What would happen if a Pokemon dealt negative damage?

Question

While the damage calculation doesn't have any negatives, what would happen if any of the values were negative?

• Is the damage set to 1?

• Does it underflow to a really big number?

As a follow up, what if they were zero?

Comments

How would one test this?

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Not an answer but similar. In gen 1, when receiving/giving negative damage, the move fails.

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Pretty sure there’s some overflow glitches with Eternatus-Eternamax. I don’t know the exact mechanics though.

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Does this count as an un-answerable question?

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Idk game would break. Move fails most likely

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I think it’s answerable within the cases we know of

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Why wouldn't it be answerable? Surely it's not *that* hard to manipulate a game to cause a move to deal negative damage, and if it's simply impossible, the answer would be "it's not possible"

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With logic, it would heal

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Unfortunately, logic doesn't always work for a computer programmed to decrease a HP value with a damage input that gives a negative output

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I think the most likely answer is that it would round up to do exactly one point of damage. I know that attacks that do under 1 damage or 0 damage by the calculation formula round up to 1 HP damage, so most likely this would also apply to attacks doing negative damage. We never see negative damage in legit gameplay though, so the only way to test this would be a modding to give some attack negative power or some such. I think the best answer to this would be "We don't know", because negative damage is simply impossible in legit gameplay as far I know.

About the follow up, I checked Bulbapedia and it says zero damage always rounds up to 1 HP damage in gen 1 onwards. In Gen 1, it displays the attack as having missed instead.

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It'll deal zero damage in Gen 1 if you use a Weedle with Poison Sting. This is because Brock's Onix 4x resist it. The game will then say that it missed instead.

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Interesting interesting…