One of Dragon Ball's most beloved characters is Piccolo, the stoic Namekian warrior who was initially introduced as Goku's nemesis before becoming one of Earth's most powerful heroes and a surrogate father figure for Gohan. Piccolo's Namekian physiology gives him many unique abilities in comparison to the rest of the Z Fighters. From his prodigious regeneration ability to recover lost limbs in a matter of seconds to being able to stretch his arms and legs to far lengths, he would make Street Fighter's Dhalsim jealous. However, it's unclear whether Piccolo inherited one particular ability from his father, King Piccolo, that no other Namekian has displayed since: spawn monstrous henchman by regurgitating eggs.
Dragon Ball Z establishes that all Namekians reproduce asexually, with appointed elders spitting up eggs of typical Namekians. However, the first wave of eggs that King Piccolo regurgitates in the original Dragon Ball series doesn't spawn conventional Namekians, but rather dragon-like monsters that don't resemble Piccolo at all. Each of these creatures immediately swears fealty to Piccolo and ages into apparent adulthood as they hatch. Piccolo also retains a psychic connection to these creatures, as the Namekian Elder Guru does with his offspring, with Piccolo visibly pained every time one of his spawn is killed. The process of creating such monsters is described as significantly aging Piccolo, implying it draws directly from his life force.
While King Piccolo is capable of spawning typical Namekian offspring, creating a reincarnation of himself possessing all his memories who eventually rejects his progenitor's wicked ways, no other Namekian since has been shown generating these unique kinds of monsters, leaving them as a curious oddity within Piccolo's background. This raises questions about how King Piccolo was able to learn such a unique ability and, as the reincarnation of King Piccolo, if the villain's progeny could similarly produce his own army of monsters.
The likely reasoning behind King Piccolo's monster-spawning ability is because franchise creator Akira Toriyama hadn't decided, like Goku, that Piccolo was an extraterrestrial and not a demon as Piccolo initially declares himself to be. There is a passing moment when a tease about Namekian culture is provided between Piccolo and Kami at the end of Dragon Ball, but nothing that implies directly that it's alien and not supernatural by nature.
Theoretically, any Namekian, including Piccolo, should be able to create the same monsters as King Piccolo, but given the physical strain on the progenitor's body, they choose not to. King Piccolo found a loophole through this health hazard by using the Dragon Balls to grant himself eternal youth, and with other Namekians not possessing this caveat, they would want to avoid the physical toll.
Namekians are the strangest alien species in all of Dragon Ball, responsible for crafting the Dragon Balls in the first place, and with an esoteric connection to the afterlife and Kais evidenced by Kami and his successor Dende. King Piccolo may be the strangest of them all, introduced at a time when the franchise wasn't quite sure what to do with the original series' final antagonist and leaning more into the fantasy sensibilities that Dragon Ball was known for in contrast to the more science fiction-influenced DBZ. But one technique that Piccolo has apparently had in his back pocket all along is the ability to create a monster army -- albeit one that he has expressed no interest in performing himself.
