Power Levels should have more relevance

[Revolution]

so in my opinion, the issue with power levels in the Dragon Ball series obviously stems from a lack of consistency and continuity. I guess Toriyama or whoever couldn’t be bothered or more likely at some point forgot to maintain a coherent power scaling system. And now power levels have lost their significance and meaning really within the series - for me at least.

But considering the influx of new characters and abilities introduced in Super so far, I reckon there's an opportunity for a gentle reintroduction of power levels. They have a chance to give an in-depth explanation, so we can effectively measure the true extent of Goku's power, as well as gauge the strength of characters like Frieza Black. This would bring much-needed clarity and enable us fans to better appreciate the growth and abilities of all of the characters and actually have something tangible we can reference like the good old days at the start of Z.

Vegeta especially having used a scouter before would have a point of reference to compare what he senses to a round power level number.

What does everyone think? reintroducing power levels, easing in a better explanation, could help restore the importance and meaningfulness of power scaling in the series?

[Godo]

I don't see the need for power levels as a means to be able to do power scaling as it limits the series and what can be accomplished. With power scaling, we wouldn't be able to see Kame Sennin parrying Jiren or the humans doing just anything fighting-wise in Super.
Power levels were shown to be an inferior system in-universe to such a degree that Vegeta chose to learn sensing ki by himself instead of using a scouter, since most non-basic and worthwhile fighters can use their ki in many ways and use different attacks. Kuririns Kienzan is an example where he could have cut Nappas head off or Freeza's head (second form), while being vastly inferior to them in power.

[FinalPilaf]

Whether or not they bring back actual power levels, I do think they should definitely try to start paying attention to characters strenght relative to each other again like what was the case during Toriyamas original manga and it's anime adaptions.

Back in the olden days, you usually knew which character was stronger than which, and that in turn for one thing made it all the more special when someone much weaker than someone else managed to somehow deal damage to the stronger person. We all remember how epic it was when Tien managed to hold back Semi-Perfect Cell, and the reason it was so epic was because we knew for certain that Cell was in a completely different league than Tien. In modern DB like DBS, you always have the feeling that you don't really know the characters strenght relative to each other. Like in the ToP when Ribrianne who in some instances seemed to be able to battle Goku and Vegeta (although not at their strongest) suddenly taken out in her final form by Android 18, a character who doesn't seem to have trained since the Cell saga and should logically be nothing to Ribrianne. You watch that and you just sorta shrug and go "eh, sure why not" since you no longer even EXPECT there to be a clear power hierarchy between characters.

[Bloodthroe]

I see what you're saying. It would help put into perspective who is stronger than who and would stop a lot of infighting in the community. Then again, those kinds of debates help fuel active discussions in the fandom.

Personally, I have been using the wafer stickers to gauge the powers of DBS characters.

[MasenkoHA]

Power levels were unique to the Freeza Force and the whole point was showing how stupid it is trying to assign a number to combat capabilities when characters can hide their ki. Nappa and Vegeta even acknowledged it got Raditz killed and Vegeta mocks the members of Freeza's army for still depending on it when he can sense ki

There's no reason to bring them back

[Hugo Boss]

I don’t see the point in reintroducing them within the series because their point was to teach the readers a fight isn’t always decided by who has the greatest power and that you shouldn’t rely solely on the battle power you are feeling. Vegeta finally came to realize that he has to make better use of his power, that in the long run it will make him perform better than simply focusing on increasing strength. We have yet to see how much it will impact in his future matches after he barely defeated Goku.

In another hand, I like the wafer sticker approach of signing numbers for multiple characters from multiple animated content, not necessarily translating battle power but the overall level of fighting performance. I would just like it to be a little more fleshed out, with details about how the numbers were selected.

[theherodjl]

There should be a tier system that puts PL units into more simplified figures; such as PLs of 1 through 1,000 being in the "A" range, PLs of 1,001 through 1,000,000 being in the "B" range, and so on. Even things like Babidi's Kiri measurement couldn't keep a proper handle on the levels of power, that only continued to get much higher long after the Boo arc.

[miguelnuva1]

Power levels were unique to the Freeza Force and the whole point was showing how stupid it is trying to assign a number to combat capabilities when characters can hide their ki. Nappa and Vegeta even acknowledged it got Raditz killed and Vegeta mocks the members of Freeza's army for still depending on it when he can sense ki

There's no reason to bring them back

The entire power level thing was stupid anyone before weaker characters only one when their power level exceeded the stronger character anyway.

[YoungDefender]

Back in the olden days, you usually knew which character was stronger than which, and that in turn for one thing made it all the more special when someone much weaker than someone else managed to somehow deal damage to the stronger person. We all remember how epic it was when Tien managed to hold back Semi-Perfect Cell, and the reason it was so epic was because we knew for certain that Cell was in a completely different league than Tien.

What a great moment that was. Another that comes to mind is when Yajirobe basically saved the Earth by cutting off Vegeta's tail. Having characters make a big impact despite a huge disparity in power level made for very memorable, "instant classic" sort of moments.

The moment where things really got out of hand as far as power level for me was when Trunks arrived and smoked Frieza and Cold for style points basically, and then turned around and said "Yeah, so this was still nothing, there are androids in the future who are way stronger than me and Goku". Power levels have been difficult to conceptualize since that moment.

[PowerLevelGuy]

Power levels are not BS. The entire series is based on an opponent's power and speed. The only problem Freeza's scouters had is they were tricked by a fighter's ability to suppress. Some people take it too far that power levels have no meaning, inaccurate power levels have no meaning. But the whole story is about accurate power levels and how people inaccurately sense people and get surprised. Power levels have always been consistent in universe and logical. Only a few instances in Super make them redundant. But still, power is always a huge factor.

[JulieYBM]

Writing to keep battle powers in mind is boring, so I wouldn't want the series to stick religiously to them. As it is, the original comic had a hard enough time figuring them out. They're just a distraction.

[PowerLevelGuy]

Well, the series has always had battle power in mind. What makes it boring is if he has to consistently showcase their numerical values, thus rendering all suspense dead. But yeah, battle powers are always being used in universe, they just don't have a numerical representation of them.

[Vegetto95]

I see what you're saying. It would help put into perspective who is stronger than who and would stop a lot of infighting in the community. Then again, those kinds of debates help fuel active discussions in the fandom.

Personally, I have been using the wafer stickers to gauge the powers of DBS characters.

Oh yes, because as we ALL know very well, Ultra Instinct Gokū isn't even three times stronger than the combined Ginyū Special Corps.

You know, despite the fact that, when he became a Super Saiyan for the very first time (which was almost TWENTY YEARS before he first achieved UI at the ToP), Gokū had a battle power of 150 million, which is literally over SIX HUNDRED times more than the Ginyū Corps' combined Battle Power of approximately 250 thousand.

It's almost like the Battle Power numbers on those wafer stickers are just as believable and reliable and accurate as, say, the ones on the Japanese Cardass cards from the 90s, or the American CCG cards from the 2000s by Score, or the ones in several of the video games. Which is to say, not at fucking ALL.


I will never understand why people are SO OBSESSED with HAVING to assign arbitrary numbers to how strong characters are at any given point in the series, instead of being able to, oh I dunno... just sit back and enjoy the story and characters for what they are.

Like... I get the desire to know how much the strength difference between characters in a nekketsu battle shōnen series is, as those types of series do have to rely on that to some degree by their very nature... but that was every single bit as obvious and easily determined in Dragon Ball looooong before Scouters and their Battle Powers showed up (and there are soooo many similar battle shōnen series out there that have no numerical strength measurements, and yet no problem with organically displaying the relative strength levels between the characters).

Like, I had NO trouble telling how strong Giran, Namu, Gokū, Jackie Chun, Yamcha, Kuririn, etc. all were compared to each other in the 21st Tenkaichi Budōkai just by watching them all fight each other. Ditto for Tenshinhan, Gokū, Yamcha, Kuririn, Jackie Chun, etc. in the 22nd. Or Tambourine, Gokū, Piccolo Daimaō, Drum, Tenshinhan, Muten Rōshi, etc. immediately after that.

And it would NOOOOT have been hard to tell the difference in power between Gokū, Piccolo, Raditz, and Gohan at the beginning of Z either if we never knew the exact numbers on Raditz' scouter (and hell, we're forced to estimate how strong Raditz is anyway by comparing him to the other characters, because he never says what his own Battle Power is!). As MasenkoHa and Hugo Boss said before, Battle Powers were used mainly as a storytelling device to showcase the difference between the evil aliens who relied too much on their technology, and the earthbound martial artists who instead relied on their spiritual senses (a dichotomy that was wonderfully turned on its head in the next arc, where the main characters' reliance on Ki sensing put them at a disadvantage against the Artificial Humans, who had no Ki to sense! And aaaaalll done without a single number).

So it's just kinda sad to see such a HUGE swath of the fandom take that and come away with ENTIRELY the wrong interpretation, instead using Battle Powers in an obsessive, pointless quest for Versus Debate fuel. Like, here's the thing... I don't fucking CARE if Son Gokū is stronger than Superman, or vice versa. AT ALL. Or if he's stronger than Saitama, or Seiya, or Dark Schneider, or He-Man, or The Incredible Hulk, or fucking Mighty Mouse or Underdog or SpongeBob Fucking SquarePants for that matter!! Relative strength does not an interesting story make. I care about the CHARACTERS. What motivates them? How did they achieve that strength? Why? What are they using it for? Good? Evil? Revenge? Protection? Their own amusement? How does it affect their interactions and relationships with the other characters? THAT'S what matters in a story, and that's what matters to me.

[Hugo Boss]

I don’t think these numbers in particular are supposed to purely represent their battle power. They seem to be taking into account the overall fighting ability of the characters, including their special skills. That’s why you have 100 points of difference between characters that have several thousands of BP difference.

[LightBing]

Power-scaling always existed and still exists(later Super anime excluded). All the "many times stronger", old Villain returning to get his ass kicked and the never failing "half as strong than" line frequently repeated. These are all for that purpose, essential by the very nature of the manga.

Actual numbers were just a narrative point, besides appealing to readers.

Their return would be fun for secondary characters who's power might hard to figure out, for the Goku's and Vegeta's it would just be extra work with little benefit.

Also reminder they did return twice. In the Boo arc with Babidi's Kili system. In the BoG movie when Toriyama clarifies the power-scale in an interview.

[MasenkoHA]

Well, the series has always had battle power in mind. What makes it boring is if he has to consistently showcase their numerical values, thus rendering all suspense dead. But yeah, battle powers are always being used in universe, they just don't have a numerical representation of them.

I mean not really, no. Battle Powers didn't exist until Chapter 195 and they pretty much stopped existing after chapter 331. The fandom just bizarrely decided to hyper fixiate on them, ironic given how the series mocked the idea of trying to turn fights and a characters strength into a numbers game.

If you mean they were always in mind in the sense one character is usually stronger than another...well yeah, but that's almost any fighting series. You might as well say Yuyu Hakusho and Fist of the North Star were written with battle powers in mind.

[ABED]

If we kept the numbers in their proper context, it could be fun, but no. Nerds do what nerds do. They turn nerd stuff into math problems.

[miguelnuva1]

Well, the series has always had battle power in mind. What makes it boring is if he has to consistently showcase their numerical values, thus rendering all suspense dead. But yeah, battle powers are always being used in universe, they just don't have a numerical representation of them.

I mean not really, no. Battle Powers didn't exist until Chapter 195 and they pretty much stopped existing after chapter 331. The fandom just bizarrely decided to hyper fixiate on them, ironic given how the series mocked the idea of trying to turn fights and a characters strength into a numbers game.

If you mean they were always in mind in the sense one character is usually stronger than another...well yeah, but that's almost any fighting series. You might as well say Yuyu Hakusho and Fist of the North Star were written with battle powers in mind.

Yu yu hakusho did start brining power levels in. They tried it in the Genkai arc and then brought them back in the Three kings saga in a way that would make Frieza proud.

[PowerLevelGuy]

I think power levels are consistent. Or should be from an in universe perspective. Skills don't really matter all that much in the Z portion of the saga. And I think the feats should supersede guidebook logic.

For example, 100% Freeza is far closer to Super Saiyan Goku than Zarbon is to Vegeta if we go by the fights. Freeza has far more power and speed feats, so I'd say his power level is closer to Super Saiyan Goku's then Zarbon is to Vegeta. That is what always made sense to me.

[NeoZ Duwang]

The power level readings would get so high that most people wouldn't even be able to read them, they'd have to be displayed at scientific notation at the very least. Keeping track of who's stronger than who with numbers isn't really helpful, specially when you get to six or seven digits, it becomes increasingly more difficulty to actually feel the difference