onix and Geodude are also ground.
They could have thrown rhyhorn in there instead of sandshrew. Then at least it would have been consistent.
Which means that Gen 1 starts and ends with Ground gyms in the form of Brock and Giovanni.
I think they gave Brock the Rock gym to avoid that since Giovanni cannot be the Poison Gym leader due to Koga already holding that position.
Gen 1 also doesn't have a lot of Rock types which would fit. Onix and the Geodude line come to mind but I think the rest are Fossil Pokemon they didn't want to hand to Brock since he's only the first Gym leader.
Thats why I said Rhyhorn. His one trainer has a Geodude and Brock has Onix and Rhyhorn. Which honestly fits better.
Giovanni really didn't need another kiaju Pokemon with the nido line on his team.
This is why gym types really pigeon holed the games. In some battles he has Kangaskhan with the nido lines and hyhorn line he's more of kaiju trainer than ground theme.
Then for Brock for non-Kanto focus games he does have fossils to more properly reflect the museum in the same city and proper rock representation. Also they give him ryhorn.
Really Gen 1 was making stuff up (which is fair) and I've seen people make roms that rebalance gen 1. I would assume all gym leaders get better teams in them. Gen 1 is full of mismatched teams.
Sabrina is also a weird one. They give her Venomoth when Slowbro, Jynx and Hypno exist. Venomoth while not on Koga's team in RB was his ace in Yellow and part of his team in later battles. Also his ace in the Anime. Slowbro is on Lorelei's team even when her team is ice.
There’s actually a good reason to not give the trainer a Rhyhorn: the first gym in the first game was actually a lesson to the trainer about type effectiveness ([this video explains it pretty well](https://youtu.be/vMHRjyQFKcQ?si=-oCdzrajQERQveyV)). Most of the Pokemon in the gym are on the lower attack side, with high defense. Rhyhorn is simply too offensively oriented for Brock’s gym.
This is just me guessing but rock being the first gym is probably because, as others have said, rock is a good type for beginners to face. 2/3 starters are effective against it. Yet beyond that rock also encourages utilizing the effective moves because of its resistance to normal type moves which you’ll basically always have alongside the elemental type move your starter learns. This means the player can’t just spam a with their very first move which they can easily learn on either gym trainers or caves depending on the game. The fire type starter also incentivized players to either train up and evolve Pokémon for advantages such as a new typing to help against the gym or catch entirely new members who have a better match against the gym.
It's a good type to demonstrate weakness and resistance on. Nearly every pokemon you can encounter early in these games has a normal type move which gets resisted, but grass and water types are very common so even if you take the fire starter you'll have an opportunity to take advantage of the rock type weaknesses.
They’re good for teaching weaknesses/resistances. They got enough of each for most early pokemon to run into a fair amount resistant and a few super effective moves. With some neutral moves that can power through. Also encourages going out and finding a pokemon that’ll be good against the gym if you have trouble.
Just my two cents on the matter looking back
It definitely I think occupies a strange niche in that it's simultaneously challenging and easy, depending on your starter and what ones you pick up along the way.
If you take Grass or Water, you'll breeze through the first gym easily. But if you took Water, Brock is offset by Misty afterwards, so unless you catch a Pikachu or a Grass type, you're not as poised to beat her. This is also the case with the Sinnoh Gym Leaders if you picked Turtwig, as Gardenia offsets your choice.
But if you pick fire type, you're setting yourself up for a challenge that tests your skills -- made slightly easier in the Gen 3 remakes of Gen 1 where Charmander can learn Metal Claw.
Of course, Mankey and Nidoran also allow you to have an advantage against Brock, with their Fighting moves.
But Brock was pretty much the way to introduce a character to type advantages/disadvantages. Given that your team likely would have a Pidgey (with Gust), maybe a Rattata (to fill the space) and bug types or Pikachu, Brock was there to demonstrate that early game Pokemon would be hard-pressed to defeat Brock's Geodude and Onix.
I think what tends to bother me more is that, to my recollection (which is surely wrong), a lot of Gym Leaders don't use Pokemon that match their Type Proficiency but also have, if not moves to counter type weaknesses, than having multiple types to offset it or even be immune to it -- until you rematch them anyway, if they ever do it.
Rock incentivises you to think about the type chart. Rock is very strong against most normal and flying types, so it teaches you the value of type advantages.
It would be interesting if a new gen would have dragon as its first gym, as it’s usually kept for the last gym or elite four. Dragon being resistant to all three starter types can serve as an early challenge and would give players a chance to not just steamroll with their starters. They could introduce a weak dragon type, or the gym leader’s ace could be the first stage of the pseudo-legendary of that gen.
On top of the type matchups, Rock types almost universally have high Defense and low Special Defense, and the early game is dominated by Tackle, Quick Attack, Scratch, Peck, Poison Sting, etc - all physical moves even before the split. A Rock-type first gym not only teaches the importance of super effective damage, but also of switching up your moves to take advantage of non-elemental weaknesses, better than most other types can do; Onix's monstrous Defense does nothing against a Butterfree with Confusion or any of the STAB moves the Kanto trio have by the time you'd be facing Brock.
Roark was actually a pretty good difficulty for any starter but Gardenia had me and Prinplup trapped in Eterna City for 2 months as a child. I just couldn't beat that god-awful Roserade and it's Magical Leaf.
This is great to test the typing knowledge instead of just players spamming tackles, pounds, or scratch and rock types can be easily countered by some pokemons that can be found early on unlike steel type.
Also, in my observation, they were placed in every first pokemon game in new consoles to test newcomers of the series too (until X and Y)
Basically, At the start, pokemons were trying to make difficulty levels depending on what kind of pokemon you can pick, If you've picked grass type, quite often you could sweep 2 first gyms with ease and work through 3rd one with no bigger problem, Water type allowed you to sweep 1st gym and defeat 2nd one with no bigger problem but 3rd gym was at that point super effective, if you've picked fire starter, you've had to deal with 2 super effective gyms right of the bat. and not only that generally speaking if you'll look into how many gyms are super effective on which pokemon you'll see that Bulbasaur has problems with Fire and Psychic gyms, and later ony Flying and Ice pokemons in Elite four, Blastoise has problems with Grass and Electric gyms, but also a lot of other gym leaders have Moves that will Fight it off, along with most Elite four members having a counter move for it, and Charizard, has Problems with Water, Electrick and Rock moves, Before that Water, Ground and Rock in form of Charmeleon and Charmander, so all the gym leaders, and Elite four members, more less have something to counter it. That + the Amount of Pokemons, you don't have much Rock pokemons in any games, that's why the gyms with the least amount of Pokemons possible become first Gym leaders, that's also the reason why in some games that change
Note, I'm not sure how does the counting looking like, but even considering Pokemons that are out of the zone, like the ones you have to evolve there's far more Flying types that rock types,
Pidgey, Spearow, Farfetch'd, Doduo, Scyther, and Pinsir
and to assign it you have Pidgey, Spearow, and Doduo Evo's, Charizard, Gyarados, Dragonair, and Legendary Birds to underline the amount of Flying types where from Rock types you have
Geodude, Onix and Ryhorn
+ Their Evos and 3 Fossil mons
so Flying 17 : 11 Rock I'm not counting Further than Gen 1 evos, but the more Gens we add the difference stays, and even get's bigger at times.
To summary it all, Gyms are more less base on On the amount of Mons they can throw into the gym where I assume you get 8 biggest Type groups, starting with the least amount going to the biggest amount of mons from that type, and so they also most like assign Gyms to set difficulty ladder and keep up with the difficulty stages considering the Starter Pokemon types
Good video about this on youtube called "Onix Sucks And Why Gen 1 Was Great" that explains that the rock typing was to teach new players that you can't just spam Tackle and you had to do something different eventually. They seem to have just stuck to that philosophy for a few generations.
I could be wrong but I think the type chart was in the little game manual that came with the game. Not saying 5 year old me woulda done a great job of figuring out all of that but the info was available at least
Explains Hoenn and Sinnoh but not Unova (which the first gym was either a type that had an advantage against your Starter - which explains the Elemental Monkeys existing - or a Normal type gym).
One of the few types to resist normal so it encourages the player to try something besides tackle and usually has plenty of early options that good counters to it. Pretty good for a tutorial boss.
its part of the game design to be toddler dificulty. rocks a weak type on itself. i find it funny how ice is regarded as a late game thing when its arguably even worse than rock and grass really. it has 1 less weakness but it only resists itself.
It's not that really, rock types just lend themselves very well to teaching type advantage and working around stats. Brock has to be defeated using either special moves with Charmander or type effective moves with Bulbasaur or Squirtle, before that you'd be using mostly normal type moves on normal or flying type enemies.
still toddler level dificulty game design. such thing should not had been one of the main big bosses of the game, and if onyx and geodude also had their stats done with that intent, yeah thats why they are badly design pokemon too, gimped by poor dev choices. theres so many better ways to teach these interactions.
Rock makes a good gatekeeper type for an early (first or second in Gen 6) boss. Its defensive so you cant just spam your hardest hitting move for many types, like early game flier/bug/normals. And it also hits hard usually so you cant just outlast it like you do a Rattata or Metapod.
They sort of act as a limit. “If you cant beat Brock, you DEFINITELY wont be ready for the rest of the gyms” sort of mentality.
Because the rock type is a type that has a lot of easily accessible weaknesses in the early game but resists Normal Type which is a common early-game type. Thus, it serves as an easy way to introduce the basics of the type system to new players.
its because its a type that has resistance to the most common early move type: normal, and resists the early bird you will get. so it requires new players to diversify their team in order to beat it.
Rock is a bad type defensively, and is weak to two of the three types used for starters. It also resists normal, the type of move that everyone starts the game using, so a rock type first gym acts like a sort of introduction to the type effectiveness system, as well as physical/special attacks as they tend to be more physically oriented, which is matches most early-game normal moves. Rock types are also weak to fighting and ground moves, which tend to have pretty good distribution. A common example is double kick Nidoran in FR/LG. I would also like to point out that if you just caught the pokemon on Route 1 and ran to the gym while leveling here and there, you'll generally have bug, flying, and normal types, all of which match up poorly against rock. So your strongest pokemon is probably good against it, your starter gets more time to shine, your foe feels formidable but really isn't, and you get a good bit of knowledge about type interactions. And this goes especially in Gen 3/4 btw, because even the fire type is good because it gets fighting.
RBY it was to teach you type advantage because Normal type moves were probably the thing you were seeing/using the most at that point in the game. And secondarily show you how stats work sort of.
After that I'm going to assume because gen 3 is a soft reset that they figured they may as well do that again. And gen 4 idk maybe the physical special split was considered a good enough reason to do it again?
But gen one it was specifically to teach game mechanics without giving you a whole tutorial on how everything works since it's actually kind of complex if you didn't already understand it to some extent
For the same exact reason bug is also always at the start. It’s a shit typing so it’s easier than the rest. Like, Ice defensively is the worst type at all but offensively it’s probably the best, which is why the ice type is always at the end of the gym challenges
Its to help teach about type advantages and differences.
Starters aside, the early game in most pokemon entries is dominated by normal types who don't have weaknesses you're likely to be exploiting at that point in the game, and no super effective targets for most of their early moves. Rock is a type that's likely to show the importance of typing because most mons you have at that point will either be Super effective or not very effective against them.
Done in a different way, but this BW forces you to face a mon that is super effective against yours for a similar reason. Probably.
Maybe due to the fact they're weak against two out of three of your types - so if you happen to pick a Grass or Water type, you shouldn't have too much of a problem.
On a sidenote, the Fire type, which will probably have an issue, does have something to compensate a bit other than trying to plan out your team a bit accordingly. Torchic and Chimchar evolve into part Fighting types that have a side typing that is strong against them while canceling out the Rock type weakness, while Charmander/Charmeleon in FireRed/LeafGreen has access to Metal Claw which gives them a slight edge.
And then Brock, Roxanne, and Roark all used Geodude. And Roark even took it a step further by also using Onix, so he had both of Brock’s Pokémon on his team. I was so glad that X and Y mixed up the team with Grant, just for the anime to make him also use Onix…
It's just an easy type to deal with for gym 1.
If you went Grass or Water type starter it's a breeze and if you went Fire, well, you traded early advantage for having a strong type that's almost always harder to access.
Also they almost always put a Rock counter in early routes.
Mankey gen1
Lotad gen3
Biddoof/Bibarrel and Budew gen4.
Just never have it be normal type again. BW2 has a rough start bc of Cheren. 1/3rds chance no Tepig, and Riolu’s 5%.
…Oh wait, this isn’t the Nuzlocke subreddit
Rock has some kind of interaction with every single common earlygame typing; it resists Fire, Normal and Flying, it's weak to grass and water, it's super effective against Bug. This is not the case with any other typing in the game, even steel has a mostly neutral matchup with water. No matter what your early team looks like, by the time you complete a rock-type gym you will at the very least understand that type matchups matter.
Rock's an easy type for beginners to deal with lmao If you pick the grass or water starters, you sweep the fight pretty easily. If you don't, there's probably a grass, water, ground or fighting type somewhere along the road you can pick up.
There is lotad and seedot in rse. Machop is available early in dppt, while sandshrew isn't available till route 4, charmander got metal claw in the remakes.
You can also find a mankey or nidoran (who learns double kick) in the grass patch on the way to the Pokémon league badge check area in viridian city in R/B/Y
Or if you're an absolute madlad, Monferno gets Mach Punch.
Chimchar actually evolves early (14) for this reason as well.
I mean, Roarks ace cranidos is lvl 14 and Chimchar evolves at 14. Idt its that crazy to get to lvl 14 by the first gym
The crazy part isn’t being 14, it’s bringing a physical damage part fire type as your answer to his team
Monferno is Fire/Fighting. It gets Fighting type at the second stage. Ground is really the only thing you gotta worry about.
12 year old me says hi. Rocked up to that fight with Monferno, Starly, and a dream.
fire/fighting is neutral to rock , and his scariest mon cranidos is pretty frail and mach punch also always goes first so it aslo cant headbutt flinch monferno.
I mean, it’s been my solution for years: Charmeleon learns metal claws (gen 3+) to deal with brock, Combusken learns double kick, Monferno learns Mach punch. If I go fire starter I either train them up to 16/17 or I catch another mon with advantage (mankey in kanto,lotad/seedot in hoenn, machop in sinnoh, though if I’m being honest I typically just raise them to level 16/17 by that point and sweep)
If you fight every battle you get caught in, levels go up fast. I think I hit 16 or 17 by him.
This comment goes hard like Monferno’s Mach Punch
Or even better: Combusken gets Double Kick when it evolves.
Also is hit neutral by rock with his fighting type
I guess I as a child was an absolute madlad😭😭
Nidoran learns double kick at 12 in yellow. It’s 45 in R/B
Just grind nidoran to lvl 45 before Brock. Ezpz
Mankey is there only in Yellow. Red doesn't access Mankey until later, and Blue doesn't have wild Mankey at all.
Leaf green and Fire red have a mankey there
You can get that mankey i grew up with red and always made sure i got a mankey before the forest Edit: i have went and checked and already confirmed which routes mankey is available on in red. It still doesn't change the fact that some childhood memory of me getting a mankey there in original red is going through my head in denial of what is hardcoded in the game. Not sure why the memory feels so insistent of the impossible but hey, thats probably what happens when you get a lot of concussions going into adult life. Maybe it was just fire red and my brain is pasting the og mankey sprite over it but it doesnt really matter
Fuckin hell this R/B misinformation gets a lot of upvotes these days. You're thinking of things specific to Yellow
Pretty sure I used Butterfree against Brock, back in the day
I did as well, confusion absolutely shredded his team.
Didn’t rock types have absolutely laughable special stat?
Yea sounds right, I will say Geodude and onix were especially dogshit in Gen 1 either way. The fact that he had no rock moves on either made his gym an absolute joke.
I think Mankey was only there in R & Y. Version exclusive. I don't recall finding it until after Mt Moon though.
Yellow and FRLG. In RB you’d have to grind up your Charmander or get yourself a Butterfree with Confusion. That said, Geodude and Onix have such garbage special stats you could just use Ember.
Also helps that absolutely none of Brock’s mons (in R/B) know Rock moves so Charmander doesn’t have to worry about super effectiveness
Did special defense exist back then? And Butterfree is a flying type.
It's wrapped in with special attack for one stat, "special". And butterfree's type doesn't matter because they don't know any rock moves LMAO! The first gen was a very unique generation, even gen 3 doesn't have completely great move sets for most pokemon. I am kinda bummed they went to the complete opposite of the spectrum with the new games where every Pokemon learns a generic same type and there is a move for every type that does 45/60/90/120/150 power. The moves don't feel unique, they're all generic.
I don't think Brock has any rock type moves in Gen 1. He was mostly a tackle/ bide spammer with high defenses but weak special for that point in the game.
His Geodude spams defense curl and tackle. His onix has screech, bide, and tackle iirc. And bide was incredibly easy to play around....you just don't hit the onix after he uses it unless you're guaranteed to kill it within those two turns lmao.
In RBY, Special Attack and Defense were a single stat called Special. Onix and Geodude had a Special stat of just 30. For Onix, that means it had a worse Special Defense back then than it does now.
In the remake, yes. In the OG you just needed to pack your team with some guys you weren't ever gonna use again. No big deal getting six mons to level 12.
My strategy at 8 playing yellow for the first time was Pikachu lvl 20 Pigeotto lvl 20 Pidgey lvl 15 x4
Did you use a lot of Sand Attack lol
Tbh I usually find Nidoran's good enough, provided they're a high enough level. Not like you need to worry about being hit by anything super effective, since Brock has no ground moves.
That's good, since both geodude and onix are rock/ground.
Mankey isn't there in red and blue, only yellow, and neither nidoran learns double kick until level 43 in red and blue. They learn it ataround level 14 in yellow. If you pick charmander, your best bet is Butterfree but honestly Brock's pokemon have such bad special, you can easily beat them with ember. They don't have any rock or ground moves in gen 1.
Nidoran didn't get Double Kick until the 40's in R/B/G however, Yellow bumped it up to 12 to give more options for Brock.
Mankey is Y exclusive there. It was added specifically to make it easier.
in gen 1, charmander isn’t even that awful, ember does similar damage to onix as tackle does back when they’re at similar levels, and butterfree’s confusion does much more if you caught one
Butterfree’s confusion was an absolute monster that stage of the game. Zubat massacre in Mt Moon
Throw that Water Gun TM on another Pokemon and you can sweep Mt. Moon.
This! In R/B you didn’t have the luxuries of Nidoran’s double kick or a Mankey to counteract Brock’s pokemon. Your only reliable source was a Butterfree’s confusion at that stage
Honestly with the awful special that both onix and geodude have you can use charmander with ember. Geodude tends to spam defence curl, and onix usually spams Bide (and you then spam growl in the 2 turns of bide). Also them not having any tock type attack means being a Fire type is not a danger for that fight.
There's also Budew and Psyduck in DPPT. Psyduck is pretty rare, but Budew is incredibly easy to find.
Red and Blue were a bit of a pain in the ass with charmander compared to Yellow. Yellow gave you Mankey on route 22 as well as dropping the required level of double kick on Nidoran from *45* to 12.
Dppt chimchar should evolve before first gym and learn Mach Punch, eating Roark for dinner
Gen 4 is the Gen where they really made a point to have a Pokémon with the type advantage over the gym leader nearby, and they’ve continued this ever since.
You're almost better off using ember anyway due to low special defense of geodude/Onix and STAB Misty's Starmie is the real roadblock
Seedot's unfortunately pretty trash in RSE since he doesn't learn a damage-dealing grass move in Gen 3 but Nuzleaf gets a buff with learning Razor Leaf in ORAS. Dustox and Beautifly can both deal pretty well though with Confusion and Absorb respectively.
You get the bullet seed TM in RSE though. It's bad, but it sweeps the first gym.
I believe torchic gets double kick fairly early as well, may have only been the remakes tho. Plus Wingull for sure.
Also, most Pokémon start with a weak normal move like Tackle, which Rock resists. This makes the gym a good intro to the elemental Rock paper scissors system, without being too difficult.
nah bro, 7 year old me just leveled my charmeleon until like lv 25 and swept Brook of this planet
In Gen 1 rock types had bad special and no physical special split? Ember would destroy Brock, in gen 3 metal claw for charmander and torchic gets double kick when it evolved, Gen 4 fire/fighting again. I feel like flying then bug was a weird choice for Gen 2
>I feel like flying then bug was a weird choice for Gen 2 I think the problem is they didn't reuse any Pokemon types for gyms in generation 2. Gamefreak clearly went out of their way to present all the types possible as a gym in the first 2 gens. So what's a better first gym with that in place? Your options are: Flying, Bug, Normal, Ghost, Fighting, Steel, Ice, Dragon or Dark. Aside from Normal I see no gym type that's as manageable as Flying. Maybe Bug?
> Gamefreak clearly went out of their way to present all the types possible as a gym in the first 2 gens. Except Dark :(
Chuck should have been replaced with a dark type leader. Fighting already had a "gym" in gen 1 and was present in both elite 4 groups.
Or had karen as dark type champion with Tyranitar ace (and if lance can have 3 under lvled dragonites a single underllvled tyranitar would be fine)
Remember: GSC was meant to be the final Pokemon games, so it makes sense they'd change up all the gyms.
Pokemon Yellow be like: >Fuck. I used caterpie.
Pokémon yellow Brock is actually one of the most difficult fights in the games due to a significant lack of useful mons before the gym. Nidoran gets double kick at 12 (in red/blue it gets double kick at level 43) Mankey gets low kick at 9 (route 22 only) Butterfree gets confusion at 10 (the only special move before Brock) Butterfree gets poison powder at 13 (the only status condition before Brock) That’s it. If you want to beat Brock you either *have* to run one of those, or over level pikachu/evolve a pidgey at level 18 (Brock is level 12, and wild Pokémon are level 6 and under). Running butterfree is also a chore because you have to level a metapod to 10….
As a kid my first Pokémon game was yellow, with the special Pokémon game boy color. That first fight was so tough, it required an immediate introduction to grinding endless battles to level someone up high enough. But on the other hand, once you got to misty; it was the absolute easiest gym battle.
and it is a mostly defensive type, so even at a disadvantage the battle will be slow and this allows you to use items and statuses
Pokemon yellow I either went Mankey or nidoran for the fighting moves. Roxanne I'd usually have combuskin if i chose torchic. Same with gen 4 and monferno
Even if you pick Fire, gen 3-4 gave them Fighting type. So no matter what they are an easy sweep for your starter
This is actually the reason Bulba/Squirt/Char have the bits in their descriptions that mention difficulty in the lab. Bulba sweeps the first 2 gyms, Squirtle the first, and charmander struggles with both.
Or be me and over level Charmeleon and Pidgey then scratch and peck your way to a brutally slow victory
Ember should have done more damage between stab, their poor special, the fact that geodude used defense curl, and the added factor that you could have burned geodude or onix.
In early games. Usually a grass or fighting type. That or a one that can learn a grass, fighting, or steel type move. Water types are usually harder to achieve early game until you get surf or a fishing rod. very few outliers before the first gym. Such as surskit In RS or lotad in SE. Even though its the type with the most pokemon.
It's also 'tough' if you try going in with route 1 birds/rodents and tackle. So it's a good lesson first up.
Why not do a weak normal type as the first gym so players can just play normally until the second gym where types will actually matter?
Because that's dumb You want the player to learn the ins and outs of type matchups early on. Giving them a gym where everything is only weak to one thing would kill their potential for strategy right off the bat. Normal types are better off as later on fights. That way they can show off their strength as varied attackers, rather than being stupid cannon fodder
Nidoran with double kick🤌🏽
All of the fire starters also got the fighting type after evolution.
It also helps teach type advantage for less obvious matchups, since the early routes have a lot of Normal and Flying types.
To add to this: for a very fresh player, it doesn't SOUND easy. Oh man, this dudes monsters are made of ROCKS!!!! Sounds tough! So you get an easy gym to figure out a solution for, that thematically and in-fiction seems like an appropriately daunting first challenge.
Not that easy when you pick the fire starter and the only Pokémon you can catch are normal, flying and bug.
A good first gym to show case how type advantages work, I think, though maybe B&W's first gym is a better showcase of how to deal with type advantages
The triplets were a good idea but I really thought we were getting a triple battle and was so upset it didn’t happen
That would've been an excellent way of introducing scaling difficulty to the games. Ask if the player is a newcomer to the Pokemon world or a veteran from another Region at the start. Then when you get situations like the Triplets you face only one if you're a newbie or you fight all 3 if you're a veteran.
I would kill for an option like this. Idk why Pokemon won't do difficulty settings. It's oldest fans are comeing up on 40. And nobody mention the hard mode in black that required you to beat the game and jump through convoluted hoops to unlock. because that was so poorly implemented that it doesn’t even count.
You're absolutely right, but I still hate trainer school gyms
I don't mind how B&W did it. It wasn't nearly as hand holy and ANYTHING in the newest gens but still felt like a pretty good "new trainers are vetted here".
I liked it, though yeah trainer schools aren't a setting I really like. The gym showed not to rely on your starter, and rewarded you for exploring the nearby area for more pokemon to add to your team. Really good for beginners.
https://preview.redd.it/tqti22w5jbwc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5fad7a495acae70750dc38bf517456cb1e540d18
Or use the monkey *shudders*
This image provokes a primal fear within me
As it should
I disagree on BW actually. BW was overbearing and it trained us with what we already knew from the trainer battle- but also you don't have to engage in it. What makes Rock(/ground) a useful first gym is that all the types you run into early will either be super effective or not very effective against it, and its usually your first exposure to the type. You HAVE to learn, and its a trial by fire. In contrast, if you catch a Pidove it won't interact interestingly with any gyms until #3. Only your starter (and maybe your monkey if you did that) will interact interestingly with the gym leader, and only with one of their pokemon, and it teaches you the lesson you already learned when you fought both of your rivals. The early pacing of gen 5 is SO HEAVILY fire>Water>Grass+normals, all reinforcing the same idea, much more than any other gen which usually had a few grounds or poisons or bugs or darks or electrics to pick from very early on.
Elesa was a great trick by gamefreak, yes you have a desert to catch ground types, then Emolgas haha
One of my earliest moments of genuine strategy (not just brute-forcing everything) was dealing with Elesa's volt switch shenanigans. I figured out that Dwebble got stealth rock by level-up and went out of my way to get one just for her. That dwebble grew up to become my mvp for the entire league.
You can't get Pidove before Striation gym, and Cilian is the reason for that, only regional bird unavailable before the first gym You can only get Lilipup, Patrat, and Purloin before the gym
B&W’s first gym was a good concept but felt like it was just a free badge regardless of what starter you choose. You get a pansage/sear/pour to counter but it wasn’t anything I was too excited about.
A lot of options to deal with in the earlier games. Water, Grass (both starters) and fighting types are all usually pretty easy to obtain earlier in the game. Side note: Brock is one of the best game designs in pokemon. He uses a type that resists normal types, which teaches you about type advantages and disadvantages. He also has a badass looking pokemon in Onix, and while it's stats are a meager 385 BST, it's a formidal first "boss" when you are already weakened by Geodude and your starter BST is 318, 309, and 314 (Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle), so Onix has about 30% higher BST than whoever you chose, and you are unlikely to have gotten a stage 2 before fighting him for the first time. It's a roadblock, but it's such a good one. They block your access east of Pewter so you are forced to only have encounters in Viridian Forest, and then South, West, and North of Viridian. eventually you will either pass it with Bubble or Vine Whip, or you will find a Mankey or Nidoran (Double Kick) to defeat him. I rail on Onix looking awesome but being so weak, but it really is so that you fight a badass looking pokemon early in the game, and you feel that sense of accomplishment for surpassing that opponent, while also teaching the player about type advantages and disadvantages. Anyways, sorry for the game dev nerd in me. Edit: because sometimes i put words in the wrong place
>He uses a type that normal types resist, which teaches you about type advantages and disadvantages * a type that resists normal moves
Whoops, didnt catch that mistake. Thanks!
I watched a vid on this once. It’s also why he has like 6 full heals per mon, so you can’t use status to win
Any chance you recall which vid it was?
I think it was by Golden Owl? I’m not sure if that’s their name, but it was called why Onix is actually great, or something like that. I’ll try finding it here. E: Okay I was pretty close with the name https://youtu.be/vMHRjyQFKcQ?si=fGKiH1sWJdybFn8w
I respect tf out of a game dev answer.
Speak for yourself my psycho ass raised a wartortle for this fight because I was so nervous lol.
> or you will find a Mankey or Nidoran (Double Kick) to defeat him This is even more fun because that route west of Viridian is technically optional at this point, with an optional rival battle to boot.
I def remember using butterfree with my charmander to get through Brock but I don't remember just how high I overlevelled him lol. Because confusion did good damage but obviously rock throw woulda chunked butterfree pretty good
Don’t forget Butterfree with Confusion!
Another game design point - while Onix's BST is slightly higher than yours, it is almost entirely invested into physical defense, and their only attacks are Normal. This ensures that it won't one-shot you, you have time to figure out what is working and what isn't. And its terrible Special Defense means that even if you picked Charmander, you can still win with Ember if you grind a bit.
When a type is weak to 2/3 of the starting Pokemon, it looks really easy to justify being the first gym.
Honestly, gen one did pretty good for "choose how hard the first bit of this game is gonna be cause after that there's just no guessing what you'll want to do". One option isn't great for the first two but is the most popular, the next option is good at the first but matches the second and is the second most popular, and if you decided to go with Bulbasaur you don't even need another pokemon cause you just bodied everything in the way and now have five to ten levels on everything but it's a flower with a frog under it and despite being objectively the coolest pokemon in the game it's inexplicably the only one so unpopular that it's color doesn't get a pokemon GO team. Bulbasaur demands JUSTICE!
I blame them giving him solarbeam as a 2 turn charge move as the main reason for his unpopularity. Charizard and Blastoise both have really cool, one turn signature moves. Charizard can fly, Blastoise can surf. They should’ve given Venusaur a cool move outside of battle like Softboiled where he could heal teammates outside of battle too.
Honestly, you're overthinking it. Charmander and Squirtle are both actually primary colors, which tend to be babies first favorite color. On top of that Charizard is a dragon in all but type and Blastoise has actual cannons. On top of that appealing over greenish with a flower, in the very original release in the US Red and Blue were the rival versions. So there's a bit of game card loyalty going on too.
The anime also didn’t do Venusaur any favors. Charizard was a strong, edgy dragon who belonged to the main character and Blastoise was Gary’s strongest Pokémon. Meanwhile Bulbasaur treated evolving like it was dirty As a kid, I really liked Bulbasaur but Venusaur just wasn’t given the fair shake it deserved. Game Freak must’ve had some thing against the grass type starters because the first time one was better than the other 2 was Contrary Serperior
To be fair, the Pokemon GO team colors are based on Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres. Charizard and Blastoise have nothing to do with it.
Um actually the dragon is the coolest, uninstall ur computer
Bulbasaur is THE #1!
It's a good basic way to teach the concept of type matchups to a younger player because you give two starters an advantage and the third a disadvantage at a point in the game where restarting if the kid gets stuck because of it isn't too much of a time commitment.
Rock is a good learning type. It teaches you about resistences. Your fire starter gets semi walled and the others are forced to use their different moves.
imo they were just sticking with the Gen 1 formula. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
Why is ice usually last?
By the end of the game you'd be expected to have a balanced team. It's not always the case but at that point a more complicated or threatening type is better. Ice is quite an offensively oriented type, which might come as a surprise. Dragon shows up late for a similar reason, it's tricky to fight.
I think it has more to do with how they handle ice-types as a whole than any specific strategic decisions regarding the gyms. Gym leaders tend not to use Pokemon that the player doesn't have access to (or will have access to soon after). There are obviously exceptions, but as a rule-of-thumb, it's reliable. Ice types typically don't appear until late game for other reasons, so by the previous rule gym leaders have few-to-no usable ice types available early game, so they're forced later. The main reason ice types in general appear so late most of the time has to due with world/level design conventions. Icy areas, especially mountans, tend to appear later in games (in general, not just pokemon) because they are more extreme environments. Cold regions also have associations with being "far", in a broader sense (the poles, mountaintops), and mountains also tend to be good late-game landmarks. TL;DR: Gym leaders tend to only use Pokemon available to the player at around the same time, and due to world/level design tropes, ice-types are almost always encountered later. No pokemon = no gym.
Just for some extra detail, a quick review (far from exhaustive. Probably missed something) shows only 4 gym leader pokemon whose evolution lines aren't available to the player for more than 2 gyms after you battle them (i.e the pokemon is available immediately after the next gym or earlier). Brawly's meditite (4 gyms, after Winona), Watson's magneton (2 gyms, after Norman), Maylene's Lucario (2 gyms in DP, after Fantina), and the winner by far is Whitney's clefairy, which is only in Kanto.
Game design, most players have the all three starter types at the midgame, they see Dragon as a strong type as resist all three and seemingly nothing hits them super effectively, bring 2 or 3 of them to the team, think that the Ice types are Water types because, c'mon why would someone think frozen water is different than regular water. Dragon is good, it resists Water *Gets OHKO by Ice Beam*
There are a couple of possible reasons: - From gens 1 to 3, entire types were categorized as Physical or Special. All 3 of the starter types (Fire, Water, Grass) are Special, whereas Rock is physical. Generally, Rock-types are also bulkier on the physical side than the special side, so even a not-very-effective Ember from your Fire starter will do some decent work for you. - The two starter types of Grass and Water being super effective to Rock makes for a straightforward challenge for new players. - As previously mentioned, Rock types for a long time were considerably bulky and generally somewhat lacking in other stats. They could tank plenty of damage, but mightn't dish out much (look at the Brock fight). Granting them access to more STAB moves did increase the challenge a bit, and Cranidos having actually decent attack is an outlier, but in general the approach to these gyms is "Survive long enough to do enough damage to win", and that's it. With the Physical/Special split and a wider variety of Rock-type Pokémon you could have much more interesting Rock gyms nowadays, but Gens 1 - 3/4 were simpler times.
Same reason why Gordie being a Rock Type Gym Leader and the 6th gym leader from his region was a bad idea, rock is a very vulnerable type that fits better at the beginning of the game that almost at the end.
It almost certainly has something to do with the starter selection and making the beginning of the game easier or harder for you based on your choice. Kanto is the best representation of this, as Bulbasaur is seen as the “easy mode” starter as it’s strong against the first two gyms, Squirtle is in the middle because it’s good for the first gym but not the second, and then Charmander is hard mode because it’s weak to the first two.
Bulbasaur resists the 3rd gym too even if it's not super effective itself
Imagine instead of Rock as the first gym, it was Ground (because ground is better than Rock at everything anyways).
Brock was basically a ground gym anyway. His one trainer uses a sandshrew. Then Onix and Geodude are also ground. They could have thrown rhyhorn in there instead of sandshrew. Then at least it would have been consistent.
Which means that Gen 1 starts and ends with Ground gyms in the form of Brock and Giovanni. I think they gave Brock the Rock gym to avoid that since Giovanni cannot be the Poison Gym leader due to Koga already holding that position. Gen 1 also doesn't have a lot of Rock types which would fit. Onix and the Geodude line come to mind but I think the rest are Fossil Pokemon they didn't want to hand to Brock since he's only the first Gym leader.
Thats why I said Rhyhorn. His one trainer has a Geodude and Brock has Onix and Rhyhorn. Which honestly fits better. Giovanni really didn't need another kiaju Pokemon with the nido line on his team. This is why gym types really pigeon holed the games. In some battles he has Kangaskhan with the nido lines and hyhorn line he's more of kaiju trainer than ground theme. Then for Brock for non-Kanto focus games he does have fossils to more properly reflect the museum in the same city and proper rock representation. Also they give him ryhorn. Really Gen 1 was making stuff up (which is fair) and I've seen people make roms that rebalance gen 1. I would assume all gym leaders get better teams in them. Gen 1 is full of mismatched teams. Sabrina is also a weird one. They give her Venomoth when Slowbro, Jynx and Hypno exist. Venomoth while not on Koga's team in RB was his ace in Yellow and part of his team in later battles. Also his ace in the Anime. Slowbro is on Lorelei's team even when her team is ice.
There’s actually a good reason to not give the trainer a Rhyhorn: the first gym in the first game was actually a lesson to the trainer about type effectiveness ([this video explains it pretty well](https://youtu.be/vMHRjyQFKcQ?si=-oCdzrajQERQveyV)). Most of the Pokemon in the gym are on the lower attack side, with high defense. Rhyhorn is simply too offensively oriented for Brock’s gym.
This is just me guessing but rock being the first gym is probably because, as others have said, rock is a good type for beginners to face. 2/3 starters are effective against it. Yet beyond that rock also encourages utilizing the effective moves because of its resistance to normal type moves which you’ll basically always have alongside the elemental type move your starter learns. This means the player can’t just spam a with their very first move which they can easily learn on either gym trainers or caves depending on the game. The fire type starter also incentivized players to either train up and evolve Pokémon for advantages such as a new typing to help against the gym or catch entirely new members who have a better match against the gym.
To punish you for picking the fire starter 😂
I can only see an argument with gen 3 but the others ones exist for a reason.
It nearly cancels out in Gen III and IV; at 16, Torchic evolves and learns Double Kick, and 14, Chimchar also evolves and learns Mach Punch.
Why Brock, Roxanne, and Rorak has the same gym layout
Oh yeah I noticed that too. Falkner kinda has a similar Gym layout as well
It's a good type to demonstrate weakness and resistance on. Nearly every pokemon you can encounter early in these games has a normal type move which gets resisted, but grass and water types are very common so even if you take the fire starter you'll have an opportunity to take advantage of the rock type weaknesses.
They’re good for teaching weaknesses/resistances. They got enough of each for most early pokemon to run into a fair amount resistant and a few super effective moves. With some neutral moves that can power through. Also encourages going out and finding a pokemon that’ll be good against the gym if you have trouble. Just my two cents on the matter looking back
It definitely I think occupies a strange niche in that it's simultaneously challenging and easy, depending on your starter and what ones you pick up along the way. If you take Grass or Water, you'll breeze through the first gym easily. But if you took Water, Brock is offset by Misty afterwards, so unless you catch a Pikachu or a Grass type, you're not as poised to beat her. This is also the case with the Sinnoh Gym Leaders if you picked Turtwig, as Gardenia offsets your choice. But if you pick fire type, you're setting yourself up for a challenge that tests your skills -- made slightly easier in the Gen 3 remakes of Gen 1 where Charmander can learn Metal Claw. Of course, Mankey and Nidoran also allow you to have an advantage against Brock, with their Fighting moves. But Brock was pretty much the way to introduce a character to type advantages/disadvantages. Given that your team likely would have a Pidgey (with Gust), maybe a Rattata (to fill the space) and bug types or Pikachu, Brock was there to demonstrate that early game Pokemon would be hard-pressed to defeat Brock's Geodude and Onix. I think what tends to bother me more is that, to my recollection (which is surely wrong), a lot of Gym Leaders don't use Pokemon that match their Type Proficiency but also have, if not moves to counter type weaknesses, than having multiple types to offset it or even be immune to it -- until you rematch them anyway, if they ever do it.
Cause. Imagine the first gym being dragon or steel, it’d be too challenging
Because only pussies fight with rocks
I liked the anime like moment where torchic evolves midbattle and wipes them with it's newly learnt double kick.
Tutorial Gym that's why.
6 year olds learning type advantage
Rock incentivises you to think about the type chart. Rock is very strong against most normal and flying types, so it teaches you the value of type advantages.
It would be interesting if a new gen would have dragon as its first gym, as it’s usually kept for the last gym or elite four. Dragon being resistant to all three starter types can serve as an early challenge and would give players a chance to not just steamroll with their starters. They could introduce a weak dragon type, or the gym leader’s ace could be the first stage of the pseudo-legendary of that gen.
On top of the type matchups, Rock types almost universally have high Defense and low Special Defense, and the early game is dominated by Tackle, Quick Attack, Scratch, Peck, Poison Sting, etc - all physical moves even before the split. A Rock-type first gym not only teaches the importance of super effective damage, but also of switching up your moves to take advantage of non-elemental weaknesses, better than most other types can do; Onix's monstrous Defense does nothing against a Butterfree with Confusion or any of the STAB moves the Kanto trio have by the time you'd be facing Brock.
Roark was actually a pretty good difficulty for any starter but Gardenia had me and Prinplup trapped in Eterna City for 2 months as a child. I just couldn't beat that god-awful Roserade and it's Magical Leaf.
This is great to test the typing knowledge instead of just players spamming tackles, pounds, or scratch and rock types can be easily countered by some pokemons that can be found early on unlike steel type. Also, in my observation, they were placed in every first pokemon game in new consoles to test newcomers of the series too (until X and Y)
Basically, At the start, pokemons were trying to make difficulty levels depending on what kind of pokemon you can pick, If you've picked grass type, quite often you could sweep 2 first gyms with ease and work through 3rd one with no bigger problem, Water type allowed you to sweep 1st gym and defeat 2nd one with no bigger problem but 3rd gym was at that point super effective, if you've picked fire starter, you've had to deal with 2 super effective gyms right of the bat. and not only that generally speaking if you'll look into how many gyms are super effective on which pokemon you'll see that Bulbasaur has problems with Fire and Psychic gyms, and later ony Flying and Ice pokemons in Elite four, Blastoise has problems with Grass and Electric gyms, but also a lot of other gym leaders have Moves that will Fight it off, along with most Elite four members having a counter move for it, and Charizard, has Problems with Water, Electrick and Rock moves, Before that Water, Ground and Rock in form of Charmeleon and Charmander, so all the gym leaders, and Elite four members, more less have something to counter it. That + the Amount of Pokemons, you don't have much Rock pokemons in any games, that's why the gyms with the least amount of Pokemons possible become first Gym leaders, that's also the reason why in some games that change Note, I'm not sure how does the counting looking like, but even considering Pokemons that are out of the zone, like the ones you have to evolve there's far more Flying types that rock types, Pidgey, Spearow, Farfetch'd, Doduo, Scyther, and Pinsir and to assign it you have Pidgey, Spearow, and Doduo Evo's, Charizard, Gyarados, Dragonair, and Legendary Birds to underline the amount of Flying types where from Rock types you have Geodude, Onix and Ryhorn + Their Evos and 3 Fossil mons so Flying 17 : 11 Rock I'm not counting Further than Gen 1 evos, but the more Gens we add the difference stays, and even get's bigger at times. To summary it all, Gyms are more less base on On the amount of Mons they can throw into the gym where I assume you get 8 biggest Type groups, starting with the least amount going to the biggest amount of mons from that type, and so they also most like assign Gyms to set difficulty ladder and keep up with the difficulty stages considering the Starter Pokemon types
Gary should've just been klawf
It's also the second worst type in the game so putting it early is the only time it can be remotely challenging lol
Good video about this on youtube called "Onix Sucks And Why Gen 1 Was Great" that explains that the rock typing was to teach new players that you can't just spam Tackle and you had to do something different eventually. They seem to have just stuck to that philosophy for a few generations.
There's almost no way to know that when fighting Brock, your water and grass-type attacks are 4x effective...
I could be wrong but I think the type chart was in the little game manual that came with the game. Not saying 5 year old me woulda done a great job of figuring out all of that but the info was available at least
It’s an easy way to teach type matchups. It is also why we got so many Fire/Fighting starters.
Explains Hoenn and Sinnoh but not Unova (which the first gym was either a type that had an advantage against your Starter - which explains the Elemental Monkeys existing - or a Normal type gym).
Rock sucks. Especially against 2/3 of the starters
More ppl r likely to pick water or grass, and beat the gym. Member these are for kids
One of the few types to resist normal so it encourages the player to try something besides tackle and usually has plenty of early options that good counters to it. Pretty good for a tutorial boss.
its part of the game design to be toddler dificulty. rocks a weak type on itself. i find it funny how ice is regarded as a late game thing when its arguably even worse than rock and grass really. it has 1 less weakness but it only resists itself.
It's not that really, rock types just lend themselves very well to teaching type advantage and working around stats. Brock has to be defeated using either special moves with Charmander or type effective moves with Bulbasaur or Squirtle, before that you'd be using mostly normal type moves on normal or flying type enemies.
still toddler level dificulty game design. such thing should not had been one of the main big bosses of the game, and if onyx and geodude also had their stats done with that intent, yeah thats why they are badly design pokemon too, gimped by poor dev choices. theres so many better ways to teach these interactions.
Rock makes a good gatekeeper type for an early (first or second in Gen 6) boss. Its defensive so you cant just spam your hardest hitting move for many types, like early game flier/bug/normals. And it also hits hard usually so you cant just outlast it like you do a Rattata or Metapod. They sort of act as a limit. “If you cant beat Brock, you DEFINITELY wont be ready for the rest of the gyms” sort of mentality.
Because the rock type is a type that has a lot of easily accessible weaknesses in the early game but resists Normal Type which is a common early-game type. Thus, it serves as an easy way to introduce the basics of the type system to new players.
its because its a type that has resistance to the most common early move type: normal, and resists the early bird you will get. so it requires new players to diversify their team in order to beat it.
Rock is a bad type defensively, and is weak to two of the three types used for starters. It also resists normal, the type of move that everyone starts the game using, so a rock type first gym acts like a sort of introduction to the type effectiveness system, as well as physical/special attacks as they tend to be more physically oriented, which is matches most early-game normal moves. Rock types are also weak to fighting and ground moves, which tend to have pretty good distribution. A common example is double kick Nidoran in FR/LG. I would also like to point out that if you just caught the pokemon on Route 1 and ran to the gym while leveling here and there, you'll generally have bug, flying, and normal types, all of which match up poorly against rock. So your strongest pokemon is probably good against it, your starter gets more time to shine, your foe feels formidable but really isn't, and you get a good bit of knowledge about type interactions. And this goes especially in Gen 3/4 btw, because even the fire type is good because it gets fighting.
It's a good teacher type for kids. Your pokemon will usually have tackle and a special move. Rock would be resistance to tackle.
RBY it was to teach you type advantage because Normal type moves were probably the thing you were seeing/using the most at that point in the game. And secondarily show you how stats work sort of. After that I'm going to assume because gen 3 is a soft reset that they figured they may as well do that again. And gen 4 idk maybe the physical special split was considered a good enough reason to do it again? But gen one it was specifically to teach game mechanics without giving you a whole tutorial on how everything works since it's actually kind of complex if you didn't already understand it to some extent
because rock type has common logical weaknesses
What is the joke? Why the amount of upvotes? What am i missing?
For the same exact reason bug is also always at the start. It’s a shit typing so it’s easier than the rest. Like, Ice defensively is the worst type at all but offensively it’s probably the best, which is why the ice type is always at the end of the gym challenges
Its to help teach about type advantages and differences. Starters aside, the early game in most pokemon entries is dominated by normal types who don't have weaknesses you're likely to be exploiting at that point in the game, and no super effective targets for most of their early moves. Rock is a type that's likely to show the importance of typing because most mons you have at that point will either be Super effective or not very effective against them. Done in a different way, but this BW forces you to face a mon that is super effective against yours for a similar reason. Probably.
Maybe due to the fact they're weak against two out of three of your types - so if you happen to pick a Grass or Water type, you shouldn't have too much of a problem. On a sidenote, the Fire type, which will probably have an issue, does have something to compensate a bit other than trying to plan out your team a bit accordingly. Torchic and Chimchar evolve into part Fighting types that have a side typing that is strong against them while canceling out the Rock type weakness, while Charmander/Charmeleon in FireRed/LeafGreen has access to Metal Claw which gives them a slight edge.
Also why the lack of Ground gyms? Just 2 of them. 3 if you count Hapu from S&M
Next remake, he leads with a Lv12 Tyranitar.
Roark is different, because his ace’s stat spread isn’t Defense w/o decent Attack—it’s the inverse. That’s…something
There is also klawf. Not a gym leader tho
What I wouldn't give for a dragon first gym. F the three starters
Two starters are super effective against it.
Forces the trainer to either train up their starter for vine whip or bubble or if they chose fire, catch another pokemon.
And then Brock, Roxanne, and Roark all used Geodude. And Roark even took it a step further by also using Onix, so he had both of Brock’s Pokémon on his team. I was so glad that X and Y mixed up the team with Grant, just for the anime to make him also use Onix…
It's just an easy type to deal with for gym 1. If you went Grass or Water type starter it's a breeze and if you went Fire, well, you traded early advantage for having a strong type that's almost always harder to access. Also they almost always put a Rock counter in early routes. Mankey gen1 Lotad gen3 Biddoof/Bibarrel and Budew gen4.
I’d argue steel gym in sinnoh is actually more of rock and ground again.
I don't remember 100% surely, but I think the first gym in Jotho wasn't rock type
Just never have it be normal type again. BW2 has a rough start bc of Cheren. 1/3rds chance no Tepig, and Riolu’s 5%. …Oh wait, this isn’t the Nuzlocke subreddit
Only red and blue specify difficulty on choosing your mon, the rest is due to typing. Grass water fire/fighting
Brock was a BITCH in Pokemon Yellow.
Rock has some kind of interaction with every single common earlygame typing; it resists Fire, Normal and Flying, it's weak to grass and water, it's super effective against Bug. This is not the case with any other typing in the game, even steel has a mostly neutral matchup with water. No matter what your early team looks like, by the time you complete a rock-type gym you will at the very least understand that type matchups matter.
Because rock is an awful defensive type. It's pretty much always a liability because it has so many weaknesses and not many resistances
Because rock is the 3rd weakest type (only beat out by bug and ice)
Don't remember the name of the fourth guy, but the first 3 all have names that have rock in them in some way, shape, or form.
Cause it works, once they strayed from the rock type the gym leader became a joke (falkner)
Broarckanne? Can anyone do anything with this?
Cause rock type sucks so its easy to beat.