How is the damage of Foul Play calculated?

Question

I know it uses the targets attack stat but it says it has 95 base power. How does the move work actually?

Answer 1

Every attacking move takes the user's offensive stat into account before calculating final damage. If it's a physical move then this stat is attack, and similarly if it's special then special attack. Even 150 base power moves, when coming from a low offensive stat, will do negligible damage.

What Foul Play does is take the opponent's and not the user's attack stat to calculate the damage. So for example a Sableye would normally rely on it's miserly 75 attack stat when using a physical move, resulting in it doing rather low damage. But if it uses Foul Play then Sableye is firing the move off through the opponent's attack stat, which may be higher or lower, resulting in more (or less, depending on opponent) damage. It's great on Pokemon that do not have a great attack stat and need good ways of physical damage.

Hope I helped!

Comments

but why its base power 95 does it add 95 to the opponent stat or what :(

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95 is the base power of the move itself. Out of curiosity, do you know how damage is calculated? Because otherwise this would be hard to explain...
Anyways, here's how damage is calculated, if you're curious:

http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/231025/how-is-damage-calculated

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im still confused :( so is it only 95 base power or uses opponent attack stat

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K... imagine you have a Sableye facing an Arceus.

If the Sableye uses a move of 95 base power against it (not Foul Play) then it's using it's own stats. Means 75 base attack (Sableye's base attack, look it up). By this it's doing about 20% damage.

Now, if the Sableye uses Foul Play instead, then it's using the opponent's attack stat. Means 120 base attack (Arceus' base attack). By this it's doing about 35% damage to the opponent. See the difference?

The higher the base attack is, the stronger the attack is fired. Simply put, the base attack stat determines the damage and is completely different than base power of the move. Normal moves take the user's attack stat. Foul Play take's the opponent's. It's base power doesn't change from 95, but the damage it's dealing does. Any more explanation I think I'll have to do on your wall/chat room now :P

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:p lol

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ok so the opponents attack stat replaces the users attack stat when calculating the damage for this move am I right

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Yup [filler]