How strong was Goku REALLY at the start of Dragonball?

[Ssjcell]

How strong was he because I refuse to believe he was at a pl of 10. He is running downhill on an object that any normal person outside of roshi crane or tao couldn't do. He tanks a freaking bullet after being hit by a car. Breaks a large stump into firewood with ease also breaks a brick with one finger. Survives a hatchet to the head when OFF GUARD , did I forget anything . Is he really just as strong as twice that farmer? I put his pl at 50 that still allows for him to triple his power level for the world tournament through roshi's training.

[Kaboom]

The power level of 10 works fine.

Remember that power level numbers only represent someone's amount of raw ki. At this early point in the series, ki/PL wasn't the driving force in battles yet. One of the guidebooks even points out that it was Goku being a Saiyan which gave him a big extra advantage in physical attributes like strength and durability. It's retroactive logic, but it works just fine.

[Polyphase Avatron]

PL only measures ki. As a Saiyan he's naturally more resilient than a human.

Of course we now have the whole retcon thing in DBS where anyone can be hurt by bullets if their defenses are down, and back then Goku didn't know how to control his ki so that's an inconsistency.

[theherodjl]

10 really is fine. Goku uses Ki even as a child which is something the vast majority of Earthlings know nothing about, combine that with the fact that the average human only uses like 30% of their muscle power. Let's say that relying purely on the body brings a person to only 1/10th of their actual Ki, and if that person is only using 30% of their body' strength then if they're power level is 5 then 1/10th of that is 0.5, and then 30% of that is 0.15. Divide 10 by 0.15, and then you get 66.66 which means that Kid Goku has the power & attributes of 66.66 average humans.

[GreatSaiyaman123]

50 is fine. Lowest i'd go with is 30 here, though 10 could fit if you really don't give a shit about gaps.

The problem here is that people are forgetting that durability and strength depends on Ki. Goku needed to power up (Turn into a SSJ) to lift those weights in the Boo Arc.

[Lionel]

Goku would have possessed twice the strength of that farmer at the beginning of DBZ who was likely in good physical condition given his vocation. The farmer was a fully grown man, by the way. Goku was only a child at the time yet his power level was already notably superior. I don't see why it couldn't fit. Besides, what Goku demonstrated by maintaining balance and directing the trajectory of the log's movement are likely products of his grandfather's reflex and physical discipline training in martial arts just as much as they have to do with his strength. Also, while his durability is certainly greater than the average earthling's thanks to his Saiyan durability, I don't think we know the exact calibre of ammunition and gun that Bulma used. It was a nondescript pistol using an unknown cartridge. If you were to take a shot at Goku with a definably more powerful gun like the Smith and Wesson .500 then his head would probably burst just like any normal person's.

[KBABZ]

Power Level isn't an indication of knowing how to actually use it, as Captain Ginyu proved back in the day. Goku has a leg up with physical durability, but the kicker is his training with Roshi, and picking up the Kamehameha in particular, taught him the essentials of Ki control in terms of using it as a physical weapon, something most fighters of their day had no conception of. As alluded to by Lionel, a fat but fit farmer can have a battle power of 5, so Goku having ten as an untrained Saiyan child isn't that much of a stretch, and would arguably be a lot lower than characters like King Chappa, Giran and Panput.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Power Level isn't an indication of knowing how to actually use it, as Captain Ginyu proved back in the day.

Didn't Ginyu in Goku's body actually have a much lower PL than Goku in his own body?

[KBABZ]

Power Level isn't an indication of knowing how to actually use it, as Captain Ginyu proved back in the day.

Didn't Ginyu in Goku's body actually have a much lower PL than Goku in his own body?

Yeah, because he wasn't that skilled in using it. It seems that most of Frieza's forces, and the opposition they face, are very blunt in the way they harness their ki, focusing on brute force rather than finesse and technique like Goku and friends. So my interpretation of that scenario is that Goku's original battle power/ki was always there (as far as I'm aware it didn't move to Ginyu's body when the switch happened), but because Ginyu is so crude at using his body' ki, he wasn't able to draw all of it out for the Scouter to detect.

[Pantalones]

Personally, I always saw beginning-of-Dragonball Goku as having something more like a power level of 25. Of course, power levels weren't a thing in the original Dragonball and all of the levels listed for characters back then were added after the fact, so you kind of have to expect them to be a little wonky if you try to make them work with how power levels worked in Z.

The only way start-of-DB Goku having a power level of only 10 can work with the average human being a 5 is if you assume that at such low levels, even a single point of difference is huge -- something along the lines of the Richter scale for earthquakes, where an 8 is actually about ten times more powerful than a 7 so a difference of "just" one point is still pretty significant. If you go with a scaling system like that for the single-digits, somebody like Mr. Satan could only have a power level of 6 (I think I recall someone giving him 6.66 just to go with the Satan/devil theme... I like that idea so let's go with that) and still be MUCH stronger than a random farmer or any other non-fighter. Just not strong enough to do superhuman stuff like shrugging off bullets or jumping 50 feet in the air.

Roshi's turtle having a power level of less than 1 is the one that really makes no sense, though. If he's that weak how the heck is he able to haul people across the ocean to Roshi's island on his back!? Kid Goku starting out at a 10 could work, as mentioned above, but Turtle being 0.0001 has to have been a glitch in the scouter or something. Unless that turtle somehow learned how to suppress his ki really, really well. Maybe he's been training with Kami, too!

[Desassina]

In case you're writing a power level list, consider Grandpa Gohan's power and put Oozaru Goku above or equal to him, and divide by 10 to figure where the latter was in the beginning.

[KBABZ]

The only way start-of-DB Goku having a power level of only 10 can work with the average human being a 5 is if you assume that at such low levels, even a single point of difference is huge -- something along the lines of the Richter scale for earthquakes, where an 8 is actually about ten times more powerful than a 7 so a difference of "just" one point is still pretty significant. If you go with a scaling system like that for the single-digits, somebody like Mr. Satan could only have a power level of 6 (I think I recall someone giving him 6.66 just to go with the Satan/devil theme... I like that idea so let's go with that) and still be MUCH stronger than a random farmer or any other non-fighter. Just not strong enough to do superhuman stuff like shrugging off bullets or jumping 50 feet in the air.

I think it works similarly too, but for me it's a matter of fractions and perspective. If Goku has a Battle Power of 10 at the start of the manga, and we assume that the Farmer with a BP of 5 is representative of untrained humans, that means that Goku is twice as strong as most humans with only a cursory knowledge of martial arts. Later on, Frieza's first forms BP is 530,000 while Vegeta's is 250,000, or just under half. Frieza mopped the floor with Vegeta at that point.

Some early Battle Powers I do take issue with though, primarily for "normal" characters. I find it hard to believe that Pilaf has a BP of 40 and Shu and Mai have 20, and similarly the leaders of the Red Ribbon Army range from 100 with Commander Red (which is the same as Giran) to a ludicrous 200 for Colonel Silver (20 above Roshi). That makes no sense considering that, with the exception of Tao, they all rely on technology like rocket launchers and battle jackets to fight Goku; if they were truly that powerful (Goku apparently is at 180 by the 22nd TB) then they would have not feel the need to use that tech to win. Ran Fan has 80, which is 40 short of the Crane Hermit. Chi-Chi is even stated to have 130 for the 23rd TB, which means she's 30% more powerful than Giran and only 9 short of Master Roshi himself??? Madness, I say.

[AvatarReiko]

PL only measures ki. As a Saiyan he's naturally more resilient than a human.

Of course we now have the whole retcon thing in DBS where anyone can be hurt by bullets if their defenses are down, and back then Goku didn't know how to control his ki so that's an inconsistency.

Didn't AT state in an interview once that power level correlates with "strength, speed and durability" and that they all rise equally the higher the PL is? Or something to that effect?