Abilities
Abilities are intraneous faculties of Pokémon that are inherited by Pokémon upon obtaining them.
Abilities perform passive effects in-battle for Pokémon; they can be beneficial, hindering, or bilateral in nature. The possessor is usually the beneficiary of the ability, but some, such as Dry Skin, can have a countereffect; or in the case of Truant, for example, it may have a strictly hindering effect as a needful counterbalance.
While some abilities also performed out-of-battle functions in the official games, this is not the case in Pokémon Revolution Online; most out-of-battle functions, such as spawn-predeterminers, have not been functionalized, here, due to the belief that it may disbalance the encounter rates of potentially rarer Pokémon, so most abilities are modomodal for their in-battle functions.
Bear in mind that not all abilities have been programmed in PRO, yet; they will be distinctly marked on the tabular list below.
Mechanical overview
Usage
These abilities are mechanistically similar to passive abilities in other RPGs; they are not manually activated by the user, since they are performed automatically. They will actuate when all the requisite conditions are in effect or, for unconditional abilities, when a possessor of the ability is deployed in-battle.
Determination
All Pokémon species have subsets of inheritable abilities with 1-3 eventualities, but only one is possessable per Pokémon; this is predetermined upon encountering or obtaining the Pokémon.
The ability orientations can be subsumed into two categories: predominant abilities, which comprise the first-ability and second-ability slots, and hidden abilities, which are rarer abilities that have a 5% chance of inheritability by the Pokémon.
The inherited ability will be unchangeable with the potential exception of when the inheritee evolves; if the evolved form has a different ability correspondent to the orientation of the ability that they already have or if the evolved stage has a monoability (Metapod's Shed Skin ability, for example), that ability will supplant the pre-evolution's ability.