@King Cosmos Here's a crazy concept, why not actually let others be in the spotlight once in awhile and then get more focus in a later scene? You act like everyone has to be in the limelight at all times. It won't kill us to back off with our characters so that others get a chance to be the hero.

I'm really starting to hate this mentality of "My character has to be center stage at all times!" that I'm seeing in this discussion. First of all, no, nobody's character has to be constantly getting the spotlight. It is entirely possible (better even) for characters to trade off who gets the spotlight and when. Yeah, obviously the characters dying in the effort to kill Raditz are getting a little more spotlight right now. But that's right now. There's no telling how the fight against Nappa and Vegeta will go. Other characters who didn't shine when fighting Raditz could very well shine and be instrumental in the defeat of Nappa and Vegeta later. Hell, the show itself proves this to be true with Krillin. Krillin played no role whatsoever against Raditz, but ended up being instrumental in helping Goku defeat Vegeta, and even more so while he and Gohan were stuggling alone on Planet Namek.

Now if you want to argue that there's too many player characters and not enough villains to go around, then sure, I can see that argument being made. Now here is my suggestion for that argument.

Movie Villains.

No really, just use movie villains. Want to have a few more storylines happening in between the main arcs to give more characters more chances to shine? Throw in the villains and plots from various movies. Have Turles show up while we're trying to prepare for Nappa and Vegeta to arrive. Want Frieza to be more of a threat? Throw Cooler into the mix. Reinvent the Namek Arc to revolve around Frieza and Cooler effectively at war with each other for the Dragon Balls while our guys are caught in the middle of it. Or just have Cooler come to Earth some time after we beat Frieza looking for revenge. Write in Lord Slug, Android 13, the list goes on. For God's sake, Kami's Lookout has the freaking PENDULUM ROOM. Have whoever survives Raditz use that room for training, getting beaten down and humbled by whatever foe Mr. Popo has them face, only to have them win a rematch fight later on to demonstrate the fruits of their training.

@Weird Tales The only reason I don't think outnumbering enemies is viable is Bardock. If what you say about overwhelming foes with numbers is true, then Bardock would have never gotten anywhere as close to Frieza as he did. Also, Frieza's 1,000 man army would have wrecked everyone in Resurrection F.

Honestly, I think once we get to the Namak arc, and people are allowed to spread out and interact with the villains and such in ways that aren't just "Wait for them to get here and start fighting" we'll have a lot more to work with.

Honestly, I think once we get to the Namak arc, and people are allowed to spread out and interact with the villains and such in ways that aren't just "Wait for them to get here and start fighting" we'll have a lot more to work with.

Maybe, but eventually it's going to come down to Frieza and then we're right back to having this discussion about who gets to be awesome and who gets sidelined. And then later the same thing will likely happen with Cell... and then again with Buu...

@Double makes a valid point. I loved the idea of recreating the sagas but the standard story won’t accommodate us all in a way everyone wants. So I think we could use something along the lines of the following for Namek:

Namek: Make the Ginyu Force much more fearsome (I mean they were tough anyway but you get my point). Maybe have Cooler, Frieza and King Cold as the “boss fight” so you can have some double teams and what not.

I mean ultimately nobody wants to be a Krillin or Yamcha by the boss fights but unfortunately people need to be. I mean everyone will want to be the one to strike a killing blow on an enemy.

The other option we could have is to introduce tiers in regards to fighters power. So A, B and C would be top tier and fight the likes of Frieza and Cell. D, E and F would fight the likes of the Ginyu Force and maybe some custom supporting enemies. I know that would piss some people off and some may leave but it’d at least partially stop everyone trying to jump in front of each other. Could do a collab post with two/three people rather than try and get 10 people to sync up right.

@CaptainSully Wain is Tier D, but will be Tier A++ by the time of the Frieza fight. Calling it now. I have dibs on it.

And already it's turning into a race to see who gets stronger the fastest. This happens every time. This is why I hate using power levels.

I'm sorry, @geminironin but I can't keep waiting for you forever. I'm going to post again today and finally get myself out of Limbo.

I agree completely with @Double, also for me at least, all this arguing and subverting others to be in the limelight in the IC has really killed my interest in this RP.

There needs to be more communication and if someone comes up with a plan then people need to actually stick with it. Things were going ok until Sam tried to use his Mistform technique and then instead of sticking with the plan everyone did their own thing.

Honestly, having the first fight be everyone on Raditz was always going to be messy. I was hoping having Daiko and maybe Josh on his side would make things more manageable but that didn't pan out.

I still maintain that we should have used Saibamen. I know I know, I'm a broken record and I won't let it go, but it would have prevented so many issues.

And I still have reservations about everyone being forced to increase their power levels by the same number after each arc. You're basically telling us that if we didn't jump on the bandwagon of starting at 800, that we are forever screwed out of ever being more useful in later fights. I also think the increase is way too freaking small considering how much of an unwarranted boost the villains are getting (because again, Raditz wouldn't have needed to be made so impossibly powerful if we just used Saibamen).

We're basically setting ourselves up to beat every single villain using the same, boring and repetitive strategy of "Zerg rush them with sheer numbers".

I think the power increase from training should be judged based on what kind of training people do. I know that's more work for the GM and honestly, will probably cause some arguments, but it makes sense that someone who goes to train with Mr Popo in the time chamber would see more dividends than, say, Sam continuing to train with Kojiro.

Basically I want to see our efforts actually reflected in what kind of power increase we get.

As far as Saibamen go, it's a limited time solution. If Raditz used them here and then Nappa used them later, they would either be too strong now or too weak later on, since it makes sense that they would be the same strength both times; if I remember correctly their strength is based off of soil quality of something like that? At this point it doesn't seem like Raditz really needs the help, but he could still throw out some seeds in his next post with the justification of being annoyed having to fight so many people at once.

Then when Vegeta and Nappa show up rather than reuse Saibamen, maybe just have them bring a few jobbers from Frieza's army with them?

An easy fix for the Saibamen is to a take a page from the various DBZ video games. One of the DBZ games is an RPG on the Super Nintendo and Saibamen are of course a random enemy encounter you get early on. But if I recall correctly that game used recolors later on to indicate a Saibamen as being higher level than earlier encounters.

What if we did the same thing? Raditz uses the lowest quality Saibamen and then Nappa plants his own batch later and then the heroes are surprised when these different color Saibamen turn out to be more of a challenge than the batch Raditz used?

Well the plan was for him to join forces with Raditz as soon as he got there, but because of how diako attacked him, he threw that out the window, as why wouldn't Raditz a member of the same species act any differently? Also I don't remember who but someone got stuck with Diako cause the person never followed up after Josh left.

@TheForgottenArc yeah, I think Double's new character is stuck there.

@Double I never finished it but Xenoverse had the recoloured Saibamen as well, but those were artificially empowered unbeknownst to everyone. Nappa says something about the soil on Earth being better than he thought if they were that strong.

Well the plan was for him to join forces with Raditz as soon as he got there, but because of how diako attacked him, he threw that out the window, as why wouldn't Raditz a member of the same species act any differently? Also I don't remember who but someone got stuck with Diako cause the person never followed up after Josh left.

That would be me. I already decided I'm going to post today because I'm tired of being stuck.

Anyways, there are plenty of options to avoid having too few villains to go around. Apart from my suggestions involving Saibamen and Movie Villains, these are also possible solutions:

1. The Frieza Force is an army spread about the entire galaxy. Just because we only see a fraction of it in the show doesn't mean we can't incorporate more of it to provide a larger force for us to deal with on Namek.

2. The Androids/Cell Arc... I won't lie, this one's going to be difficult to deal with. There aren't any underling type enemies to speak of apart from Cell Jr, and those didn't show up until the actual Cell Games. Until then we're just going to have to decide ahead of time who's going to be the most useful in defeating Androids 16 through 20. I think my suggestion involving the movie villains would be most useful here, since we could then throw in 13, 14, and 15 in addition to the main 5.

3. The Buu Arc had me stumped for a while, since the closest thing Buu gets to underlings is splitting himself up into Mini Buus. But then I remembered something crucial... and that is Dabura. His role in the actual show is short and he ends up (much like many characters) criminally underused. But Dabura is the King of the Demon Realm, which suggests that he naturally has his own army of demonic servants and warriors, right? So what if Babidi not only employed Dabura but also Dabura's army along with him?

I will say, during the android arc, Josh will be mostly a villain no matter what. Well more like an Android 21 styled villain that's a little more violent than him.

My plans are to keep power levels under control. DBZ is infamous for letting power levels go into space and become absurd. I want to try and have some consistency in power level increase

My plans are to keep power levels under control. DBZ is infamous for letting power levels go into space and become absurd. I want to try and have some consistency in power level increase

But why force those of us who didn't start at 800 to forever be unable to catch up? That feels like we're being punished for no good reason.

@Weird Tales I'm in agreement with Double. A flat power increase will only result in other characters being stiffled. Demon boy would only be 800 at best, and we'll end up with a defacto heros, which basically discourages anybody else from participating. What's the point of starting low, if you're always going to be low in comparison to that one guy who wanted to be the strongest from day one. It kills any sense of growth.