Issue 1 Downtime

Name: Harleen "Barghest" Flammel
Age: 18

Power: Harleen possesses three unique abilities due to her primary and secondary mutations.

*Resistant to most forms of telepathy. At first glance a psychic would only sense a void where her mind is, but if they were to really go after her mind they would eventually get access. Omega level telepaths would have the same ease of access as a normal psychic would have against a normal person.

*Eyes that allow her to see into people's personal astral planes: Most people look normal to her, but any telepath would appear as their avatar or would have a distinctive glow around them. She can also see when psychics are affecting others or attempting. Over the years, she's learned the difference between simple mind speak and outright manipulation.

When her secondary mutation kicked in, she found she could generate a force she calls hellfire. Though not true hellfire hers can:

*Generate and manipulation of "Hellfire": Though not true hellfire, her form is capable of burning the human mind. It would just force them to feel pain for every action they've performed that they view as wrong. Since it has an astral presence, it can also be used to combat and defend against telepathic and astral threats. Once the hellfire reaches the telepath's mind, the "guilt burn" effect works as it would against any normal person as well

-It can take a physical form, which she hasn't really explored to it's fullest due to a minor weakness she sees in it. The more effort she puts into making the hellfire physical, the weaker it's astral presence is and vice versa. In short, if the hellfire is physical it offers no astral defense and if it's astral it offers no physical defense

As it stands, when she manifests it, it has a ghost like quality to any non-telepath who sees it. They would see it more like a holographic projection in the real world since it is only partially there. The harder she focuses on bringing out it's physical form the more it looks like a real flame.

Personality: Harleen is in a perpetual good mood, and does her best to make others feel the same way. The only time she isn't in her typical happy mood is when she is reminded of her brother.

Her only real flaw is that she does have a minor issue with Telepaths. Though she doesn't outright hate them, she is very cautious around them until she feels they're on the up and up.

Description: Hailing from San Francisco, Ca, Harleen stands at 5'6", weighs 120 pounds, has blond hair and hazel eyes. Her eyes have a unique pupils due to her power, taking the shape of an X. She frequently wears clothes that could be considered punk, but likes to shake things up by dressing nicer from time to time.

Background: Most of her life, Harleen was living in the shadow of her older brother. He was strong, athletic, talented, and always watching out for her. This was her status quoe until one day a much older man started dating her brother.

The man treated her brother horribly and, due to her powers, she always suspected he was manipulating her brother. She tried desperately to convince her parents of what was going on, but they refused to believe her since, at the time, they had no idea what her physical mutation actually did. After a while, she decided to confront the man herself.

He revealed that he was a psychic and was forcing her brother to be with him. He also informed her that there was nothing she could do to stop him. Following that comment, he made her brother attack him. Due to the stress of the situation, her secondary power manifested. She engulphed both her brother and the man in hellfire, ending the man’s control over him, but that caused considerable mental trauma to her brother.

His mind was more or less shattered by the realization that the person he thought he loved was merely using him, as well as the mental pain her powers caused him. He currently resides in a mental institution, and their parents refuse to let another telepath help mend his shattered mind. It has been 4 years since this happened, and she still feels a considerable amount of guilt over it. The fact that her family has ostracized her because of what happened to her brother is further insult to injury

Though Harleen is now very proficient with her abilities, she decided to go to XU to seek further control over her powers so something like this will never happen again.

I'm going through this point by point. I think the power has a lot of promise, my main issues are just with its wording. Let me look it over and roll it over in my mind for a while.

k, if anything needs rewording, let me know

I'm a little worried about adding GL type abilities with the hellfire on top of the abilities of being immune to telepaths, 'causing people immense pain, stripping telepaths of their abilities, and detecting telepaths. It's not a bad app and I like it's basic concept, but I think you should just remove the shaping and flying stuff for now to avoid a slight OP situation.

I thought that might be a little much. changed and reworded. If you want me to take away it's physical presence entirely then I can. Pretty much only left it in there for a potential power development.

Having a physical presence doesn't bother me too much, especially if it's for more development later down the road.

What sort of limitations do you see Harleen having?

For starters, despite being immune to psychic suggestion and mind reading, she can still "see" a telepath's astral presence. For example, Sam's ravens and three headed goddess. A telepath willing to do a little research could find out about the incident involving her brother and attempt to alter their avatar or powers to create an illusion of the incident which would easily mess with her. Though she would be able to tell it is fake, the incident was extremely traumatic and being forced to relive it would probably result in a panic attack. I'm willing to give her a phobia as well if anyone wants to further explore this weakness.

Also, the hellfire changes depending on the plane it's on. If it's being used as a shield in the real world, she can't use it to defend any allies from astral harm. This means a telepath is free to take over her allies and use them against her. But if she uses her hellfire primarily to fight off an astral presence or use it offensively against normal people, then it offers her no physical protection. So if she were to send a stream of hellfire at an enemy in it's basic form and a foe were to fire any projectile at her, the projectile would go straight through, forcing her to dodge or take the hit.

Harleen Flammel wrote:For starters, despite being immune to psychic suggestion and mind reading, she can still "see" a telepath's astral presence. For example, Sam's ravens and three headed goddess. A telepath willing to do a little research could find out about the incident involving her brother and attempt to alter their avatar or powers to create an illusion of the incident which would easily mess with her. Though she would be able to tell it is fake, the incident was extremely traumatic and being forced to relive it would probably result in a panic attack. I'm willing to give her a phobia as well if anyone wants to further explore this weakness.

While interesting, this is really specific and unlikely to come up.

Also, the hellfire changes depending on the plane it's on. If it's being used as a shield in the real world, she can't use it to defend any allies from astral harm. This means a telepath is free to take over her allies and use them against her. But if she uses her hellfire primarily to fight off an astral presence or use it offensively against normal people, then it offers her no physical protection. So if she were to send a stream of hellfire at an enemy in it's basic form and a foe were to fire any projectile at her, the projectile would go straight through, forcing her to dodge or take the hit.

This is more what I'm talking about. I like it. Edit it so that's a bit more stressed in the OP and I'll give you Approval 1

Okay, I know that there's no good way for me to say this, so I'm just going to be blunt. Is there any way that you can make this power simpler? Like, state each aspect of it in two sentences or less?

Also, I'm really not comfortable with the effects on other telepaths, read: being immune to other telepaths, and being able to de-power them. The rest of it, I'm okay with, but those two parts make me really leery.

editted again. no more telepathic immunity, just resistance.

Re-editted for "hopefully" make the power section easier to read/ understand. felt it was a little clumped. did the same for liam.

I think the problem I have with this powerset is that all three of her powers are geared towards taking down telepaths. While this might work fine in a comic book, I tend to find that in a freeform roleplay if your powers are all applied towards making someone else's useless or hurting someone with a particular powerset... that leads to some seriously un-fun situations. As well, the specificity of her focus means there will be a select few situations where she's ridiculously powerful, and a much broader number where she's of limited to no usefulness.

Particularly, if I were to trim something away, I'd say get rid of her ability to "burn away" psychic powers. I have no problem with her being able to fight telepaths with her hellfire and burn away Astral constructs, but being able to remove their powers might be a bit too much.

editted

Then I'll give this Approval 1/2

What's the defense against the Hellfire? Like, are non-teeps just totally boned?

Also, in order to give the character room to grow I would like to see a limitation on the telepathy resistance. Either it's a bit weaker across the board, or it's still really strong but it's open to other types of mental manipulation, like illusions, or empathy, or Rachel's access to people's automatic processes, something like that.

There is no defense against the hellfire, but it needs to actually hit the individual to take effect. So if she throws a fire ball, the non-tepe will be able to dodge it or take cover. Once connected it has traits similar to normal fire, since it is a form of energy. If an effected individual is doused with water, or a strong wind, it will go out and she'll need to hit the individual again. However, it's only fuel is feelings of guilt. If she uses it against someone who has never had a shred of guilt for anything they've ever done, it would have no effect.

As for the resistance, it would only work on telepathy. But as I said before she's very susceptable to illusions since she already "sees" the astral. It'd be very hard for her to tell the difference between an illusion and a normal telepath standing infront of her. I also have no problem with Rachel's power working on her like it would anyone else since that's not technically true telepathy.

But isn't it invisible to people who can't see astral stuff? So if it's always visible, even if it's not physical, I'm more cool with it.

It's not invisible in it's astral form. It's just kind of translucent. in the ap I think I described it as a ghost flame.

And when it goes physical it's... fire? pure force?

Just to correct the misapprehension about Rachel's powers, Rachel O'Brien is a telepath. Her primary ability is affecting the autonomic nervous system, but she can do everything that a 'classical' teep can do. Its been established that the reason that she can (sometimes) work her mojo on people a 'normal' telepath would not be able to touch is because most people only defend their thoughts and emotions, not their automatic bodily processes. Since other telepaths have been established as being able to kill people with their minds, if Harleen is vulnerable to Rachel, she'd be vulnerable to any telepath making such an attack, which would not be a bad limitation.

Right. What I'm saying about the defense is that it has to have a hole in it somewhere, or be weaker in general, and that's a handy hole.

When physical, it looks like fire, but it has no capabilty of burning anything. It'd be just a form of solid energy. Any attack she did with the physical form would basically feel like getting hit by a blundt object. Which is why she generally doesn't use it physically. It looses it's greatest ability when it goes physical.

And I like Rachels suggestion. She's resistant to mind reading and control but not direct autonomic manipulation.

I'm willing to approve the character at this point, but it's my suggestion that you dial things down a little as far as the raw power of the Hellfire and the Psychic defense, or you won't have any room to grow, and power progression is one of the more fun things about playing games like this.

Approval 2/2

I kind of like the idea of an anti-telepathy person, if they have weaknesses to some brute strength....

This mostly comes from my feelings that psychics are overpowered by nature.

This character has already been approved, and in fact her player has been MIA for some time.