Imagine if Tien learned the Fusion Dance and Kaio Ken

[Peach]

Imagine if Tien learned the fusion dance when he trained with King Kai after Nappa killed him.

And if he paired it with his multi-form move, fusing the four clones together with three fusion dances. And then he went Kaio Ken x20. Maybe during emergencies like Semi-Perfect Cell, he sometimes also pairs the three way multi clone fusion dance and Kaio Ken x20 with the Neo Tri Beam. And imagine that Yamcha also knew the fusion dance and Merged Tien did a forth fusion dance with Yamcha to make Tiencha, and Tiencha used the Kaio Ken x20 and the Neo Tri Beam as well.

Do you think he could have kept pace with the Saiyans? Would he also have been more motivated to get stronger as well?

[Vegeta th3 4th]

I don't think he would've kept up with the Saiyans and Piccolo, but he definitely would've been far more useful than he was. Despite not having the advantages they had, Tien proved that he was a very capable fighter despite that, as we saw against Cell and briefly against Buu. I think it was a very missed opportunity to not have Tien present with Piccolo to train Goten and Trunkns. Piccolo working directly with Goten who's clearly different from Gohan, and Tien working with the son of the man he hates would've created very interesting dynamics. Trunks likely never found out about Vegeta's past, so that would've been a fascinating conversation to have with Tien.

[Zephyr]

I think if Toriyama cared about keeping Tenshinhan relevant to the story as a major rival and fighter in what is effectively the Super Saiyans Arc, he could have easily justified it by having Ten learn the Kaio-ken and be inventive with it, yeah.

[MasenkoHA]

The problem with Tenshinhan as a character is he kind of became redundant after Vegeta was introduced.

[Majin Buu]

I think if Toriyama cared about keeping Tenshinhan relevant to the story as a major rival and fighter in what is effectively the Super Saiyans Arc, he could have easily justified it by having Ten learn the Kaio-ken and be inventive with it, yeah.

This. If Toriyama had wanted to keep Tenshinhan relevant, he would have done so and BSed a rationale for it.

As such, it's hard for me to get invested in this kind of speculation when we know the character became irrelevant in the first place because Toriyama had nothing for him to do and didn't care about him enough to do more than throw him a bone every so often.

[Zephyr]

I think the main thing that made him (and others before and after him) feel redundant past a certain point was that Toriyama mainly cared about focusing on characters' rivalries with Goku, and very rarely ever with one another. I often mention how cool I think it would have been to see Piccolo have a rivalry with Vegeta, and/or for Tenshinhan to have had rivalries with the both of them; there's fertile ground for bad blood, wounded pride, and itches for rematches.

But that's a lot more cognitive load than simply focusing on Goku's ever-upward journey, which DB tended toward. And given how stretched thin and burnt out Toriyama was after Namek, I can hardly blame him for keeping things relatively simple in that regard. DB's simply not that kind of martial arts story.

[Jord]

The problem with Tenshinhan as a character is he kind of became redundant after Vegeta was introduced.

He could have been an interesting "good" counterpart to Vegeta. There was obviously still some heat between them and they could have done something with it if they made Tenshinhan stronger.

[JulieYBM]

I think the main thing that made him (and others before and after him) feel redundant past a certain point was that Toriyama mainly cared about focusing on characters' rivalries with Goku, and very rarely ever with one another. I often mention how cool I think it would have been to see Piccolo have a rivalry with Vegeta, and/or for Tenshinhan to have had rivalries with the both of them; there's fertile ground for bad blood, wounded pride, and itches for rematches.

But that's a lot more cognitive load than simply focusing on Goku's ever-upward journey, which DB tended toward. And given how stretched thin and burnt out Toriyama was after Namek, I can hardly blame him for keeping things relatively simple in that regard. DB's simply not that kind of martial arts story.

It makes me wish that the anime team had focused their efforts on filling in those gaps, building up the rivalries between Ten, Vegeta and Piccolo over the course of when they needed to fill in time between adapting scenes from the comic. It would have given them both room to do as they please and allowed for them to do more exciting stuff.

Alas, perhaps in a future adaption.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

The problem with Tenshinhan as a character is he kind of became redundant after Vegeta was introduced.

That's because Toriyama stopped using him for the most part. Any character that's not used is going to seem redundant.

I often mention how cool I think it would have been to see Piccolo have a rivalry with Vegeta, and/or for Tenshinhan to have had rivalries with the both of them; there's fertile ground for bad blood, wounded pride, and itches for rematches.

This so much. It's such a shame that these three rarely interacted with one another. I'd pay good $$$ to see a movie of these three just sitting at a table throwing shade at one another.

[MasenkoHA]

The problem with Tenshinhan as a character is he kind of became redundant after Vegeta was introduced.

That's because Toriyama stopped using him for the most part. Any character that's not used is going to seem redundant.

Well no. Tenshinhan’s schtick was Goku’s rival who wanted to train to surpass Goku. Once Vegeta was created and ended up covering the same ground there really isn’t a place for Tenshinhan in the narrative. He also didn’t have much of a personality outside of that.

The other rival characters at least had something to keep them around. Krillin had rapport with Goku outside of martial arts (and didn’t seem to care that much about surpassing Goku anyways) and had more of a personality than Tenshinhan could ever hope to have, Yamcha was Bulma’s boyfriend and got shoved further into the background when that ended, and Piccolo became a mentor and second father to Gohan. Once Vegeta became Goku’s primary rival there was no place for Tenshinhan because he had nothing going for him outside of that. The only other character he interacted with was Chaozu who was even more of a nothing character.

[super michael]

If Tenshinhan continued to train hard after training with Kaio, then I am sure he could have kept up with the Saiyans and Piccolo.
However after training with Kaio, for some reason Tenshinhan never wanted to train with anyone other than Chiaotzu. He didn't think of training with Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta, Future Trunks or Gohan and didn't think of using the ROSAT.

Even in DBS Tenshinhan only trained with Chiaotzu. Basically the problem with Tenshinhan is that he stopped improving his training, while the Saiyans and Piccolo improved their training.

Even Goten and Trunks has more motivation to train with others that are more skillful and stronger than themselves, the only thing stopping them is that everyone forbids them.

As for Pan, she is training with Piccolo who is one of the best fighters.

[Yuji]

The problem with Tenshinhan as a character is he kind of became redundant after Vegeta was introduced.

You could say the same about Piccolo, only Toriyama found a more interesting dynamic and role to give him post 23rd Budokai.

I think Tenshinhan is more dissimilar to Vegeta than Piccolo is. All three started as the arrogant and snarky one-note villain, but Tenshinhan always had a shred of honor from the start and eventually transitioned into the stoic and emotionless monk archetype. 23rd TB Piccolo and Saiyan arc Vegeta may have just as well been the same character. Post 22nd TB, Tenshinhan is nothing like Vegeta.

I do think there's stuff they can do with the character that doesn't involve Goku. They always show glimpses of Tenshinhan's grudge against Vegeta periodically. They could explore their dynamic a bit, leading into Tenshinhan trusting Vegeta finally.

[JulieYBM]

Tenshinhan nearly succeeding in killing Vegeta as revenger during the Artificial Humans arc but being forced to stop because of Blooma is some nice drama.

[90sDBZ]

I don't think him fusing with his own clones would do much even if it were possible. Remember that he divides his power when he splits into 4. It would probably be a pointless endeavor.

It would've been cool if he and Yamcha fused together like in Budokai 2 though. If they both had Kaioken on top of that I could see them being useful.

I understand why Tien fell to the wayside, as the Saiyans had to come to the forefront more and more.

But he's still an awesome character with tremendous courage, an incredible work ethic, and a bunch of cool techniques on top of that. He's probably my favourite human character, and I like Krillin a lot.

[Peach]

I don't think him fusing with his own clones would do much even if it were possible. Remember that he divides his power when he splits into 4. It would probably be a pointless endeavor.

It would've been cool if he and Yamcha fused together like in Budokai 2 though. If they both had Kaioken on top of that I could see them being useful.

I understand why Tien fell to the wayside, as the Saiyans had to come to the forefront more and more.

But he's still an awesome character with tremendous courage, an incredible work ethic, and a bunch of cool techniques on top of that. He's probably my favourite human character, and I like Krillin a lot.

I did the math and the three way clone fusions would be a x100 increase from base Tien. This is not including the Kaio Ken x20, fusing with Yamcha as well, or the Neo Tri Beam.