Piccolo (post three years training, pre Kami fusion)

[PFM18]

Disclaimer: Asspull is a lazy, dumb, nonsense word.

Piccolo being able to catch up with the Saiyans makes no sense from an In-Universe perspective.

I think it makes plenty of sense. There are three layers to it:

Obviously, out of universe, behind the scenes, on a writing and production level, there is no set formula for how much precisely X character is supposed to grow from Y strength increasing method. There is no bible. There is no rulebook. Characters grow just as much as they need to, from whatever given training regimen or free power boost, for the story to be told the way the storyteller wants to tell it. Toriyama wants the protagonist and antagonist to be relatively evenly matched so the fight isn't quick or one-sided? Then the underdog is going to catch up, regardless of what his method is. This happens with both Piccolo fights, the Freeza fight, Piccolo vs. #17, #16 vs. Cell, Cell after coming back from self-destructing, Gotenks vs. Buu, and probably several others I'm forgetting. The amount of strength gained is determined by the kind of fight that he wants to show, not the other way around.

Naturally, one could reasonably argue that in-universe there must be some rule, somewhere, underneath the hood. And I'm willing to concede that. However, whatever it is, it isn't something that is known. If there are indeed in-universe rules for growth rates, we don't know what they are. Therefore, we can't know when they're being violated. One thing we do know, in-universe, is that having a stronger sparring partner probably results in more gains, which is precisely why Goku wanted to help Gohan transform into a Super Saiyan: so he'd be a better sparring partner. And Piccolo, during the three year gap, had the strongest sparring partners he's ever had up to that point. His training during that period of time does not have all of the same identical variables that his past instances of training did. Ergo, different results are to be reasonably expected.

The only things we know are being violated are fan-created rates of growth. These are speculative in nature, and shouldn't be regarded as sacred. This is the only thing being violated by Piccolo catching up to the Saiyans, and I don't see how that is cause for alarm. And, yes, almost all of the "power scaling" complaints in Super pretty fall into this same trap, I think. Almost.

There isn't an in-universe set of rules for growth rates, nor do we need some arbitrary set of rules to dictate how much power one can gain over a period of time. However, there has been a precedent set for Piccolo's growth compared to the Saiyans and there the Saiyans up to that point, and after that point had atleast as much increases as Piccolo if not more increases. But for some reason, Piccolo gained almost 50x more power than the Saiyans without having a shiny new transformation to compensate for this difference. It really makes no sense compared to what we had seen prior to that point and after that point, especially compared to the Saiyans. Yes, we do not have some exact growth rate for each character, but we have seen throughout the series how characters' and their growth compares to each other. For example, Goku always has the largest boosts and that is why he is always the strongest. Now, for Piccolo to gain a much much higher boost than everybody else especially since after Namek he was easily the weakest of the three wihtout even considering transformations, it is clearly an asspull but is protected by the fact that it is part of DBZ and not DBS

[TobyS]

I have THREE headcanons for Piccolos growth.

So it seems Piccolos growth wasn't much more than Goku's, as it is in the android arc, way earlier in the series otherwise he'd have beaten Son in the 7 year BoZ timeskip right?
But what if there actually was though? Baby Piccolo caught up to a Goku who beat his adult youth restored father, even though Goku had a huge head start.

Headcanon 1:

So how didn't Piccolo surpass Goku by BoZ? Goku got an enormous zenkai from that fight, Piccolo did grow faster, the reason he didn't overtake Goku in the mean time is he had a bigger gap to close. Goku trained too so even though he grew faster he it wasn't enough to overtake yet.

Headcanon 2:

Nail had his potential unlocked by Guru (because why wouldn't he) and when he merged with Piccolo this carried over to him. But like Kuririn and Gohan it didn't come out all at once, he grew stronger over time, it took time to work on the "Piccolo half".
So in other words Piccolo is stronger then you think before he started training for the androids, this means he had less of a gap to close then you first thought.
This is supported by his willingness to fight Vegeta in the Trunks saga (and explains it). Bear in mind he's had a year to train here and has closed some of the gap already. (Toriyama considers Piccolo, Goku and Tenshinhan as people who train all the time, even in peace).

Headcanon 3a: Merging with Nail literally increased his actual growth rate as well as potential. The combined brain power of two mighty warriors allowed him to increase his knowledge of how to train effectively.
Headcanon 3b: Splitting from Kami lessened his growth rate, although Nail wasn't Kami, it helped fix some of that problem.

I'm sticking to it!

[PFM18]

I have THREE headcanons for Piccolos growth.

So it seems Piccolos growth wasn't much more than Goku's, as it is in the android arc, way earlier in the series otherwise he'd have beaten Son in the 7 year BoZ timeskip right?
But what if there actually was though? Baby Piccolo caught up to a Goku who beat his adult youth restored father, even though Goku had a huge head start.

Headcanon 1:

So how didn't Piccolo surpass Goku by BoZ? Goku got an enormous zenkai from that fight, Piccolo did grow faster, the reason he didn't overtake Goku in the mean time is he had a bigger gap to close. Goku trained too so even though he grew faster he it wasn't enough to overtake yet.

Headcanon 2:

Nail had his potential unlocked by Guru (because why wouldn't he) and when he merged with Piccolo this carried over to him. But like Kuririn and Gohan it didn't come out all at once, he grew stronger over time, it took time to work on the "Piccolo half".
So in other words Piccolo is stronger then you think before he started training for the androids, this means he had less of a gap to close then you first thought.
This is supported by his willingness to fight Vegeta in the Trunks saga (and explains it). Bear in mind he's had a year to train here and has closed some of the gap already. (Toriyama considers Piccolo, Goku and Tenshinhan as people who train all the time, even in peace).

Headcanon 3a: Merging with Nail literally increased his actual growth rate as well as potential. The combined brain power of two mighty warriors allowed him to increase his knowledge of how to train effectively.
Headcanon 3b: Splitting from Kami lessened his growth rate, although Nail wasn't Kami, it helped fix some of that problem.

I'm sticking to it!

I mean yeah these are very interesting theories but Headcanon is all that can be afforded because the series doesn't give us any kind of an answer. (albeit that is very "good" headcanon it is still headcanon) People do the same thing in DBS but the fact that headcanon has to be used is often used as a very negative criticism

[Zephyr]

However, there has been a precedent set for Piccolo's growth compared to the Saiyans

You're still leaving out the variable of training with Goku, someone who was much stronger than him, for the first time ever. That's a variable that wasn't at play when this supposed precedent was set. The results being different is entirely coherent and sensible, because there are new factors at play.

[PFM18]

However, there has been a precedent set for Piccolo's growth compared to the Saiyans

You're still leaving out the variable of training with Goku, someone who was much stronger than him, for the first time ever. That's a variable that wasn't at play when this supposed precedent was set. The results being different is entirely coherent and sensible, because there are new factors at play.

Ok but Goku was training with Piccolo too right? Piccolo wasn't just training wih Goku was vice versa is also true, so since they have been shown to increase at similar rates at the very least, Goku was 3x stronger and got a 50x boost so it would stand to reason that they would improve proportional to each other and Goku would still stay 100x+ stronger than Piccolo. So again, Goku had always gotten atleast as much gains from training compared to Piccolo and now all of a sudden Piccolo attains astronomically larger boosts than Goku? So again, In-Universe wise, Piccolo would have no reason to be able to catch up to Saiyans that attained a 50x boost through a transformation on top of already being stronger than him prior to attaining the transformation.

The only real way to rationalize it is by saying some convoluted headcanon like "Namekians gain more growth than other races when training with somebody stronger than them." Which was never indicated in the series at all.

[Zephyr]

Piccolo is training with someone stronger than him, thus maximal gains. Goku is training with someone weaker than him, thus minimal gains.

This is both intuitively attractive, and corroborated by Goku wanting Gohan to be stronger, and thus a more fruitful training partner, for their stint in the RoSaT.

Also, I think using numbers and multipliers from supplementary material like the guidebooks is silly, because that's not part of the work itself. It's not part of the story. If a discrepancy is happening due to the consideration of extra material and post-hoc trivia, then it's not a discrepancy within the actual story. The storytelling is no weaker because of it.

[PFM18]

Piccolo is training with someone stronger than him, thus maximal gains. Goku is training with someone weaker than him, thus minimal gains.

This is both intuitively attractive, and corroborated by Goku wanting Gohan to be stronger, and thus a more fruitful training partner, for their stint in the RoSaT.

Also, I think using numbers and multipliers from supplementary material like the guidebooks is silly, because that's not part of the work itself. It's not part of the story. If a discrepancy is happening due to the consideration of extra material and post-hoc trivia, then it's not a discrepancy within the actual story. The storytelling is no weaker because of it.

These "numbers and multipliers" are all but explicitly stated in the series. It is heavily implied that SSJ is 50x and it is confirmed in supplementary material. Goku loses with Kaioken x20 and then Freeza powers up to be double the strength from using 50% to using 100%, then Goku STILL wins. And these are using numbers that were explicitly stated in the series. It is all but outright stated that SSJ is 50x and Piccolo closed the gap for no real legitimate reason. I don't think it neccessarily makes the storytelling weaker but if we are holding it to the same standard that we do to DBS then we could and should deduce that this is an "asspull" for Piccolo to reach this strength so fast.

[Zephyr]

Psh, that could easily be as low as a x41 multiplier.

Regardless, I think that Piccolo catching up to Goku is still coherent, whatever the numbers, for reasons already explained.

"Asspull" doesn't mean anything. It's a vapid filler word, always used in place of some still un-articulated grievance.

And regarding its unfortunately-popular compulsive application to every other random thing that Super does: that's no more relevent to this topic than it was on the previous page. And even if one sees it as relevant, I've already expressed my agreement with you: an overwhelming majority of complaints regarding Super's powerscaling seem to boil down to outrage over headcanon violations. It's silly, and would very much apply to the original run, if applied consistently.

[PFM18]

Psh, that could easily be as low as a x41 multiplier.

Regardless, I think that Piccolo catching up to Goku is still coherent, whatever the numbers, for reasons already explained.

"Asspull" doesn't mean anything. It's a vapid filler word, always used in place of some still un-articulated grievance.

And regarding its unfortunately-popular compulsive application to every other random thing that Super does: that's no more relevent to this topic than it was on the previous page. And even if one sees it as relevant, I've already expressed my agreement with you: an overwhelming majority of complaints regarding Super's powerscaling seem to boil down to outrage over headcanon violations. It's silly, and would very much apply to the original run, if applied consistently.

I can agree with this for sure. I apologize the relevance to this topic is kind of limited but I just am a little bit peturbed about this double standard that exists

[Zephyr]

No worries, man. Everyone's got their peeves.

[The Monkey King]

Considering he conveniently caught up to the Saiyans despite their 50x boost in power during this time I would definitely say this would be considered an "asspull" if this was in DBS.

If it were DBS Piccolo wouldn't have even trained to reach SSJ/100% Freeza levels of power

[SuperSaiyanMastaDon]

I think a good standard to go by is to assume the previous arc's top powers are going to be replaced by the following arc's lowest powers. That's usually how it goes.

With the events concluding on Namek, we had the strongest in the universe, Freeza himself, the God Emperor of the universe and the legendary Super Saiyan proving himself to be top dog in a end all be all fight for the universe.

Nearly two years later, Freeza comes back, probably even stronger than Goku's massive power was, only to fall victim to some kid who couldn't care less whether Freeza powered up or not. Then Trunks is definitely not on the same level as Goku. If the author can make the God Emperor Freeza a legit jobber, no one is safe.

So, Yardrat Goku is no different here. He is most likely surpassed by Sick Goku, who by all accounts had a very impressive battle power according to Yamcha and Tien. Only Gohan and Piccolo know better, that Goku is capable of far more, but that has no bearing on Sick Goku's already impressive level. His level wouldn't be considered impressive if it didn't at least surpass Yardrat Goku's power by a good margin and then we go from there. I think Piccolo is decently above Sick Goku, who should be significantly superior to Yardrat Goku. Androids 19/20 initial powers ending up around Yardrat Goku's level and their post absorption level ending up around Sick Goku's.

I generally like to have Yardrat Goku at 75% of Sick Goku and Yardrat Goku at 66% of Piccolo to make everything flow smoothly. Does Piccolo have any reason to ever surpass Freeza prior to fusing with Kami? Hell no. But this is the way the story is written.

[PFM18]

Ah man this thread was revived from the brink of death. It is an unreasonably large increase and it is very hard to pinpoint where exactly he falls in the hierarchy of the fighters in the series.