How do Protect and Counter work, and why do they fail?

Question

Please explain me how and when Protect and Counter works and why does it fail?

Comments

Protect and Counter have completely different affects. Did you mean Protect and Detect?

Answer 1

Protect is a move that protects the user from any direct damaging and status moves. Indirect damage such as weather or status will still take effect, by status I mean if for example, you're Pikachu was already poisoned on the turn it uses protect. When used consecutively or with detect or endure, the chances of it failing increases

Also, z and max moves bypass protect but only deal a quarter of the damage. Unseen fist also completely bypasses protect if the user is using a contact move. On this page, you can find a list of moves that bypass protect completely

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Protect_(move)

Counter is a move that if the user takes a physical hit, it will reflect double the amount. For example, if Wobbuffet takes 80 damage, counter will reflect 160 damage to the target. Since this move requires the user to get hit by a physical move, gettIng hit by a special move or not getting hit at all causes this move to fail. You can read about it more here

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Counter_(move)

Comments

Thanks, I completely understood about counter. But what about protect? I mean when and why does it fails, and how to use it without fail? Like... does protect fails if we use it starting of a battle and if opponent didn't select any move?

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Yes it does. Also consecutive uses of protect increses the chances of it failing. The same applies if endure or detect has been used previously

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iirc the chances of protect being successful are 1/x, where x starts as one and triples every time Protect or a copy of Protect works.