Can a Hidden Ability be inherited from a parent with the correct Ability in a normal slot?

Let’s say I had a male, non-Hidden Ability Tirtouga with the Sturdy ability and a female Relicanth that’s non-Hidden Ability. (Relicanth’s Hidden Ability is Sturdy, while Tirtouga has Sturdy as a non-Hidden Ability.)

Suppose I breed Tirtouga and Relicanth. Is there a chance I can get a Sturdy Relicanth from this matchup?

If you are wondering my logic, male Pokémon have a chance to pass hidden Ability and sturdy is the hidden Ability of the Relicanth, but not of the male Tirtouga.

Pleaselog inorregisterto add a comment.

No. You cannot breed a Pokemon to have its hidden ability unless you already have a parent in its evolution family with the hidden ability.

A female Pokémon (or male when bred with Ditto) has a 60% chance of passing down its ability to the offspring; otherwise the offspring’s ability is randomly chosen from its regular abilities.Source

In your example your breeding a female Relicanth and a male Tirtuga. Only the female Relicanth has a chance to pass down an ability. So only the female Relicanth can pass down the hidden ability, which it doesn’t have.

If you’re breeding with a Ditto, that Ditto acts as a replacement for the missing parent, and the other Pokémon acts like the female, being able to pass down the (hidden) ability. However, you’ll only get Tirtouga eggs from this.

Here’s another explanation to add to an old post, because I can and I find this example easier to understand.

When you receive a Pokémon, it has one of 3 ability slots, according to PKHEX.

Type 1 is for Wild encounters/Static encountersType 2 is for eggs and gift PokémonType 3 is called the (H) Slot. This is reserved for a hidden ability.

For a Pokémon to get it’s hidden ability by breeding, one of the Parents must have type (H) ability. Even if the male Pokémon’s type 1 ability is the same as the females type (H) ability, it won’t be able to pass on hidden ability, due to having a type 1, not type (H) ability.