Counter Damage vs Attack Damage

Helmsword

Can someone explain this to me like I'm 5...

the difference between Adding/Moving Counter Damage vs Attack Damage (straight up dmg from any attack)

Example ...

Player A:
Radiant Alakazam in Active Slot (Ability: Painful Spoons - Once during your turn, you may move up to 2 damage counters from 1 of your opponent's Pokémon to another of their Pokémon.)

Player B:
Bulbasaur in Active Slot with 20 dmg on it from Alakazam's Mind Ruler attack
Manaphy on the Bench (Ability: Wave Veil - Prevent all damage done to your Benched Pokémon by attacks from your opponent's Pokémon.)

Can Radiant Alakazam move the 20 dmg and put it on Manaphy using Painful Spoons?

DoubleCure

Yes! Manaphy doesn't protect against damage counters, so simply put anything that says damge counters will ignore the Manaphy ability.

Octowen

@DoubleCure already gave a fantastic answer, but I couldn’t resist asking chat GPT to explain it like I was a five year old, as that was the request. The result:

“Alright, let’s use a simple example with Pokémon cards!

1. Adding Counter Damage:
   • Imagine you have a Pikachu card. Pikachu gets hurt in the game.
   • To show this, you put small red tokens (damage counters) on Pikachu. Each token means Pikachu has some damage.
   • Adding counter damage means you put more red tokens on Pikachu when it gets hurt more.
2. Moving Counter Damage:
   • Now, imagine you have Pikachu and a Bulbasaur card, and both have some red tokens on them showing they’re hurt.
   • Moving counter damage means you take some red tokens off Pikachu and put them on Bulbasaur, or vice versa. You’re just shifting the damage around between your Pokémon.
3. Attack Damage:
   • Pikachu can use its Thunderbolt attack. When Pikachu attacks, it can hurt the opponent’s Pokémon, like Charmander.
   • You then put red tokens on Charmander to show it got hurt. The attack damage is how much Pikachu’s attack hurts Charmander.

So, adding counter damage is putting more hurt tokens on your Pokémon, moving counter damage is shifting hurt tokens between your Pokémon, and attack damage is using an attack to put hurt tokens on the opponent’s Pokémon.”