[quote=@Double] First of all, Krillin is not useless. Don't let TeamFourStar's portrayal of him color your opinions, because in the official material he was doing useful shit even as late as the Cell Arc. Secondly, the only reason Yamcha ended up being useless is because his techniques were designed with DPS in mind which becomes outclasses the second Saiyans are introduced as a concept. Before the Saiyans, Yamcha was actually capable of not only holding his own, but even winning fights as well. It was only the Tournament settings that hit him with the Worf Effect, and that only became worse when the Saiyan Arc started. Also, Toriyama wanted to force Vegeta and Bulma together because he wrote himself into a scenario where only Saiyans could be viable and thus needed a flimsy excuse to introduce another Half-Saiyan character, even if that meant he had to blatantly assassinate Yamcha's entire character to do it (seriously, fuck the retcons that turned Yamcha into a supposed cheating playboy while conveniently ignoring the fact that he spent most of his life terrified of women but also simply wanting to find someone to settle down with). Krillin, Tien, and even Roshi were able to keep some semblance of relevance later on because they had techniques that lent themselves well to playing the Crowd Control role while the Saiyans could draw aggro and do DPS. Fun fact, the Mafuba is the literal only reason Roshi was able to be useful in the slightest during the TOP, while the Solar Flare x100 was meant to be Krillin's justification for being useful there. Tien got totally shafted because frankly the Multiform is a hell of a lot more useful than the series gives it credit for. Yes, you divide your power level, but there is a definite argument to be made for the merit of literally being able to be in 4 different places at once (plus it also would have given Universe 7 extra fighters in the numerical sense since the rules made that Tournament a numbers game in the end). The non-Saiyans COULD totally stand up to a heavy hitter if they'd just get their acts together and fight like an MMORPG party. Krillin and Tien as Crowd Control, Piccolo as the Tank (Regeneration is hella powerful, yo), and Gohan as the DPS. Together they could totally take Goku or Vegeta on. The problem is that Dragon Ball characters are morons who insist on boiling everything down to one-on-one death matches because honor or some such bullshit. This is why I like Future Trunks so much, he's the only one who realized how stupid that was and thus was willing to just take the fucking win however he could find it. [/quote] Yamcha actually used to be my favorite because he had long hair and so did I when I was younger... but then he never fucking did anything in DBZ so I latched onto Gohan instead because as a child I guess I related best to the youngest character. So... yeah, it might just be bad writing and unfortunate circumstances, but that still means being the "Yamcha" of a group is unfortunate. XD And I'm fully aware of how ridiculous the cheating thing is. And just in general, for everything DBZ did right, there [i]was[/i] a lot of plot induced stupidity used to move the plot along. Like... half the fucking Android/Cell saga, honestly. DBZ really did peak during the Namek saga. Plenty of cool stuff came after that, but as a whole... Namek takes it. Saiyan saga is right up there as well of course.