How much is a kaioken boost?

[Cursed Lemon]

Has anyone ever really quantified how large a kaioken boost is?

We know that one can use double, triple, etc. levels of kaioken, but when Goku just simply breaks out the technique as normal, how much of a power increase is he getting in that short burst?

[dbgtFO]

The basic Kaioken doubles the user's power.

[KentalSSJ6]

The initial Kaio-ken is a X2 boost as seen when Goku uses it before Ginyu. his PL reads 180k and Goku was at 90k upon landing.

[Darkprince410]

The manga establishes that the normal Kaiou-ken doubles Goku's strength.

Chapter: 229 (DBZ 35), P1.1
Narrator: “Vegeta's strength has greatly surpassed what Goku had figured on...! That power was such that not even the Kaio-Ken, which doubled Goku's battle power, could give Goku the upper hand... What will you do?! Goku!!"

This was said by the narrator prior to Goku using the "Kaiou-ken 2x" and it was just the Kaiou-ken he was using

[TTC817]

My guess would be if Kaio-Ken 2X doubles one's power, the normal 1X Kaio-Ken is probably a 50% power increase.

[Adamant]

My guess would be if Kaio-Ken 2X doubles one's power, the normal 1X Kaio-Ken is probably a 50% power increase.

There's no such thing as a "Double Kaiou-ken". The number indicates how many times your power is multiplied.
It's not all that logical if you think it through, but that's how it is. The Kaiou-ken doubles your power, the Triple Kaiou-ken triples your power, the Quadruple Kaiou-ken quadruples your power, the Ten-fold Kaiou-ken multiplies your power by 10, and the Twenty-fold Kaiou-ken multiplies it with 20.

[hleV]

My guess would be if Kaio-Ken 2X doubles one's power, the normal 1X Kaio-Ken is probably a 50% power increase.

Kaio-ken is synonymous to Kaio-ken x2. It would've been weird for Goku to say "Kaio-ken x2" the first time he used the technique as KK3 and above weren't revealed at that time. Then when he's soon to use KK3, he shouts "Kaio-ken x2" instead of just "Kaio-ken" because switching from "Kaio-ken" to "Kaio-ken x3" would've been somewhat weird.

[Cursed Lemon]

I'm 99% sure Goku mentions something about "using a double" in the dub, but I'm assuming that's just a dub error?

[dbgtFO]

I'm 99% sure Goku mentions something about "using a double" in the dub, but I'm assuming that's just a dub error?

The confusion stems from the original text, where Goku first calls it the Kaio-ken. When realizing he needed to use Kaio-ken x3, he calls the one, he just used Kaio-ken x2.

[RandomGuy96]

Daizenshuu 2 does say this:

Finally the showdown with Vegeta had arrived. Goku is overwhelmed by Vegeta's power, which is in a different league. Goku counters with the Kaio-ken, but even that fell short, so he raises its power x2.

[Hitiro]

Daizenshuu 2 does say this:

Finally the showdown with Vegeta had arrived. Goku is overwhelmed by Vegeta's power, which is in a different league. Goku counters with the Kaio-ken, but even that fell short, so he raises its power x2.

I'm not sure this this sentence is very helpful because it is vague. At what point is it saying Goku's power fell short of Vegeta's? Because there are two occasions in which that happened. During the hand-to-hand combat Goku couldn't keep up, which forced him to push himself up to Kaioken x3. Or the other possible one is during the beam struggle which pushed him to use Kaioken x4 to beat back Vegeta's own beam.

In all eventuality it is probably the latter. It does make sense if you put it through this example as if Kaioken is a 2x boost then 2 x 2 = 4.

In the former example it would sound as if Kaioken was merely a 1.5x boost as 1.5 x 2 = 3.

I would lean toward the latter example as it makes more sense and fits with the manga as the Narrator confirms that Kaioken is a 2x boost as what Darkprince410 confirms in his quote.

[DieHard]

Daizenshuu 2 does say this:

Finally the showdown with Vegeta had arrived. Goku is overwhelmed by Vegeta's power, which is in a different league. Goku counters with the Kaio-ken, but even that fell short, so he raises its power x2.

Does not make sense,ignore.

[Adamant]

I checked the actual book. The quoted part is only vague when viewed in a vacuum, that section very specifically claims that Kaioken and Double Kaioken are two different things.

[Herms]

There's also Daizenshuu 4's technique section, which (as I recall, can't check right now) has a segment on Kaio-ken and lists Kaio-ken x2/3/etc as variants. I've also heard that a lot of those old school RPG games typically had plain Kaio-ken as separate from KK x2, and had it give a x1.5 boost. Of course, as already noted, in the manga the narrator says the Kaio-ken doubles Goku's battle power, so it seems like no matter which approach you take you're going to contradict something.

[Adamant]

There's also Daizenshuu 4's technique section, which (as I recall, can't check right now) has a segment on Kaio-ken and lists Kaio-ken x2/3/etc as variants.

That's correct.

For some reason it doesn't list the Tenfold Kaioken or the Twentyfold Kaioken though.

[Tectorman]

On the one hand, the narrator calls the Kaioken a doubling boost, meaning Kaio = Basex2 and Kaio2 = Basex2.

On the other hand, Goku lists Kaioken and Kaiokenx2 as two separate things, as does King Kai.

Both views have representation, so to me, the answer is which one makes more sense. I think it makes little sense to have the two separate distinctions if they do not, in fact, mean anything. So for my money, Kaio = Basex1.5 and Kaio2 = Basex2.

"But what about Ginyu? Goku faces him with a confirmed PL of 90,000, then uses Kaioken and achieves a PL of 180,000. Shouldn't that confirm that Kaio is the same thing as Kaio2?"

Not necessarily. What I saw was Goku calling out Kaioken and then powering up to 135,000. Then he decides that the difference between his power and Ginyu's doesn't feel like a big enough gap to convince Ginyu to back off. And since he could already sustain Kaio2 safely back on Earth and could surely do the same here (I personally think Goku could've sustained as much as Kaio5 when he first landed on Namek), he just kept right on powering up to Kaio2. Then he stopped when he felt that Ginyu would be suitably intimidated to surrender without bloodshed.

"But he didn't call it out."

He didn't need to. It's well-confirmed that Goku doesn't have to call out Kaioken for it to work. We never hear Kaiox10 out of him when he faces Frieza, and some translations don't have him call out Kaiox20.

[Kaboom]

I'd be open to the idea of a "normal Kaio-Ken" being a 1.5x boost or something, but as things stand now, the very straightforward "Kaio-Ken, which doubles his power" narration from the manga pretty much trumps everything else. It'd take something like a correction in a future printing or direct word of god from Toriyama to overturn it.

[rereboy]

My guess would be if Kaio-Ken 2X doubles one's power, the normal 1X Kaio-Ken is probably a 50% power increase.

No, regular Kaioken and Kaioken x2 are exactly the same thing. The author just made Goku say Kaioken x2 because he was about to use Kaioken x3, thus making it easy to distinguish just how much power up he was getting just by the naming scheming, that's all.

[Ultimate_Nova_X]

It would make more sense to me that Kaioken and Kaioken x2 are the same thing.

Given that Kaioken is supposed to be a power multiplier, it would be odd if the difference in the "first 2 levels (Kaioken & Kaiokenx2)" is different from the 3rd level and beyond, let alone half the difference.

Also, it's more valid to take what was said in the manga than the other sources, but that's my opinion.

And just FYI, in Chinese (I don't know about Japanese), saying 一倍 (one times) and 二倍 or 兩倍 (two times) both mean two times, as saying 1x and mean it is pretty obsolete.

[DarkPrince_92]

I'm sure the Kaioken is initially a x2 boost. Goku's BP was roughly 8,000 upon arrival to fight the Saiyans, then he used Kaioken to fight Vegeta. That would double it to ~16,000 which was less than Vegeta putting out ~18,000. Goku's only choice was to do a x3 to top that.