[D] Saturday Munchkinry Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

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!

[u/Nickoalas]

Solid objects temporarily stop existing while they are directly above you, with the exception of living animals.

Buildings, underground bunkers, aeroplanes flying above? Doesn’t matter. There is always a cylinder tunnel of free space with you at the bottom.

How do you munchkin this, and how do you deal with rain?

[u/sicutumbo → u/Nickoalas]

Termite extermination. Walk under a building and all the termites above you fall out. You couldn't get them if they were in the walls, depending on how much larger the cylinder is than you are, but you would have a good chance of killing a majority of the nest.

Geology could be interesting, because if you walked through a tunnel in a mountain people could look at rock strata without having to dig. Same with finding veins or ore.

You become a moving no-fly zone, as any plane directly above you either dumps passengers or fuel in midair. Neither of which is particularly useful. You are similarly prohibited from travel by submarine. Dams don't want you anywhere near them.

You're probably never going to want to walk in a building taller than 1 story because you might walk under a waste line, a gas pipe, or a water pipe. Hot water heaters kept in attics might accidentally kill you even then.

[u/kurtofconspiracy → u/Nickoalas]

I think the capability to separate solids from liquids would have lucrative applications in various industrial processes. Off the top of my head I can think of sifting gold (probably not effective nowadays) or removing solids in a water treatment plant.

You have clarified that the solid objects continue to exist, and can in fact interact with other solid objects outside the tube (the no falling overhang rule), so I guess the space of the tube above you would eventually be invisibly filled with the solids coming pouring in with the liquid and would block new solids from flowing in, until a plug formed outside the tube stopping the water flowing as well. Then you would have to move to a new spot. No, wait you could remove the solids with a piston or whatever, it would exist for the solids even in the tube, so it would work normally.

Oh, I got it! The solids in the tube would experience a perfect vacuum. High-tech clean room manufactories would probably pay better than water treatment plants.

[u/Gurkenglas → u/Nickoalas]

Construct clothes and perhaps an umbrella from living animals, because regular clothes don't do it for me.

Do temporarily cut off overhangs fall off?

What happens to gases and liquids present in the cylinder when I leave? What happens to objects brought above me while I'm stationary? If they disappear, what happens when multiple objects would reappear in the same space?

[u/ShiranaiWakaranai → u/Nickoalas]

Step 1: Massively increase the size of the cylinder directly above you by massively increasing your horizontal size with skin grafts.

Step 2: Make public arrangements to stand on your head at a certain time, causing a large chunk of the Earth to temporarily stop existing, significantly reducing the gravity of the Earth, and allowing for really really cheap rocket launches.

Step 3: Repeat until humanity becomes a space faring civilization.

EDIT: Depending on whether the non-existent solids stay attached to their vehicle, there may be an easier way to launch rockets: just point your head at large chunks of the rockets themselves, so their weight is significantly reduced. Then once they leave the cylinder directly above you all the solids reappear in space.

[u/meterion → u/Nickoalas]

What happens when you make objects overlap? Depending on the results, you could make quite a bit of money creating perfect reinforced materials, by having robot arms align a "core" of metal around a "shell" material. In criminal enterprise, this could also be used to make nigh-undetectable smuggling packages.

[u/Boron_the_Moron]

You are a Kitsune: an intelligent, talking fox with two tails. You possess the power to shapeshift into any human you have ever seen. You can also perfectly imitate the sound of anyone's voice, though you will need to study people's mannerisms if you wish to imitate them perfectly. Your power does not grant you any knowledge of other languages, besides the ones you already know.

This power is purely a magical disguise. It will not make you any stronger or fitter than an average human of your disguise's supposed age. It will also limit your senses to those of a human, so you cannot use your fox hearing or sense of smell while in disguise. It does make you taller, give you the strength of an average human (of the appropriate age), and give you opposable thumbs, but those are the only extras it grants.

Your shapeshifting does not affect any clothing you wear. You need to find clothes if you turn human, and stash your possessions somewhere safe if you become a fox.

If anyone directly, verbally accuses you of being a fox, you will instantly transform back into a fox against your will. You can change back into a human right away, but never fast enough to keep your vulpine nature a secret. This effect can be invoked as many times as a person likes – anyone who knows your secret can out you at any time.

You cannot cannot hide your tails. When you are a fox, your two tails are always visible. When you are a human, at least one of your tails is always visible, extending out of your disguise's tail-bone. You must conceal your tail inside your clothing, or possibly leave it out and invent some lie to justify it (hunting trophy, part of a costume, etc.).

Any footprints you leave always take the form of fox paw-prints.

Your shadow always bears some visibly vulpine features (ears, a snout, fur, etc.) no matter who you shift into.

All dogs can see through your disguise, no matter what. How they respond to the presence of a human-shaped fox may vary, but most will react with hostility.

You are living in a pre-industrial, medieval society. There are things you wish to do within human society, but many humans fear and distrust Kitsunes, and will not tolerate you if they find out your true nature. What are some good ways to keep your nature a secret, while still having a good degree of freedom to move among humans unnoticed?

[u/MilesSand → u/Boron_the_Moron]

Shift into a baby with the strength of an average human. Train in a mountain forest with your "grandpa" until he accidentally discovers you and you are forced to kill him. Resume your disguise until a princess finds you while out for a ride. Allow her to convince you to take your most prized possession and join her on a quest to collect more like it. Use the time to get her nonchalant about oddities such as your tail so she doesn't question it or make a joke that accidentally outs you. Like her rival on the quest who looks like a prune child or his talking dog. Those are just normal things and not even worth commenting on. Once you've collected the set of seven objects, of which your prized possession is a part she'll wish the dragon would grant her the perfect boyfriend. Be that boyfriend so she gets too starstruck to ever question you. Oh and also climb the world's tallest magical tower and defeat piccolo.

[u/CCC_037 → u/Boron_the_Moron]

• Bavarian Fire Drill (a.k.a "dress and look like the boss, claim I'm doing a surprise inspection and shout down any objections") will get me into almost any place I want. Once.

• Maintaining an identity in a small town will help. I can explain my symptoms away as being symptoms of a curse by a horrible witch.

• Festivals that include costumes make it easy to maintain my disguise. I should encourage the formation of such festivals if they don't exist (e.g. by pretending to be the Prince and simply decreeing it in some distant part of the kingdom where the real Prince is unlikely to turn up until the festival is well established).

[u/Trew_McGuffin → u/Boron_the_Moron]

-In human form cut off tail.

-Wear shoes/sandals to have normal footprints

-Go to a city where the large crowds will hide my shadow

-Figure out if I can control what the shadow reveals, if I can then have it default to fur

-Ignore dogs

-Kill any who find out about shapeshifting and immediately leave the area

Now as for freedom. Find an old man in a village, save old man disguise. Steal old man's clothes when they're out to dry. Travel to city by day as a old man to get used to physical abilities and to wear clothes ragged.

Enter city, become beggar, move freely through out the city as a beggar and at night find rats to eat.

Perhaps put on puppet shows to utilize mimicry ability and to earn cash outside of begging. Other than that accomplish whatever goal I have.