Impossible move selection glitch

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The impossible move selection glitch is a natural glitch in Generation V games, in which AI opponents select moves that are supposed to be off-limits to them.

There are two ways to cause this glitch to occur, one involving a Triple Battle and the other involving Pokéstar Studios.

In the Triple Battle variation, suppose the opponent's active slots are labeled A, B, and C from left to right, while the player's are labeled D, E, and F. The battle should proceed such that the opponent ends up with a 2-to-1 advantage in remaining Pokémon, and they should be in slots A, C, and D; or else A, C, and F. At this point, one of the opponent's Pokémon will be isolated, with no adjacent targets.

Trainer AI has ways of applying various degrees of discouragement to shift it away from picking certain moves, such as a damaging move that the opponent is immune to by type, or a stat-changing move where the stat in question has already reached its limit. The signal that a move is not supposed to be selected at all, such as because it has no PP left, is several times stronger than any of these ordinary forms of discouragement. However, in Generation V Triple Battles only, if a Pokémon is isolated in such a position as the one that was previously constructed, and has no moves that can reach a distant target (such as Aura Sphere or Drill Peck), its moves are given the same level of discouragement as in the no-PP case. This means that when the trainer is judging between the Pokémon's moves to find the one with the best score, all they can do is choose randomly from their options which all have the maximally dismissive value. If some, but not all, of those moves are supposed to be impossible to use because of the ongoing effects of Disable, Taunt, Imprison, Heal Block, Gravity, or a lack of PP, the random selection is nevertheless still capable of picking such a move and having the Pokémon attempt to use it, but the move will fail with the relevant message for the effect in question. Moves that are supposed to be forbidden by Torment or a Choice item locking the Pokémon into a different move may also be chosen this way, and in that case the move may be capable of succeeding (as long as it's a move that's not hindered by a lack of adjacent targets, such as Rest).

If it turns out that all of the isolated opponent's moves are truly disabled by any combination of these factors, and not just given the dismissive AI score equivalent to such, they will respect that limitation and use Struggle just as in any other battle where all of a Pokémon's moves become unavailable.

The Pokéstar Studios case arises for a different reason. In this area, opponents don't follow standard trainer AI logic at all, but instead act in accordance with their predefined movie script. Once again, if they would normally be forced to Struggle because all of their moves are inaccessible, that remains true here, but other than that case, they will attempt to use the scripted move and nothing else, in spite of any limitations that should make it impossible to do so, such as if their move runs out of PP sooner than they were anticipating.