Why can Victreebel learn Leech Life as an egg move but not as a TM?

Question

As I was looking through on the website, I noticed that Victreebel can learn Leech Life as an egg move, but not a TM.
Can someone tell me why is that please?

Comments

They intentionally made it frustratingly hard to get a leech life Victreebel.

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it is sad I say. sad.

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TMs could just be instructional videos for your trainer to watch and then teach it to his/her Pokémon. A Pokémon (Victreebel) that doesn't really know how to be a bug because it's not a bug can't just learn a special kind of bug type move because it can't do "everything" in the video. So, you have to force your Pokémon to breed with bugs to get offspring with bug DNA. With this new DNA it can use Leech Life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



Game Freak logic? Maybe it's because it's teeth were meant to inject poison and not suck stuff out. The bug DNA changes that. Everything in this comment is 95% false except for GF logic.

Answer 1

This was probably a mistake on Game Freak's part. I doubt they would intentionally do this.

Historically, they have done this because it an impact on the game too great to handle. Kangaskhan can't be taught Power-up Punch in Gen 7 because of the Gen 6 Mega Kangaskhan debacle, iirc.

But this is Victreebel we're talking about. Isn't it a special attacking Pokemon anyway? I digress. Anyway, I still think this was merely an accident. Beeheyem, in Generation 5, was given Steel Wing by accident. To this day, I believe they have not rectified this, though I can't imagine why, unless they continually forget because Beeheyem is of relatively low relevance, especially when nobody in the right mind should be using a physical Beeheyem in the first place.

TL;DR: Accident.

Comments

They've done stuff like this a lot, like how Heracross can only learn false swipe as an egg move even when it was a TM and how Spiritomb learns shadow sneak at level 1 and by breeding. This is so common that I doubt that they do it by accident.

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boy that gotta be frustrating

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Having it by breeding and at level 1 doesn't sound as wrong to me as giving a Pokémon a move it has no business having or exclusifying a move to breeding instead of having TM access. But that's just me.

sumwun, how many examples can you rattle off for me? Like 10? I'm not necessarily doubting you, I'm just genuinely curious.

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Light screen generations 3 and 4: Bulbasaur, Paras, Psyduck, Machop, Scyther, Dratini, Marill, Feebas
False swipe generation 4: Spearow, Heracross, Seedot, Shroomish, Mawile
Safeguard generations 3 and 4: Bulbasaur, Sandshrew, Growlithe, Tentacool, Kangaskhan, Scyther, Mareep, Wooper
Just click random TM moves and you'll find a few of these.

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I'm pretty sure they did that on purpose: Most people could only get 1 of each TM in those games (when TMs could only be used once) and TMs were passed down via breeding between all Pokemon that learned them (because of their single use, breeding made it possible to "use" the TM multiple times), to have some Pokemon only learn a TM via breeding would encourage TM breeding (and breeding in general). :P

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All Pokemon that can be female and learn TMs can inherit TM moves as egg moves, even if it's not listed as an egg move.