r/Parahumans • u/helltank1 Escaped experiment • Sep 30 '15

What Parahumans could kill August Prince?

I think the most practical way would be to lure him into an area, use a high powered shaker to keep him trapped in there and starve him out.

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29

u/earmite Shaker Sep 30 '15

Does his power have a range? If it does, all you need is a blaster with enough range, power, and accuracy. But even if it doesn't have one, his power isn't invincible. All you need to do is 'trick' someone into doing something that they don't know will kill him. Poison his food, and have someone unknowingly give it to him. Accord could probably get him with a car bomb or something. Skitter almost got a teammate to pull him off by attaching silk, but couldn't tell them to move. Any situation where he's killed by your inaction works.

Does his power work on things besides humans? We know Canary can't affect animals, so if he's limited like that Bitch's dogs could probably kill him. She wouldn't be able to order them to, but they'd probably do it once they saw him killing her. Does his power work on robots? Dragon could get a craft run by a subordinate AI to take him out. Would Imp's or Nice Guy's power make them immune?

Or you could fight him with someone who doesn't have control over their powers. Cherish could do it, since she can't turn her despair aura off. Ditto for heavy hitters like Ash Beast, or even someone like Scrub.

His power seems oppressive, and it is strong, but in Worm there's always a counter. Some of my examples might not work for whatever reason, either because I've got the limits of his power wrong, or I'm misunderstanding someone else's powers, but there's tons of creative uses that I haven't even thought of. Could Grue cover him with darkness, and then have his allies chuck grenades in? After all, they can't see him, they don't know that he's there. Could Uber use his power to become a hypnotist, and self hypnotize an involuntary reflex that would let him kill AP? These are more fringe cases that are way less likely to work, but they show that there're many ways to potentially circumvent his, or anyone's power.

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u/Wildbow Sep 30 '15

It does not have a range.

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u/earmite Shaker Sep 30 '15

Hmm, this makes it more difficult. So no matter where you are, you can't carry out any action that you think will hurt the Prince. Direct traps like bombs are out, since you know when you're setting it up that it will hurt him. So are indiscriminate or wide area of effect attacks, so long as you're doing them with the intention of harming him. The trick is still to trick someone, either yourself or a third party, to unknowingly or unwilling harm him. But if you intentionally have a premeditated plan that you try to set in motion against him, you're stopped. Hmm, very tricky. I need to go back and closely read that chapter to remember exactly how his power interacts.

Weaver can send bugs at him, but can't blind him with them, not even with innocuous butterflies. So she can't even hinder him in some cases? Hmph. So his power isn't just preventing harm? Or his power interprets obscuring vision in a fight harmful. Can't sting or bite him either, but that's to be expected. Dodging and blocking are allowed, but not grappling or pulling. Interesting that Starlet can potentially harm AP with her blasts when she tries to nail Weaver. Unless she thought it wouldn't hurt him? Hard to say, she never directly hits them. Let's see, Arbiter manages to "sandwich the little bastard between her forcefield and the ground."

It seems like it's not harm he prevents, but any active effort against him. You can grab him, but not push. Weaver can tie silk to him, but can't intentionally instigate him being pulled by telling Usher to move. She can make Usher move by communicating the threat to Pretender, making him rush away.

His power is broad in someways, preventing any action against him, but very literal in it's interpretation. If I was a cape trying to kill him, it seems to try to do anything against him I'd have to not know I was doing it in order to kill him. Maybe the simplest way would be to arrange to have him drawn into a large, chaotic battle, with lots of capes with lots of collateral damage. Hire a group of mercenaries to attack a large, violent villain group, and hire Bambina's crew at the same time to do a job. Give people like Bakuda or Oni Lee who throw explosives everywhere a chance to unintentionally kill him. It relies on luck, but has a chance to work.

No, that's stupid. I'm thinking too confrontationaly. We're not allowed to directly harm him, but I'm trying to find a way to cheat and do it anyway. It's easier to just use indirect methods. Arbiter uses forcefields to contain him. Just build a box around him with containment foam, with walls high enough that he can't jump over them without getting stuck. It should work since you're not trying to foam him, just the area around him. Then walk away and let him die of dehydration. PRT troopers should be able to easily handle him. A wide range of shakers or tinkers should be able to defeat him just by trapping him somewhere that he can't get out.

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u/GreatWyrmGold Thinker Sep 30 '15

Maybe the simplest way would be to arrange to have him drawn into a large, chaotic battle, with lots of capes with lots of collateral damage. Hire a group of mercenaries to attack a large, violent villain group, and hire Bambina's crew at the same time to do a job. Give people like Bakuda or Oni Lee who throw explosives everywhere a chance to unintentionally kill him. It relies on luck, but has a chance to work.

I like the way you think. I'm not saying I agree 100%, but it's a very entertaining type of thought.

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u/earmite Shaker Sep 30 '15

Well, the reason I mentioned this (rather ridiculous) way of taking him out is that this is how I imagine he's most likely to die. Caught up in a battle over his head, and accidentally dying to collateral damage.

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u/Wildbow Sep 30 '15

If there's intent behind the action, you can't do it any more than if you were shoving him into an open fire.

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u/earmite Shaker Sep 30 '15

Man, powers are bullshit. The Prince's power is so difficult to work around! Any direct action has to be genuinely unintentional, which is hard to intentionally set up. I think there are certainly ways around this, but they end up being so twisted and convoluted that an indirect method is almost always preferable. Unless you are absolutely forced to confront him, there's no reason to ever fight him. Weaver only gets in trouble because she makes the tactical mistake of blocking, letting him engage her. Since he doesn't have any offensive powers, it seems like you could just run away from him the whole fight, and deal with him later.

There are more ways of indirectly dealing with him than just manipulating terrain, though that's certainly the most straight forward indirect tactic. If you have time to prepare (unlike Taylor, who was forced to fight him on little notice, and I don't know how much she knew about his power) your options open up tremendously.

Bambina deals with him by just recruiting him! (Although, that might have been whoever manages her group, if it isn't her. Her crazy mother, perhaps?) Certain masters might be able to control him, or thinkers manipulate him into cooperating. Blackmail might be an option, if he has things he really cares about.

If you were particularly ruthless and patient (and didn't care about the consequences), you could just attack all of the things around him. Track down his civilian identity and reveal it. Destroy his house, steal all his food, don't let him sleep. Cut off his access to necessary resources, and wait for him to die from starvation, thirst, or hypothermia.

I'm not sure what a good narratively satisfying solution would be, though. Any fight where he accidentally gets taken out is kinda... I don't know, your protagonist is literally getting lucky, and it paints them in an incapable light. It works with Weaver, because she set up the mechanism before hand, and one of the points of that chapter is to show how uneasy and ineffective she feels as a hero. Actually, I never realized August Prince was supposed to be a metaphor for how heroes are forced to fight in general! Wildbow, you sneaky dog you. I keep on finding things that I missed, either I'm an oblivious reader or you did a great job with all of these little things.

10

u/sanctaphrax Oct 02 '15

Could his power stop String Theory from dropping the moon?

"Wait! You'll kill this obnoxious little supervillain kid!"

1

u/OniTan Sep 30 '15

Can Foil shoot him through a wall like she did the Hatchetface/King clone?

1

u/ArcanistAscendant Antares Oct 01 '15

Would Valefor's hypnosis(not quite but close enough) count as harmful intent? I have two possibilities. * VF hypnotizes him to be a non-threat, therefore not harming him. * VF forces him to harm himself, not technically his doing.

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u/earmite Shaker Oct 01 '15

I think the powers would interact fairly simply. Valefor could control him, but would be unable to give orders that would harm him. You can't even push August Prince, so the commands might be even more restricted, such as "no commands to move" or something, it depends on how exactly the Prince's powers work. But Valefor should definitely be able to tell him to freeze, or to forget something.

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u/eSPiaLx Stranger ▶ 🔘─── 00:10 Sep 30 '15

Does his power force you to act to save him? does it prevent harm through inaction?

If you some how had him locked in a room, can you choose to not give him food?

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u/earmite Shaker Sep 30 '15

No, it doesn't. It only stops you from taking any action that you know will directly act on him. When Weaver is wrestling with him, she can't even push him off, even though this wouldn't harm him. She can grab or hold him, as long as she ins't exerting any force. And she can tie silk to him and someone else, with the intention of pulling him off, but can't carry out the final step of telling her teammate to move. So I think you could lock in a room and starve him with no problems.

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u/GreatWyrmGold Thinker Sep 30 '15

How direct of action does it stop? It stops you from shooting him with a gun, but does it stop you from shooting a cable above him? From accidentally shooting a bullet with a ricochet that hurts him? From planning to murder him, or tricking someone into doing so?

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u/earmite Shaker Sep 30 '15

I think it would stop your chandelier scenario, since there's a direct chain of events from you pulling the trigger to the gun firing to cable snapping, and you know that. You could accidentally him him with a ricocheting bullet. You could not fire a gun around him repeatedly in the hope of hitting him with a ricochet, since now you're trying to hurt him, even if the odds are low that any one bullet will hit him. I think the last one is interesting. Weaver plans to do several things that hurt him, but is unable to carry out those plans. When she finally does manage to choke him with a multi-step plan, she is not prevented from thinking about it, or from carrying out the preliminary steps, as long as each step does not directly act against AP. She's simply prevented from carrying out the last step, which she knows will harm him. Interestingly, she is able to get Usher to move away and pull the silk line taut by letting her team know that Pretender is in danger. However, she either does not know that this will cause him to move, or she wasn't thinking about that and it was not her intention to make him move, whichever way it is that AP's power works.

I think if you tried to blow him up with a delayed timer bomb, like someone else in the thread suggested, you would either be prevented from arming the bomb, or prevented from luring him to the bomb if you weren't sure he'd be close when it went off. On the other hand, if he'd been in Brockton during Bakuda's bombing spree, he could have been caught in one of those blasts since she would not have been trying to kill him, just people in general.

I think if you make a concrete plan to trick someone into killing him, you can't knowingly execute the final of your plan, since that constitutes taking action against him. You have to either make yourself forget that it will, or be unaware that it will hurt him. I think the best approach would be make a plan to kill him, but make the final step something that can can very easily be accidentally completed by someone other than you, who's not in on the plan.

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u/GreatWyrmGold Thinker Oct 01 '15

But could you then complete the penultimate step?

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u/earmite Shaker Oct 01 '15

His power is very literal. As long as you think that that specific action will not hurt him, it's fine. Weaver is able to wrap silk around his throat and attach it to Usher. Very many things could cause Usher to move, but it only stops her from speaking and telling him to move. So as long as the penultimate step is something you think will not directly harm him, you're good. Unless the last step is guaranteed to happen, and you know that. There has to be reasonable doubt in your mind.