[Gen 7] Gen 4 starter's hidden ability not passing down?

Question

I have an Empoleon in Ultra Sun with its HA that I got through a wonder trade. It's almost certainly not legit, as it is LV 100 and shiny, but I believe it's legal as it has passed through the Bank without issue. I was hoping to breed some HA Piplups, so I bred it with a Ditto and hatched a bunch of eggs. The Empoleon is male, so I was expecting a 60% chance of HA passing down when paired with Ditto, but after hatching more than 25 eggs I'm getting the non-hidden ability every time. I guess technically I could lose the 60% RNG 25 times in a row but that seems really improbable.

Is there some lock on inheriting HA from a non-legit Pokemon? Is there some other mechanic in play that I'm missing? It's not a huge deal but I'd just like to figure out what's going on.

Edited: spelling

Comments

This Bulbapedia guide says the chance for male Pokemon is 20% not 60%, but this isn't corroborated by other sources which consistently say the chance is 60% regardless of sex. https://bulbahandbook.bulbagarden.net/pokemonsunmoon/guide/breeding#toc_5
Even if the chance is 20%, there is still a 99.6% chance you'd have gotten a HA Piplup within 25 attempts. Have you continued trying since you posted this?

---

My experiments with breeding down abilities with male parents always suggested to me that the chance was weaker with males. I'm almost positive you'd have an easier time with a female specimen, but given we're talking about the Piplup line, good luck with that.

Also, last time I tested this was in ORAS so it may well have changed.

---

I hatched another 10 or so with no luck and have decided to give up. I did some more searching through forum posts and believe I may have found the answer, though no real way to confirm.

Apparently it is possible, with hacked/genned Pokemon, to merely change the ability to the HA without changing the underlying data that is passed down through breeding. So although the summary page for the Empoleon shows it having the HA, when breeding it is passing down its original, non-hidden, ability. I have no experience or interest in dealing with the programs that allow you to see or change these things so I can't confirm, but this seems the most likely answer as statistically it's nearly impossible to not get the HA after that many attempts.

Thanks to you both for your input.

---

Fizz, if you breed with Ditto then the rate for passing down a hidden ability is 60% regardless of gender.

---

Note : Read the comment CAREFULLY before flagging.

See friend, 'E' is the most common alphabet in English language. Upto 11% of total words in English consists E . Which means if the total no. of words were 100, it would be 11. However, if we write any 100 words, is it necessary to get exactly 11 words of 'E' in it?
Nope! This is the same thing happened here. Percentages are totally approximate calculations. There is no need of blindly trusting them.
Another example : Breed any Pokémon that has a gender ratio of 50% for male and female. Get 30 eggs and hatch them. It is not necessary to get exactly 15 eggs for male and female each, isn't it?

Answer 1

Alright, I know this is old but I wanna get this off the unanswered list.

It's almost certainly not legit, as it is LV 100 and shiny...

That is an important part of this to note to those of you who haven’t read the entire question.

The asker of the question has said:

Apparently it is possible, with hacked/genned Pokemon, to merely change the ability to the HA without changing the underlying data that is passed down through breeding. So although the summary page for the Empoleon shows it having the HA, when breeding it is passing down its original, non-hidden, ability. I have no experience or interest in dealing with the programs that allow you to see or change these things so I can't confirm, but this seems the most likely answer as statistically it's nearly impossible to not get the HA after that many attempts.

This is most likely the case here, though we can’t know for sure.

There is also the slight chance that this is just awful RNG, but I doubt that.

Comments

If the Pokémon is with it’s legal HA it’s going to be using it’s HA slot when breeding regardless of which ability slot the Pokémon has. The game defaults to the HA ability.