Defensive Turn

When your PKMN is attacked, a defensive turn will commence that lasts 30 seconds, allowing you to take 4 different actions to react. These actions are Defend, Brace, Parry, and Intercept.

Defend
The most basic defensive action, attacks against the defending PKMN will proceed normally. Unlike Bracing and Parrying, Defending enables your PKMN to evade.

When not engaged, a defending PKMN will take full damage when hit by a ranged attack, but melee attacks has a chance to graze, lowering the damage they take compared to when they're engaged.

Conversely, when engaged, a defending PKMN will take full damage when hit by a melee attack, while ranged attacks are more likely to graze, lowering the damage they take. The higher speed stat your PKMN has, the lower graze damage your PKMN will take.

Depending on the circumstances, a defending PKMN can dodge an attack provided any evasive modifiers (e.g. Double Team or innate positive evasion stat) or imperfect accuracy moves (e.g. moves with accuracy below 100 or accuracy loss through Smokescreen) are in play.

Brace
An optional defensive action that lets your PKMN to guarantee an incoming attack to hit, reducing damage against a retreating or engaging hit by 1/4, or a direct hit by 1/12. Bracing a melee attack when not engaged allows the attacker to automatically engage, while bracing a ranged attack while engaged will force a retreat for the bracing PKMN.

Bracing also lowers your PKMN's defensive stats by 1 stage, so bracing too often isn't recommended. In addition, moves with extra effects (e.g. Bite, Fire Fang, etc.) will have their chances increased.

Parry
Typing a move name will let your PKMN to Parry the incoming attack, reducing the damage they take.depending on the move used as a counterattack. The move category must match. (Parrying a melee move with a melee move, ranged move with a ranged move.) Secret Actions cannot be used to parry.

Type-effectiveness applies for parries. Parrying with a super-effective move against an incoming move will greatly reduce the damage, or even completely shrug it. However, if parrying with a move not very effective or immune toward the attack, the damage reduction will be even lesser, or having minuscule effect.

Moves with high base power and cooldown makes the best parries, while low base power and cooldown moves makes the worst parries. As a result, it's best to parry with above average base power moves.

Moves used for parrying will have their cooldown increased by 1. Keeping a move balance is vital so your PKMN won't enter a lockdown from parrying too often.

Intercept
If your teammate is being attacked, your PKMN can choose to intercept, essentially taking the attack for them as if your PKMN is the one being targeted.

Intercept has a chance of failing, depending on the speed difference between the two PKMN that attempted to intercept and the opposing foe that attacked. The higher your PKMN's speed stat, the better the chances.

Intercepting successfully will reduce your PKMN's speed by 1, and by 2 if the attempt failed. Your PKMN can't intercept two PKMN engaged with each other, unless your PKMN is engaged alongside them.

Trivia

 * Certain moves (most status moves, Sucker Punch, First Impression) won't trigger defensive turns, meaning there's no way to brace, parry or intercept them.
 * When a PKMN braces an attack during a semi-invulnerable status, or using Protect/Detect, the attack will never hit them, but the stat-lowering side effects from bracing will still take place.