Extra Points and Natures: Getting the Most Out of Your Positive Nature

Take an Adamant Incineroar and watch its Attack stat as you add Stat Points: 148 with none, 149, 150, 151, 152 at 4 SP, and then 154 at 5 SP. The stat jumped by 2. There is no 153 on the way: it is simply not a value that Incineroar can have with this nature.

That jump is what players call an Extra Point. It is a direct, predictable consequence of how the nature multiplier is rounded, and once you understand it you can find every one of them for any Pokémon, on any stat, without a calculator. This guide covers where they come from, where they are, how to use them, and then widens out to the closely related question of which stat should get your nature's positive effect.

How a stat is built

At Level 50, Pokémon Champions computes every stat other than HP with the same short formula. (If you want the surrounding context, the damage formula guide shows where these stats end up.)

Two facts matter for everything that follows. First, the nature multiplies the whole bracket: the base stat, your Stat Points and the flat 20 together, not just the Stat Points you invested. Second, the result is rounded down. Everything in this guide comes from combining those two facts.

For the rest of this article, we'll call the bracket T = Base + SP + 20, the pre-nature stat: what the stat would be with a neutral nature.

Where Extra Points come from

With a boosting nature, the formula becomes rd(1.1 × T). Since multiplying by 1.1 is the same as adding a tenth, this splits cleanly into two parts:

Each Stat Point you invest raises T by exactly 1, so the first part always goes up by 1. The bonus, however, only changes when T ÷ 10 crosses a whole number, in other words, when T reaches a multiple of 10. On that one Stat Point, you get the +1 from the investment and the +1 from the bonus ticking up. That is an Extra Point.

Here is the Incineroar example from the introduction, step by step (Adamant, base Attack 115):

At 5 SP, T hits 140, a multiple of 10, and the bonus goes from 13 to 14 at the same moment as T itself goes up by one. The same thing happens again at 15 SP and 25 SP. Over the full 0 to 32 range, a boosting nature gives you 3 or 4 Extra Points on a given stat.

The one rule that locates every Extra Point

You don't need to simulate anything to find them. An Extra Point lands on every Stat Point value where Base + SP ends in a 0 (the flat 20 doesn't change the last digit). So the first one depends only on the last digit of the base stat, and the others follow every 10 SP:

Bases ending in 8 or 9 get a fourth Extra Point because their first one lands on 1 or 2 SP, leaving room for a fourth inside the 32 SP cap. Extra points for Mega forms can be different from the basic forms, so be sure to use the Mega's own base stat when you look up its row.

A few examples: Garchomp's base 130 Attack gives Extra Points at 10, 20 and 30 SP. Talonflame's base 126 Speed gives them at 4, 14 and 24. Archaludon's base 65 Special Defense gives them at 5, 15 and 25.

How to use Extra Points

Extra Points don't change what a Stat Point costs, since every Stat Point still comes out of the same 66-point budget. What they change is what you get for it, and which values are reachable at all. Two practical consequences follow.

1. Some stat values simply don't exist

Adamant Incineroar can have 152 or 154 Attack, never 153. Jolly Talonflame can have 163 or 165 Speed, never 164. If a damage threshold or a speed benchmark sits exactly on a value your stat skips, you are not "one point short": the Extra Point that gets you past it lands you one point above it. A requirement of "153 Attack" and one of "154 Attack" cost exactly the same 5 SP here.

2. Aim for them, and don't stop one SP short

The Stat Point that lands on an Extra Point is the best-value one in your spread: it buys 2 where all the others buy 1. If you are weighing "a little more" against "a little less" on a stat with a boosting nature, and one of those options lands on an Extra Point, that is usually the efficient choice. Stopping a single point before it (4 SP for Incineroar's Attack, say) leaves the next, double-sized step unused. This matters most when a threshold is tight: if the minimum investment you need falls just before an Extra Point, check whether that one extra Stat Point also gets you comfortably past a second threshold.

PokéSpread flags them for you: on the attack tabs, the Speed tab and the Defenses charts, SP values that give an Extra Point appear in red on the Stat Point axis, with a hint that explains why. They are shown for the stat your Nature impact setting marks as positive.

The mirror image: dead Stat Points

The same rounding works against you on a lowering nature. Here N = 0.9 and the result is rounded down, which works out to T − rd_up(T ÷ 10), where rd_up(x) is the opposite of rd(x): it rounds x up to the next whole number. The penalty is therefore rounded up, in the game's favour. The result is that, on one Stat Point out of every ten, the stat does not move at all.

Adamant lowers Special Attack, and Incineroar's base SpA is 80. Its stat goes 90 at 0 SP, 90 again at 1 SP, then 91, 92, 93 and so on. That first Stat Point bought nothing, and so does the 11th, the 21st and the 31st. If you must put Stat Points into a stat your nature lowers, avoid stopping on one of these dead values: the same stat is available one point cheaper.

Which stat should get your nature's boost?

With the formula above, the question answers itself. A boosting nature adds rd(T ÷ 10) to the stat, so the bonus is proportional to the whole pre-nature stat, not to the Stat Points you invested. The nature is worth the most where the stat is already largest.

Here is what a boosting nature would add to each of Incineroar's stats at 32 SP, and what a lowering nature would cost at 0 SP:

This leads to two rules of thumb that are easy to get backwards.

Follow the stat's value, not your Stat Point count

It is tempting to put the nature on whichever stat gets the most Stat Points. But Stat Points are only one ingredient of T, and a small one compared with the base stat. Mega Aggron is the textbook case: its base Defense is 230, so it is often given a Defense-boosting nature and no Stat Points in Defense at all, because they are needed elsewhere. With 0 SP, T = 250 and the nature adds +25, for a Defense of 275. Its Attack (base 140) would only gain +19 from the same nature even with the full 32 SP.

Reaching a Defense of 275 with a neutral nature would take 25 Stat Points: the nature is doing the work of a 25 SP investment on a stat that received none. The practical consequence is that, absent a specific need, the boost belongs on whichever stat has the highest base among the stats you care about. Since all stats share the same flat +20 and cap at the same 32 SP, the base stat is what separates them.

Lower a stat you don't need

The lowering side is decided by your build rather than by the arithmetic. In practice you lower the offensive stat your Pokémon never uses (Attack on a special attacker, Special Attack on a physical one), or Speed if the Pokémon is meant to play under Trick Room. The rounding leaves a small trace in the table above: the penalty is also about a tenth of T, so lowering a stat you leave at 0 SP costs less than lowering one you invest in. Incineroar, a physical attacker, loses 10 points by lowering Special Attack.

When the nature isn't a choice

Everything above assumes you are free to put the boost wherever its raw value is highest. That freedom ends the moment a specific threshold is on the line: surviving one particular hit, or knocking out one particular target. Thresholds are hard lines, and the cap is 32 SP per stat. If a line sits beyond what 32 SP alone can reach, only the nature's bonus can get you there, no matter how small it is.

This is exactly why you sometimes see Archaludon built with a positive Special Defense nature, despite a base Special Defense of only 65. Its Defense (base 130) would earn a far bigger boost, +18 at 32 SP against only +11 on Special Defense. The numbers below show what happens when a real hit is on the line.

Singles field, Sun set directly (Mega Charizard Y's own ability would bring it). Archaludon has Stamina and no item.

With a neutral nature, maxing Special Defense is not enough: the highest roll deals 199 against 197 HP. To reach a Special Defense of 119 without the nature, Archaludon would need 34 Stat Points, which the 32 SP cap doesn't allow. With the nature, it takes 24.

A short checklist for choosing

1. Start from your requirements. List the thresholds your build actually has to hit: hits to survive, targets to KO, Speed benchmarks to beat.
2. Test them without the nature. If any requirement is out of reach at 32 SP on a neutral stat but reachable with a boosting nature, that requirement chooses your nature for you. If more than one stat is in that situation, you have a genuine trade-off to resolve, not a free choice.
3. Otherwise, boost the highest-value stat that matters. The bonus follows the size of the whole stat, so base stat usually decides it, not your Stat Point split.
4. Lower the offensive stat you don't use, or Speed if you play around Trick Room.
5. Check Extra Points on the stat you picked. If your thresholds land near an Extra Point SP, that is where the Stat Points are most efficient, and you may be able to shave an SP.

Try it in PokéSpread

The calculator lets you test every claim in this guide on your own Pokémon. On the Physical attack, Special attack, Speed and Defenses tabs, set the Nature impact to negative, neutral or positive for the stat in question and compare. Extra Point rows show up in red on the Stat Point axis, and hovering any row or point shows the exact stat value it produces, which also makes dead Stat Points on a lowering nature easy to spot. Open the calculator and try your own build.