Is Sheer Force effective on all moves affected by items?

Question

I have a Mawile running a Life orb and Sheer force set, and I was wondering if it could encompass all moves that were given effects by items, such as the Razor fang. Most likely it can’t, as that would allow it and Copperajah to fire steel beams and get off scot free, no recoil, but I just wanted to make sure

Comments

I think major status conditions, raising user's stats, lowering target's stats, confusion, flinch, and a few weird exceptions (like sparkling aria) are the only things that count as secondary effects and are consequently prevented by sheer force. It doesn't prevent any other move effects, like recoil.

Answer 1

The Ability Stench and the held items Razor Fang and King's Rock grant additional effects to moves, though (in the case of the held items) they do not interact with Sheer Force.

source

Reducing the target's stats, increasing the user's stats, inflicting a status condition on the target (volatile or otherwise, but excluding bound), and causing the target to flinch are all considered additional effects, so damaging moves that have a chance (up to and including a 100% chance) to cause these effects will have their power increased, in exchange for ignoring whatever chance they had to cause these effects. Furthermore, Anchor Shot, Eerie Spell, Genesis Supernova, Secret Power, Sparkling Aria, and Spirit Shackle are explicitly considered to have added effects that can be removed by Sheer Force. However, Thousand Waves, whose effect is otherwise identical to Anchor Shot and Spirit Shackle, is not.

Sheer Force does not consider recoil or decreasing the user's own stats to be additional effects.

source
The game handles life orb recoil very differently from move recoil.

Comments

Yeah, I think that the Life Orb effect is not really a recoil in the first place, since it is a fixed percentage health reduction and not really based on how much damage you deal with a move to the enemy.

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Steel beam is also a fixed percentage.

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I find it very intriguing as well, there isn't really an overaching logical explanation (known to players at least) for these kind of exceptions. The Thousand Waves example is very strange as well. If only I could read the minds of the game devs and programmers.

Answer 2

I think your question is addressed by DB's entry on Sheer Force itself, isn't it?

I quote (with specifics on non-beneficial effects and interactions with Life Orb in Bold):

Sheer Force increases the power of moves that have beneficial secondary effects by 30%, but removes those additional effects.

Beneficial effects are defined as those that are positive for the
user, such as:

Causing a status condition on the opponent (e.g. Thunderbolt) Reducing
the opponent's stats (e.g. Crunch) Increasing the user's stats (e.g.
AncientPower)

Non-beneficial effects, that Sheer Force will not activate for, include:

Recoil damage (e.g. Double-Edge) Lowering the user's stats (e.g. Superpower)

If the user is holding a Life Orb and uses an attack that activates Sheer Force, it will not receive the 10% damage from Life Orb, but it
gets boosts from both Life Orb and Sheer Force (total of 69% base
power increase).

The entry page also provides what I suppose a comprehensive list of abilities that interacts with Sheer Force.

Link: https://pokemondb.net/ability/sheer-force

Comments

Not all status conditions activate sheer force. Binding moves and a few trapping moves never activate it. Fling also never activates sheer force regardless of what secondary effect it has.