Before Tybalt-sama bans this thread and all things associated with it...

Well, first, lose the 80-line header when you reply to things, if indeed you
CAN lose it...

| Um...look.  Power earned is power kept, and by all rights Vejita would
| lose no power in crossing universes, whereas, say, Ranma would NOT
| become MORE powerful in the same way.  The Blood Transfusion sounded a
| bit more logical to me, friends.

Second of all...

Grr...

I know I'm going to get yelled at for dragging science into it again, but
it's the closest analogue I can come up with. That said...

One of the concepts necessary to understanding capacitors and dielectrics is
that of breakdown voltage; in essence, a capacitor with a dielectric between
the plates is limited in the amount of charge it can store. Beyond a certain
point, the capacitor ceases to offer resistance and becomes conductive,
allowing the stored charge to dissipate. This critical difference in
electric potential is called the breakdown voltage, and the phenomenon
observed when this voltage is reached or exceeded is responsible for
lightning, among other things. (Lightning occurs when the breakdown voltage
is exceeded in the cloud/ground/dielectric-air capacitance system.)

Consider the possibility that chi is stored in a similar fashion; building
up not necessarily a store of chi, but a potential difference between bodily
chi and environmental chi. (And DON'T get on me about the whole chi/ki thing
because I don't care and I'm not writing with regard to that thread anyway.)
Exploiting this potential difference is what makes the blasts we all know
and love, as well as enables superhuman physical feats (flight and
preternatural speed, among others).

Now, I believe the theory postulated was that, in essence, the breakdown chi
potentials are different in the Dragonball universe and in the Ranmaverse.
Only so much chi can be stored, drawn on, what have you, before it starts
leaking back into the environment. So it doesn't matter how much chi Vegita
or whoever has drawn on or learned to control; it's simply physically
impossible to hold it all in - beyond a certain point - when he shifts
universes. Similarly, it doesn't matter if Ranma can potentially draw on
more chi than Son Goku; if he doesn't know how to control that much, he
can't possibly use it. And it's entirely possible that both could be near
powerless if anyone wrote them into THIS universe... if the breakdown
potential for chi were low enough.

A simpler analogue would, I suppose, be punching holes at different heights
in a cylindrical tank of water. It doesn't matter how much water you can
draw into the tank; you can only hold and use as much water as will fill the
tank to the lowest hole. And, similarly, you can draw enough chi to snuff
the sun out like a candle, but if the universe siphons off all of it but a
spark, then you've only got a spark to work with.

Of course, if you want to write it so that Krillin can lick most of Nerima
with one hand tied behind his back or that Ranma's powers increase by a few
orders of magnitude when he steps into the Dragonball universe, you can.
This was only one possible theory, and it's always your prerogative as an
author to define a new one, since, barring experimental evidence, (yaright)
there's no real way to tell how a chi attack would work. Just don't fall
into the oh-so-convenient trap of assuming everything else but your own
viewpoint is patently impossible, illogical, insane, what have you.

--G. Falconar

And don't get me STARTED on Jusenkyo...