Master Roshi was announced to be Dragon Ball FighterZ Season 3’s third DLC challenger. The Turtle Hermit is certainly important to Dragon Ball lore as he was one of the martial arts masters responsible for training Goku, the main protagonist of the series.
It was recently revealed that Master Roshi will be unable to perform a Super Dash during gameplay. This is similar to how Videl has the ability to dodge instead of reflect.
This reveal is already prompting concerns from the Dragon Ball FighterZ community about Master Roshi’s viability before his release. Even at high level, the Super Dash is very important in the neutral and for extending combos.
It’s worth noting that Videl is often looked at as a weak character in Dragon Ball FighterZ mostly due to her inability to perform the reflect action. Many believe that Master Roshi could be doomed to being a low tier without the Super Dash unless he has something ridiculously powerful to make up for it.
However, prohibiting Master Roshi from using the Super Dash does make sense canonically. The Super Dash action is intended to resemble flight in the Dragon Ball series.
Despite being skilled at both martial arts and ki manipulation, Master Roshi is unable to fly in the source material. Funnily enough, even certain characters that are believed to be weaker than Master Roshi — such as Videl, Krillin, and Tien as possible examples — are able to fly whereas Master Roshi is unable to.
The most likely reason as to Master Roshi’s flightless tendencies is simply because he never learned how to. It is believed that Master Roshi’s longtime rival, Master Shen the Crane Hermit and Tien’s teacher, is the one who originated the now basic technique as far as residents of Earth are concerned.
As the relationship between Master Roshi and Master Shen tends to be an extremely bitter one, it seems that Master Roshi is probably making a conscious choice to not use a technique that was originally developed and used by Master Shen.
Funnily enough, there are now plenty of beings in Dragon Ball lore that can fly that actually have no connection to Master Shen now. It’s very likely that Master Roshi could learn to fly if he really wanted to, but chooses not to.