scrape_r_rational/data/cache/7c8ujd.md

[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread

Post:

Welcome to the Saturday Munchkinry and Problem Solving Thread! This thread is designed to be a place for us to abuse fictional powers and to solve fictional puzzles. Feel free to bounce ideas off each other and to let out your inner evil mastermind!

Guidelines:

• Ideally any power to be munchkined should have consistent and clearly defined rules. It may be original or may be from an already realised story.
• The power to be munchkined can not be something "broken" like omniscience or absolute control over every living human.
• Reverse Munchkin scenarios: we find ways to beat someone or something powerful.
• We solve problems posed by other users. Use all your intelligence and creativity, and expect other users to do the same.

Note: All top level comments must be problems to solve and/or powers to munchkin/reverse munchkin.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Comments:

• u/Ev0nix:

  Reverse munchkin: Whenever this individual touches someone they can choose a series of forces for that person to be effected by up to 3 days later, along with this individual's medical training this can be used to precisely fake a very wide variety of causes of death from heart attack through gunshot(minus bullet but worth mentioning) to some kinds of poisoning, even no apparent cause of death by crushing a few key nerves. This individual is smart, some rich guy wants a celeb dead and has a contact then this person is just one of thousands who happen to meet this celebrity a few days before they drop dead appatently of natural causes.
  
  Let's say you are all in the local police department and only suspect something due to slight statistical anomalies, let's also say there is precident for superpowers so you don't rule out this possibility on principal but have no reason to suspect it yet.
  
  Edit: Four things to note is that the assassin occasionally frames other people especially when there's not a better cause to blame I.E. smoking, is not willing to leave the city for various reasons but mainly because lots of business comes up there (think New York, Hollywood, a capitol or something in that vein), it does not have to be the local police(but preferably something like that, as opposed to sayyyyy, batman or someone with powers.)  and finally although the assassin is very good at using the powers other relevant skills like planting other evidence or sneeking into building to poke people and will avoid such things when possible.
  

  • u/CCC_037:

    Don't try to track the deaths. Track the *payments*.
    
    Celebrity X dies, and one of his heirs slips up and says something after a few too many drinks about hiring an assassin to get his inheritance. Ask him a few questions, then arrange a sting by finding out how to hire this particular assassin and catch him when he turns up to collect his advance payment.
    

    • u/Ev0nix:

      However there are ways around that, drop points, intermediaries, online banking... On the other hand the assassin doesn't have any special defence against that sort of thing and the police most likely have there own ways with that sorta thing.
      

      • u/CCC_037:

        Yeah... the assassin will do no better at this than a nonpowered human, and police have all sorts of ways to deal with nonpowered humans...
        

  • u/Noumero:

    *Local* police and a *smart* enemy? I don't really see it as winnable, then: the assassin would never do another job in this city until a significant amount of time has passed. Pure OCP, gg no re.
    
    But even if the assassin can't or won't leave the city for some reason, we can only have these slight statistical anomalies for evidence, and then we're left with the classical problem of building a serial killer's profile, except with more uncertainty regarding the victims and (I imagine) much lower number of victims. If we're talking a maniac instead of a professional killer, it gets much easier, but as it stands...
    
    What technology do we have? If we have ubiquitous video surveillance and powerful face-recognition programs, we could cross-check all likely victims' interactions with public in days prior to their demises, and possibly find a common face here. I imagine a smart killer would expect this, though, and either wear face-concealing disguise, or work with the assistance of someone capable of rendering camera feeds irrelevant, or just not touch the targets where there are cameras. The problem here is, of course, that we have no reason to suspect that direct presence is necessary for killing, a priori. Why would we assume that, instead of the killer having a Death Note?
    
    Hm. If we're aware of some high-level players that could employ this assassin (which can't be such a high number of people — this person's services must cost a lot), and know which kinds of people they would likely target, we would be able to either put a surveillance on possible targets, or try to bait the assassination. I can't imagine it would be actually *approved*, though, if all we have to work with are slight statistical anomalies and vague guesses about superpowers. If someone important was killed in such an inexplicable way, perhaps...
    

  • u/tonytwostep:

    > there is precident for superpowers
    
    Are there any general "rules" of superpowers, that we could use to narrow down whether or not these deaths are being caused by superpowered individuals? Like, what sort of basis are we as police working off of?
    
    If we have no inherent knowledge about powers and their limits to work off of (other than that we know superpowers exist), then it seems *extremely* difficult to track this killer down, unless he makes mistakes, or generates enough clear data for us to find a pattern. For example, in Death Note, Light was killing off tons of criminals every day, using the exact same method (heart attack). L was able to use this data to establish some baseline rules (requires name + face, seems to be able to control victims prior to their deaths, etc). But it sounds like that's not at all the case here.
    
    Sure, we could start examining any surveillance of the victims for the days/weeks prior to their deaths, to establish a pattern. However, as u/Noumero pointed out, we have *no reason* to even suspect that physical presence is even required in the first place. And since the assassin is not sticking to any particular pattern, we can't even know *which* deaths were his.
    
    The only potential approach I could imagine, would be if we could establish a death we were sure was caused by the assassin, to track who would want to pay for their death, and start interrogating those potential buyers until we figure out who they hired, and how. If we were lucky enough to get that info, we could set up a sting operation to attempt to track the assassin down (or at least get clues on how they works), by posing as potential buyers. But it would be an extremely long shot.
    

  • u/ShiranaiWakaranai:

    Local police? Can't really do anything unless you're really high up the ladder. In which case, you can try passing laws for health and safety, requiring people to wear protective clothes and take actions to minimize skin contact. That way the individual's power becomes much less effective, since they can't just touch anyone, only people they are very intimate with. And if they start killing people only after getting intimate, that leaves a very clear trail for the police to follow since all the victims got close to the ability user before dying.
    

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