PP

Power points, or PP for short, are the energy that a Pokémon requires in order to perform a move.

Each move has a base number of power points. When a Pokémon learns a move, its current and maximum power points are set to this default value. Whenever the move is used, one PP is subtracted from the move's current power points. Once a move runs out of PP, it can no longer be selected as an attack. When the PP of all of a Pokemon's moves has run out, the Pokémon will be forced to Struggle.

Under the power point system, a move may have a base number of PP equal to 1 or a multiple of 5 between 5 and 40. Up to three PP Ups can be applied to a move on a particular Pokémon, and each PP Up increases the move's maximum PP by 20% of its original value, unless the move originally had 1 PP, in which case it has no effect. A PP Max may also be used in place of three PP Ups. In Generation I and Generation II, the maximum PP values for moves that have base PP values of 40 is 61 (likely due to a lack of data space); this was increased to 64 in Generation III. Typically, the stronger or more desirable a move is compared to other moves, the lower its base PP. When the moves Shadow Rush and Struggle are used, PP is not deducted, effectively giving them infinite PP.

In Generation I, a glitch allowed struggling to be avoided by allowing the game to automatically use a move to attack, which could happen to any attack if a Pokémon attacked immediately after being defrosted, or to a handful of moves (Bind, Clamp, Fire Spin, Hyper Beam, Metronome, Mimic, and Wrap) because of the auto-selection involved with partial trapping moves (if a move is used when it has 0 PP, it will afterwards obtain a current PP count of 63, and full PP Ups will be applied to it). Starting in Generation II, a check was added to see if a move has 0 PP when executed, as well as selected, to prevent this glitch.

Outside of battle, Hidden Machines may be used even if the current PP of the HM move is 0.

Elixirs, Ethers, and Leppa Berries restore a move's PP, and a visit to any Pokémon Center will replenish the PP of all of a Pokémon's moves to their maximum values.

Power points, like many other game mechanics, are absent in the anime and manga. The Trading Card Game, however, employs a system similar to the games, which requires a certain number of Energy cards to be attached to a Pokémon before it can perform a move.