Early Z Battle Power Jump

[dbgtFO]

Perhaps Goku not being fully grown, when he commenced his divine training, compared to the fully grown Eathlings, when they received their training could also be considered a factor.

[hleV]

These power jums do seem weird at times, but the weirdest one is Piccolo's power gain during the 3 years before the Artificial Humans' arrival. I'm still not really convinced that from like 1,5 million he'd jump close to the level of SSJs.

[Piccolo Daimao]

These power jums do seem weird at times, but the weirdest one is Piccolo's power gain during the 3 years before the Artificial Humans' arrival. I'm still not really convinced that from like 1,5 million he'd jump close to the level of SSJs.

I and others have a theory that Piccolo became so strong during the three years training for the Androids because of a combination of Nail pushing his potential for power development, pushing himself harder to keep up with Super Saiyan Gokuu's strength, and having sparring partners in the form of Gokuu and Gohan. Along the way, he gained the ability (directly from Gokuu or his own training) of what Gokuu did against the Ginyuu Special-Squad: rapidly heightening his battle power for the brief instant in which he attacks, to decrease unnecessary energy consumption.

This is what he demonstrated against #20, who knew that the Z-Warriors could suppress their ki, yet still apparently mistook Piccolo's resting ki or whatever for his true power. He didn't know about that ability of Gokuu and Piccolo's, having not tracked them past the fight with Vegeta.

When Gokuu does it, Vegeta credits it to his "outrageous battle power", even though it arguably seems to entail more skill rather than power (it's not as if Vegeta has that much skill himself, at least compared to the Earth-raised warriors, or knowledge of it, considering how much power the Saiyans start off with in the first place and how a low-level Saiyan like Raditz never even trained his tail), but I digress. Perhaps it's a combination, or really just to do with power Not even Gohan, who must be more experienced and, therefore, better at ki-sensing than Vegeta (who himself doubted his ki-sensing abilities on Namek, and used his scouter up until his clash with Dodoria), couldn't tell what Gokuu was doing and why he was beating Butta and Jheese, despite having much smaller ki than them.

Chapter: 281 (DBZ 87), P11.1
Context: Gohan doesn’t think Jheese and Burta are that strong
Kuririn: "Th...that shouldn't be... Th...those guys have about the same amount of ki as th...that Recoom guy, and not even Vegeta could do anything against him...But Goku's too strong, so those guys don't look like anything special..."
Gohan: "I... I suppose... But father's ki is a lot smaller than theirs..."

Chapter: 281 (DBZ 87), P11.2-4
Jheese: “Wh-what’s going on…?! There’s no mistake that his battle power is only 5,000…”
Vegeta: “Ka-Kakarot rapidly heightens his battle power for the brief instant when he attacks…That’s probably to decrease unnecessary energy consumption…It’s for an extremely brief instant, so even the scouters probably can’t pick up on it…Th-this is an outrageous battle power…H-how did he get that kind of power?...”

Chapter: 346 (DBZ 152), P14.3
Piccolo: “Commit this to memory: when we fight, we amplify what you guys call ‘energy’, causing it to explode. That’s why the energy you stole from me earlier doesn’t matter…”

[Fox666]

I wouldn't explain Piccolo's increase in power because of Nail. Piccolo also increased his power drastically in little time while training for the battle against the Saiyans and maybe during his time in Kaio's planet. And his training with Super Saiyan Goku is a good explanation.

But the "true" reason is that Toriyama did it so Goku wouldn't be miles away of everyone else.

[Piccolo Daimao]

I wouldn't explain Piccolo's increase in power because of Nail. Piccolo also increased his power drastically in little time while training for the battle against the Saiyans and maybe during his time in Kaio's planet. And his training with Super Saiyan Goku is a good explanation.

But the "true" reason is that Toriyama did it so Goku wouldn't be miles away of everyone else.

Why not? It's as good an explanation as any, IMO. You're right in that Piccolo drastically increased his power in little time on Kaiou's planet (gonna ignore his increase for the Saiyans; everyone rapidly jumped in power then, it wouldn't make sense for Piccolo to be weaker than Kuririn and co. just because he was only training with Gohan, who had a lot of dormant power to push fast and high anyway), although some people think he was weaker than Nail, which is a valid opinion.

Maybe, to toss out a random bullshit theory, Kaiou increased the gravity on his planet (he's a god, alright, and it's his planet, he can do that!) or added weights to them (like when Gokuu was training in Heaven for the 25th TB) when he realized that, not only would Piccolo and co. probably be staying longer than Gokuu (he'd know about the broken spaceship, the Namekian DBs being a whole lot different and harder for them to summon than the Earth DBs, Vegeta and Freeza being on the planet), but that they were stronger than Gokuu and would probably have an easier time overcoming the adversity of his training. So he decided to up the stakes, and they did mention that they wanted even harder training than Gokuu.

Huh. That doesn't sound as bullshit as I thought. Maybe it really can be as simple as "Kaiou gave them an unspecified harder training regime that we don't know the full details of, but it was effective enough for Piccolo to go from 3.5k to 42k+".

Or you could just throw your hands up and say, "Fuck it, plot device." Again, if it wasn't for battle powers and the multipliers established for the Kaiouken and Super Saiyan, people wouldn't even notice or know about this, and there'd probably be less questioning too.