Yes, Professor Oak. All "spells" in Pokemon are Trainer cards, and they are almost always free. The problem, with such a powerful card, is how to make it in line with cards like Bill, which only let you draw two cards for free? Of course, the best players packed 4x Bill AND 4x Professor Oak and just dominated with hideous card advantage. Coupled with the problem of their being free was the fact you could to more than one in a turn...for free. Yes, the game was, and is, much too simple.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is Magic, where everything has a cost. That can be a huge pain, though much more thought out. Things like mana screw and wipe out your ability to cast spells. To counter this, you put in a few more lands and mana supplies, but that runs the risk of mana flooding yourself...sigh.
This is where the Vs. system does things nicely. Characters and Equipment go off a similar resource system to Magic, but Plot Twists and Locations only relate to that system only in their threshold requirements. Basically, in Vs, you can play a card that said "Draw five cards" for free, but you have to meet its threshold, and the threshold on it might be five or six, for example, which would mean you couldn't play this "really cool FREE card" until turn five or six at the very earliest. To prevent screw, every card can be used as a resource. Like in Mental Magic, where you set a spell face-down and say it is instead a land. However, when you do this, only Characters and Equipment are played as resources INSTEAD of as their types. The fun things about Plot Twists and Locations is that, even if you play them as resources, you can flip them over anytime you reach threshold and play them as what they really are. It totally prevents screw, flood, and the rampant rule of freebies.
