A lot of characters have items and abilities that straddle the line between being outside help and being something the character can do under their own power. Since it can be confusing to decide whether or not to give these abilities to characters, Smash Bracket follows these guidelines to make sure that we are consistent. I will be referring to everything as an item, but we will use these guidelines for abilities, followers, and anything else as well.

• The item must be accessible under the character’s own power. It doesn’t matter what the source of the item is, but the character needs to be able to use it when and how they please.

• Before being used, the item cannot act under its own agency to accomplish anything meaningful (anything that has beneficial or detrimental consequences). Talking and sharing knowledge is fine.

• After being used, an item is free to act entirely on its own. It could effectively be an entirely separate and independent character at this point and still be okay since it needs to be activated first.

• If a character is a core part of another character’s arsenal, they may be used even if they don’t meet any other points on this list. Character’s like Banjo & Kazooie or Sein from Ori and the Blind Forest are good examples

• Some items only need to be “used” once in order to activate a permanent and passive benefit. This might mean equipping an item, unlocking it, or acquiring it in some other way, at which point it provides a character who follows you around and provides a constant benefit. These items are usable as long as we only ever see the new character acting like an upgrade or power to the character who initially unlocked/summoned/equipped them

• Any abilities the new item/character brings can’t detract too much from the main fighter, and so we have the ability to veto something if we feel like it crosses that line. An example of when this would be a problem is when examining a single Charizard, who then gets his Pokemon trainer, who would realistically have access to other Pokemon. In this case, we wouldn’t allow the Pokemon trainer to use other Pokemon because it ruins the point of looking at Charizard initially.