Protect (move)

Protect (Japanese: まもる Protect) is a non-damaging move introduced in Generation II. It has been TM17 since Generation II.

Generation II
Protect protects the user from all effects of moves that target it during the turn it is used, including damage.

This does not include damage inflicted by weather it is susceptible to, or damage from a status condition that it obtained on a previous turn (as these are not moves that targeted the user this turn). If the user goes last this turn, the move will fail.

Protect will fail if the user is behind a.

Each time any of Protect,, or is successfully used without other moves used in between, the success rate will halve. In this generation, the success rate is implemented as a single byte over 255 which starts at the maximum of 255 and is floor-divided by 2 each time. This causes the success rate to drop to 0 on its ninth consecutive successful use.

Generation III
Protect can now be used when the user is behind a.

Like in Generation II, the success rates of Protect,, and halve each time any of the three are used successfully and consecutively. In this generation, the halving was intended to cap at a 12.5% success rate on the fourth consecutive successful use, but a bug causes the cap to not work, causing the game to read garbage values and causing Protect's success rate on the fifth and future turns to follow an erratic sequence.

The following success rates are accurate to Ruby and Sapphire; from the 53rd turn onward, FireRed and LeafGreen have a different sequence of values, as does Emerald. These numbers represent success rates out of 65536, which means that the move has a 1/65536 chance of missing on the first use.

Protect can also be used as part of a Pokémon Contest combination, with the user gaining an extra appeal point if was used in the prior turn.

Generation IV
Protect now properly caps at a minimum success rate of 12.5% on the fourth and future consecutive turns.

In only, if an attack is given perfect accuracy through the effect of a move (/), the weather ( in Rain, or  in ), a Micle Berry, or an Ability, it has a chance to hit through Protect equal to. OHKO moves are unaffected, and will never hit through Protect. This behavior was reverted in Platinum.

Generation V
Protect's success rate no longer has a lower bound of 12.5%. and now also count toward this halving.

Generation VI onwards
Successfully using Protect,, , , , , , or consecutively now divides the chance of success of Protect, Detect, Endure, Spiky Shield, King's Shield, and Baneful Bunker by 3 for each consecutive use, with a minimum (1/3)^6 (1/729 or ~0.1%) chance.

If a damaging Z-Move targets a Pokémon that used Protect, the Z-Move will bypass Protect but only do 25% of the original damage. The effects of Protect are not lifted.

If powered up by a Normalium Z into Z-Protect, all of the user's lowered stats are reset.

Moves that bypass Protect
In addition to damaging Z-Moves, the following moves cannot be stopped by Protect:

Additionally, Feint, Shadow Force, Phantom Force, Hyperspace Fury, and Hyperspace Hole lift Protect's protection for the rest of the turn.

,, (except  and ), and entry hazard moves cannot be blocked by Protect.

Description

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Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series
The user is protected from all attacks for a set amount of turns, which ends on the user's turn. However, items such as toss items can still hit.

Description

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In the Pokémon Gotta Catch 'Em All manga

 * Asuka mentioned that used Protect in The Legendary Pokémon and the Village of the Gods (Part Three) but the move wasn't shown.

Trivia

 * In Generation II, after the "[Pokémon's name] protected itself!" message appears, there is another message saying that the opponent's move missed. This is caused by Protect's effect internally leading moves with an accuracy check to miss, and was changed in Generation III to omit the second message.
 * Protect is the most common move among the movesets of Video Game World Championships team's winners.