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Credit again to @BlastX for bringing this up some time ago but I've only just now found the time to do this so I apologise. This thread is going to establish why duplicates in Danny Phantom are not as strong as the character is singularly and the characters are effectively splitting their power between them.
Evidence
Ecto-Skeleton
In the episode "Reign Storm", Danny acquires the Ecto-Skeleton which at 100% multiplies the users natural abilities by 100 times. We see Danny duplicate himself so that there are 4 of him and we see the percentage indicator drop to 25% which is a clear indication that Danny's power had split 4 ways for each duplicate.
Now I did bring up the fact that before he does this, Danny created a powerful sheild to block and reflect an attack from Pariah Dark which dropped the percentage down to the 41-38% to which wouldn't match up with the percentage split to 25%. However BlastX brought up a valid counter argument regarding this and pointed out that the suit actively recharges itself when Danny stops using lots of power and this is a fact which I'll show below.
If you look carefully at the percentage when Danny blocks Pariah's attack, it drops to 40's to 30's but quickly raises back up to the 40's before the scene changes. And what supports this futher is when Danny fires off a massive blast, he looks at the percentage and it is shown raise back up to 100% which is clear evidence. So this very much supports that the Ecto-Skeleton almost certainly rose back up to 100% because Danny doesn't use any heavy attacks after the shield until he created the duplicates.
Danny even states this when he sees the percentage return to 100% after using that large energy beam...
"Wow, ok... gotta be smart about how much of my own power I use at once."
This means he would have had to actively use up his power heavily to drain the percentage and since he creates 3 extra copies of himself and the indicator clearly says 25%, it can be assumed that he split his power 4 ways.
Finally, we clearly see Danny is capable of knocking Pariah back and surviving his hits, yet the moment he attacks with his duplicates, they could only irritate him with their combined assault before he one shot one of the duplicates which he visibly couldn't do to Danny before he created the duplicates which proves Danny had to split his power.
Vlad Plasmius
Vlad further supports the fact that duplicates are a result of splitting the users power as at the beginning of season 3 in the first episode "Eye for an Eye", Danny stomped Vlad to the point where Danny thought Vlad had lost his edge. But Vlad directly comments and calls Danny a fool to think he was that we and points out that he's far more powerful than he knows, and we see him point of to show that he duplicated himself easily over a dozen times.
And in that same episode, Vlad later creates a single duplicate which easily overpowers Danny before the fight they state...
Danny: "Alright, carbin copy freak, I'm taking you down."
Vlad: "I don't think so, remember I'm merely a single duplication, and still far more powerful than you!"
So despite them outright stating he was a duplicate, Vlad states he was just a single duplicate so he was "still" stronger than Danny indicating while he's not as powerful as Vlad normally is, he still powerful supporting that the more they duplicate the more power they half to split.
Conclusion
So using the shown evidence and statments, it's clear that duplicates are made by dividing thier overall power. This doesn't effect scaling since we already accept Vlad as twice as strong as Danny at different points due to other evidence, but it basically seals the deal and should be noted on the character's weakness section that using their duplication splits their power.
Evidence
Ecto-Skeleton
In the episode "Reign Storm", Danny acquires the Ecto-Skeleton which at 100% multiplies the users natural abilities by 100 times. We see Danny duplicate himself so that there are 4 of him and we see the percentage indicator drop to 25% which is a clear indication that Danny's power had split 4 ways for each duplicate.
Now I did bring up the fact that before he does this, Danny created a powerful sheild to block and reflect an attack from Pariah Dark which dropped the percentage down to the 41-38% to which wouldn't match up with the percentage split to 25%. However BlastX brought up a valid counter argument regarding this and pointed out that the suit actively recharges itself when Danny stops using lots of power and this is a fact which I'll show below.
If you look carefully at the percentage when Danny blocks Pariah's attack, it drops to 40's to 30's but quickly raises back up to the 40's before the scene changes. And what supports this futher is when Danny fires off a massive blast, he looks at the percentage and it is shown raise back up to 100% which is clear evidence. So this very much supports that the Ecto-Skeleton almost certainly rose back up to 100% because Danny doesn't use any heavy attacks after the shield until he created the duplicates.
Danny even states this when he sees the percentage return to 100% after using that large energy beam...
"Wow, ok... gotta be smart about how much of my own power I use at once."
This means he would have had to actively use up his power heavily to drain the percentage and since he creates 3 extra copies of himself and the indicator clearly says 25%, it can be assumed that he split his power 4 ways.
Finally, we clearly see Danny is capable of knocking Pariah back and surviving his hits, yet the moment he attacks with his duplicates, they could only irritate him with their combined assault before he one shot one of the duplicates which he visibly couldn't do to Danny before he created the duplicates which proves Danny had to split his power.
Vlad Plasmius
Vlad further supports the fact that duplicates are a result of splitting the users power as at the beginning of season 3 in the first episode "Eye for an Eye", Danny stomped Vlad to the point where Danny thought Vlad had lost his edge. But Vlad directly comments and calls Danny a fool to think he was that we and points out that he's far more powerful than he knows, and we see him point of to show that he duplicated himself easily over a dozen times.
And in that same episode, Vlad later creates a single duplicate which easily overpowers Danny before the fight they state...
Danny: "Alright, carbin copy freak, I'm taking you down."
Vlad: "I don't think so, remember I'm merely a single duplication, and still far more powerful than you!"
So despite them outright stating he was a duplicate, Vlad states he was just a single duplicate so he was "still" stronger than Danny indicating while he's not as powerful as Vlad normally is, he still powerful supporting that the more they duplicate the more power they half to split.
Conclusion
So using the shown evidence and statments, it's clear that duplicates are made by dividing thier overall power. This doesn't effect scaling since we already accept Vlad as twice as strong as Danny at different points due to other evidence, but it basically seals the deal and should be noted on the character's weakness section that using their duplication splits their power.
