Were there any power scaling problems back in DBZ?

[dragonball0900]

The only things that do seem quite strange for me are Piccolo's boosts, specially the one in the Namek arc. It's strange for Piccolo to train just for a few 6 days in King Kai's planet to come up stronger than Saiyan arc Vegeta, and manage to surprise Nail. Then there's also the big boost Piccolo made in the Android arc, from being just above Third Form Frieza (he trained after the Namek arc) to being above SSJ Namek Goku, even above SSJ Yadrat Goku.

If there's a power scaling issue that I might be forgetting, you can remind me of it.

Babidi Spaceship

Well the stuff from Babidi's spacechip I managed to figure everything out, and it's quite easy to explain. However, it did took me long for me at least to comprend everything from it.

[precita]

And then later in the Namek arc, we see that you don't need a big gap in strength at all to kill you opponent, as clearly demonstrated with Vegeta and Zarbon fight each other. Hell, a very minuscule gap in power is more than enough to overwhelm and kill your opponent. Yet when Goku hits Vegeta, who has a BP of 18,000, with his KKx4 Kamehameha, which has a BP of over 32,000, Vegeta survives. How the hell does Vegeta not instantly die from an attack that? He should have been vaporised.

This is a question I've raised before. Based on what was shown earlier in the Namek saga, the heroes never should have survived as long as they did against Frieza, not even Goku. He should have turned them inside out with a single serious blow. The power gap is far too massive.

Freeza was toying around with the heroes the entire fight. He could have easily killed Goku before he triggered his Super Saiyan form and Freeza even says that, but being as arrogant as Freeza is he never thought he could lose.

Look at how slowly he tortures Krillin, Vegeta and Piccolo too...he could have just vaporized them all in an instant if he wanted to.

[PelicanDynasty]

Dragon Ball's power scaling issues didn't start with Z. They started the moment Roshi blew up the moon with a battle power of 180. It happened way too soon and fucked up everything.

I can't think of any one moment, but it was definitely fucked before this even. It's always made no sense though, you just have to ignore it. Also, I agree with the sentiment that the numbers messed everything up.

[TheGodfather93]

The Zenkai boosts on Namek were pretty ridiculous. Within the space of a few days, Vegeta went from being able to fight on par with Zarbon and Dodoria, to being a match for Third Form Freeza. Goku's zenkai boost was even crazier, taking him 90,000 to 3 million.

Doing away with battle powers was one of the best things Toriyama ever did, but by that point the damage had already been done.

[PsionicWarrior]

We sure had some power scaling problems back in Z days but it was nowhere close to the power scaling problems of Super lol

[coola]

Besides cyborgs, the only problem i have, is 5 year break between DB and DBZ, everyone barely get stronger, including Goku and Piccolo, Piccolo still wanted to conquer Earth back then, so everyone should train harder, including Piccolo

[YajirobiTheGreat]

During all of Dragon Ball Part One (a third of the story roughly) the strongest character goes from Roshi (around 139) to Goku (probably in the 300s). In a third of the story we saw the characters less than triple their power.

In the first third of Z, stretching from the Saiyan Saga to the Frieza, we go from 415 for our strongest character to 150 million. At one point Goku gets a Zenkai that takes him from 90000 to three million, which is still nowhere near enough for the final villain, who he needs an extra x50 multiplier to beat. I think that summarizes this.

In the next third of Z, the strongest goes from being Goku, who is maybe 250 million as an SSJ in the Trunks Arc if we're generous, to SSJ2 Gohan in the billions. That is another huge powerup, albeit much slower than the previous third. We have Vegeta (and Trunks) "more than triple" his power in just a year in the ROSAT, and Goku/Gohan make those gains look tiny. Piccolo somehow makes it intk the hundreds of millions with basic training and no multipliers to prepare for the Androids. Dr. Gero somehow creates cyborgs more powerful than the universe's strongest warrior by large margins. Cell somehow gets a Zenkai that seemingly everybody else has missed out on since the end of the Frieza Saga.

In the final third we get fusions, SSJ3, and Ultimate form to boost power levels. Actual gains from training tend to be small, but fusions and ultimate form still make Goku fodder next to Gohan, Gotenks, and Vegito. Just how OP some of these forms were seems to however been retcon need downward by Super.

So while I enjoyed it all in Z and Super, there is no doubt in my mind that Z was roughly as full of inconsistencies as Super with regards to power ups, and some of Z's were worse given that they often effected the strongest characters rather than the mid and low level Z fighters. Some of the lower level fighters like Roshi could just theoretically train casually with a gravity machine for a few years and reach Tien's level at this point and it would make at least some sense.

[TheZFighter]

Reading some great points here and one of the main recurring issues seems to be inconsistency.

[PsionicWarrior]

So while I enjoyed it all in Z and Super, there is no doubt in my mind that Z was roughly as full of inconsistencies as Super with regards to power ups, and some of Z's were worse given that they often effected the strongest characters rather than the mid and low level Z fighters.

I don't understand how anyone could say that after seeing both BoG and Zamasu arc? FTrunks going from SSJ2 to freaking God-Ki level just like that beats any of the Z inconsistencies by a tremendous shot. I mean ffs, when Goku was fighting Beerus the universe could collapse for crying out loud. The difference in powers is just ridiculous and there shouldn't be any contest here really.

[TheZFighter]

On this topic, I'd be quite interested to see a list of specific character's power levels before and after a period of training, to see if there is an actual rule of thumb being used or, as we'd expect, just randomness.

[ABED]

In the first third of Z, stretching from the Saiyan Saga to the Frieza, we go from 415 for our strongest character to 150 million. At one point Goku gets a Zenkai that takes him from 90000 to three million, which is still nowhere near enough for the final villain, who he needs an extra x50 multiplier to beat. I think that summarizes this.

I don't like the math. It's silly and much of it feels like assumptions. For instance, the idea that Super Saiyan was a 50x multiplier. Goku was depleted of all his energy. He wasn't at his full powered base level. Also, all that talk about the Super Saiyan barrier would be nonsensical as it would just be multiplying the base.

[Godszgift]

There were always power scaling issues but dbz made an effort to explain why x is suddenly stronger than x. Although the reasoning was unconvincing, Super's power scaling is completely arbitrary. It doesnt bother me that much, I'm all for making the other part of the cast relevant again by all means necessary, albeit it's very glaring.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

The original story had a great deal of dubious strength gains, it just typically gave us an explanation- not necessarily a convincing one- as to why it happened and made it abundantly clear who was meant to be the strongest person in the room.

Super commits the double faux paw of training sessions that are supposed to be meaningful taking place off screen or in so little time that we cannot really process them, coupled with vaguer language regarding how certain characters stack up (so where do Goku and Beerus stand right now?) and being far more flexible with how characters with great power divides fight.

I don't mind the last part one bit- I would like to think the series has always been this flexible and just chose hyperbole most of the time. But since Dragon Ball fighting power is only put into context anecdotally, the former two do make it harder to get invested. Vegeta's repeated use of the time chamber in particular has been tough for me to wrao my head around. (So a year's training lets him trash Black... or not?)