Double

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

My reasoning for having set power level increases was so that players wouldn't constantly increase while leaving others behind. I could work it by having a maximum power level cap for the current arc

<Snipped quote by Double>

The original fight between Frieza and Goku clearly showed that final form frieza at 100 percent power was stronger than ssj Goku. He just burned through his power quicker and Goku was fucking inhuman with how he refused to stop fighting.

@Weird Tales

No he wasn't. Goku was the one whose power level busted the scouter when they're powers were measured worlds away, not Frieza. Goku was literally toying with Frieza the whole time until he literally got bored.

And you're missing my point entirely. I have no interest whatsoever in having all fights we ever fight in instant devolve into "Everyone dogpile the villain!" Not only is that a dumb strategy that has never worked in Dragon Ball, but it's also setting us up for battles that are bland, repetitive, and impossible to keep track of. How do you not see this?

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

<Snipped quote by Double>

Having the stronger power level isn't an instant win. Frieza at full power was stronger than super saiyan Goku, but Goku kept on fighting and made him burn through his energy and beat him

@Weird Tales

What version of DBZ were you watching? Super Saiyan Goku was stronger right from the start, to the point where Goku was the one who stopped fighting because he was bored. There was even a filler scene of Frieza's men on another planet using a large scale Scouter that measured Frieza's power level just fine but broke down when it tried to measure Super Saiyan Goku. Goku was stronger at that time. Several times stronger in fact.

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

The Saiyan didn't appear to be stopping him, and so Yang flew ahead unimpeded. It took nearly a full minute of his top flight speed to finally put the city in view. In that time, he sensed a number of things happening, and none of it was good. He stopped just as the long-haired Saiyan was coming into view in the distance. He had to make some kind of plan first. There was already bit of environmental damage to the area resulting from the fight, and from that alone he already knew he was in over his head. Many of the other fighters here had stronger Ki than he himself had, and none of them had even so much as wore the Saiyan down. Yang didn't stand a chance. But at the same time, doing nothing just wasn't an option. To do nothing meant that the Saiyan won, and that the people of Earth would certainly suffer.

A swift blur of movement caught Yang's eye. Someone launched a surprise at the Saiyan from behind! It was slim, but Yang saw an opening and without any further hesitation he moved to take advantage of it. His own body shot forward like a rocket on autopilot. He tried to suppress his Ki as much as he could afford to, but hopefully his timing allowed for his own maneuver to go forward without too much impediment, assuming the Saiyan's scouter worked like Yang had heard. According to his Uncle, Scouters could read Ki from an individual and translate it into a numerical value to determine an opponent's power level. Yang also heard that Scouters could only measure one person's power level at a time. The hope here was that the Saiyan's scouter would be measuring the first attacker's power level and as a result of that be too slow to alert the Saiyan of Yang's presence.

Whether or not the first fighter's attack connected wasn't Yang's focus. He had his own target, and in this rare chance that he was hopefully granted to catch the Saiyan off guard, Yang targeted... his scouter. He threw a punch once he was close enough, but that was only a feint. With his other hand he reached for the Saiyan's Scouter. Even if the Saiyan swatted Yang away, hopefully Yang's ploy worked and he would find himself in possession of the Saiyan's scouter. Should that be the case, Yang would waste no time in crushing the device in his hands.

"You may stronger than us, Saiyan, but without your scouter you may as well be fighting blind!" a curious choice of words. For all anyone knew, Yang was a total stranger who had just arrived. How did he know what a Saiyan was? And probably most importantly, how would he have known about the scouter and known to target it like he had?

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

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

@Weird Tales

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.

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

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

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?

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

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?

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

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".

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

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.

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

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.

DBZ: The Sagas of The Z Warrior

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.

@Reflection

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...