Every battle in Supplant runs through one shared resolver, so a wild encounter and a head-to-head match follow the exact same rules.
PvE (against a wild plant) and PvP (against another trainer) use identical logic: moves resolve the same way, statuses tick the same way, and passives fire the same way. The wild AI simply plays the opponent and enters with a full Sun bar.
Each plant carries up to three move slots, gated by level and paid for in Sun.
| Move | Unlocks | Sun cost |
|---|---|---|
| Starter attack | L1 | 2 |
| Ability | L10 | 0 (once per battle) |
| Advanced attack | L18 | 6 |
Damage is (the move's power + a fraction of your effective ATK), scaled by ATK ÷ (ATK + the target's DEF) and the type matchup, floored at a minimum of 1 — so DEF is diminishing armor, not a flat subtraction, and poison (which ignores DEF entirely) is the tank-buster. Healing costs 3 Sun per 10 HP; retreating costs from ~5 Sun for a seedling up to ~50 for a deep-rooted mature tree, scaled by how rooted the plant is and its level. Your Sun bar caps at 120 and only refills out of battle — about +1 every 15 minutes — so run it dry and you're attack-locked until you retreat or use your free ability.
PvE and PvP ask the same tempo question; they differ in how often they ask it.
Against a wild plant, every exchange is ordered by tempo, and the opening turn asks a different question than the rest. Turn 1 is decided by INI (initiative, from the plant's seedling vigor); turn 2 onward is decided by SPD (from its growth rate). A quick starter can take the first hit and then be out-paced for the rest of the fight, and vice versa. Ties go to you, the defender, and a move carrying the initiative rider skips the queue entirely. Retreating is exempt: a switch always resolves first, and you take the incoming hit on whoever you swapped in.
In the arena, the same quick-vs-fast split applies, one round at a time. Round 1 is decided by INI: higher INI leads, SPD breaks an INI tie, and a dead-even pair goes to the room's host. Every round after that is re-ordered by SPD, re-read at the round boundary — so an ability that raises SPD mid-match flips who leads from the next round on, and an exact SPD tie keeps the current leader rather than handing it to the host. Each side still takes exactly one turn per round; when leadership changes hands, the new leader acts twice in a row across the boundary. The initiative rider changes job here: it does not skip the queue at all — instead, a rider move whose own strike takes a body lets you act again straight away. What counts is whether the struck plant actually died, not whether something is still standing opposite you: a Resprout save or a healing tick off 0 HP denies the extra action, while a reseeder that dies and leaves a seedling behind still pays it. A knockout scored without the rider never grants one.
Above your health sits the overshield, or "Native Strength": up to four green HP segments plus two gold Sun segments. Direct hits chew through it before touching base HP, but poison, thorn recoil, seed-rain, and haustorial drain bypass it entirely. You can be poisoned to death through a full shield.
Nativity is decided by the arena's region and reshapes every fight.
| Native (buffer) | Invasive (attacker) | |
|---|---|---|
| Stats | HP ×1.15 | Wider ATK ceiling (introduced-breadth aggression), realized as it matures; dialed back if toxic |
| Overshield | Projects HP segments to the active | Contributes none |
| Cost | None | "Faustian" recoil (~10 + level) to its lowest-HP benched ally on every damaging attack |
| On KO | — | Pays a stewardship bounty / extra prizes |
Reduce every opposing plant to 0 HP. Statuses, level, and type matchup all swing the outcome — the succession wheel scales a hit up to ×1.5 or down to ×0.667 based on the two plants' groups. Status immunities like warded and staked are a separate mechanic. Victory comes from Sun management, nativity, and playing the matchup.
A fight can't grind on forever. If a great many turns pass with no knockout on either side — two tanks trading heals with nothing dying — a drought sets in. From then on, healing is switched off entirely and every plant on the field starts to wilt, taking an escalating chunk of its own max HP each turn (ignoring DEF and shields, like poison). The damage only grows, so a knockout is guaranteed within a handful of turns, and the plant with the higher share of its HP remaining is the one left standing. A normal fight ends long before the drought can trigger, so you'll only ever see it in a true stalemate.