Lesser known Starter Pokemon?

[Kandykorn]

Hey all!
I'm currently writing a fic in which the MC is enrolled in a sort of "Juvenile delinquents" situation in the not-so-distant future of Johto. And I want this program to have a "starter pokemon" system similar to how your normal "start of the game" is, however, these kids are lower income, and they're known for being lazy, unruly, troublemakers, and as such Elm isn't going to offer them any starter pokemon, he's going to offer them more common equivalents, but I have no Idea what I want them to be.

I have a few requirements for them, but I'm looking for suggestions of a new trio!

They can totally be not water/grass/fire, and in fact, I dont really need them to beat each other lol

I also would prefer if they were common pokemon that are not native to johto, to spice up the teams but not necessarily be like, a rare pokemon.

Anyway, any suggestions are appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Negrek]

Interesting… I think the options are going to differ a bit depending on whether it’s a case of the program really wanting to set the kids up for success and simply not being able to afford Charmander-tier mon, or whether they don’t really care and are just getting whatever random stuff they can find from the lowest bidder.

In the first category, I think some of the “regional birds” would make good choices; wingull, fletchling, and wattrel add some elemental attacks for an early team and evolve into solid mon. There’s less to differentiate rookidee and starly from Johto’s birds early on, but they evolve into powerful team members and would make decent starters. Some other commonish but still solid/interesting choices would be things like rolycoly or rockruff, arrokuda or shellos, shinx or electrike. Unova’s elemental monkeys would work well as straight downgrades to traditional starters.

If it‘s more “whatever we can buy in bulk,” then I‘d say it’ll depend on how much trouble you want to give the MC, heh. You could tell a compelling story about someone training a luvdisc or male salandit, but understandable if you don’t want to tackle those in a straightforward journeyfic, heh. In this scenario I’d be looking at early-route mammals or bugs that nonetheless have something interesting about them or at least evolve well—things like kricketot, grubbin, venipede, sewaddle, burmy, blipbug, maschiff, or woobat. Or maybe a literal “trash mon” like trubbish or Alolan grimer.

 

[Seren]

I'm always a fan of lesser-seen pokemon... ironically enough, things that are common in-game are less common in fic, so a lot of Negrek's suggestions are good ones, especially given the "prefer no Johto" request.

You could still also give them non-Johto 'mon that still appear there (ie zubat, geodude, etc.), as those are also not in any short supply. Your definition of 'rare' also might differ, but you could go for something like horsea or volbeat. I wouldn't consider either of those rare, even though they do have rather limited spawn locations.

 

[Mirage]

There was this thread earlier about forgettable yet interesting Pokemon that might also be a source of inspiration. In particular, Finneon, Smoliv, or Vanilite could make for interesting options, since they'd be unusual in Johto and there's not many stories with them (but they're still common and weak enough to justify giving as budget starters)

 

[K_S]

Depending on timeframe a world building idea could be that the starters offered are common mon from another regions failed criminal elements... Like ekans from rocket farms in kanto.. Electrike from kalos... Like a joint rehabilitation effort for the kids and mon... Maybe even unshadowed min from ore (whick would open the gates to so many mon...).