>>43828421Additionally, an idea I'm back and forth on is the ability to catch or otherwise receive higher level pokemon. On the one hand, nobody is going to do this on a casual run without knowing that they are gimping their own challenge. And it makes for a cool story when you found a random high level mon that proceeded to kick ass. But on the other hand, it means the difficulty of the game can actually be enforced.
The middle ground would be to actually implement the old "you don't have enough badges to train me". What I would do is give each badge a percenage of control over mons of s certain level. For instance
>no badge = mons lv 1-10 obey you perfectly, mons lv 11-15 obey you 75% of the time, mons lv 16-20 have a 50% to obey you, and mons lv 21+ will not obey you.Each badge would increase the floor of what lv mons obey you. This not only punishes over-leveling and breaking the level curve, while still providing those cool moments, it still allows challenges to be pre-set (especially if gym leaders scaled with badge count). You could even give a special badge after beating the E4 that acts as the cap unlock on what mons obey you, rather than the 8th badge being the limit remover.
I realize I got a bit away from trials there for a moment, so pardon the brief aside.
