From what I can tell, the way recoil currently works is that it subtracts HP per pokemon you hit. While this keeps you from hitting a wrong move at the wrong time and losing some HP unnecessarily, it has a majorly bad impact of making such moves USELESS in monster houses/for large groups.
[spoilerMore details, but that paragraph is the gist of it.:3t22sffq]Case in point, Pidgey with Brave Bird. Here"s a real example:
In this situation, there were several pokemon trapped in between cut trees. Wanting to get a lot of exp with minimal effort, I used brave bird, which should"ve been a near 1-hit kill for the trapped pokes. But instead, I ended up dead instantly because of how recoil functions.
Also you"ll notice that the trapped pokes are still alive. I haven"t experimented with this enough, but if recoil is applied BEFORE the damage is done to the opponent, that reduces recoil move effectiveness even more.
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I suggest having recoil just take off hp once per move use (or some other way that isn’t the current system). I also suggest user actions affect enemies before death or before enemies affect them. I also suggested user priority for escape orbs in tricky situations; it would add a lot of fairness to the game.