Mindshielder

From LSWiki

Mindshielders have the ability to create psychic defenses for both themselves and others, projecting standing fields of psionic energy which insulate their subjects from harmful influences.

The first ability in your repertoire is the creation of a simple mindshield. This effect interferes with hostile or neutral telepathic effects intended to establish contact with, manipulate, or harm the subject's mind. The shield degrades the performance of these effects and, if of sufficient potency relative to them, can stop them completely. Each time an effect tries to penetrate the shield, this costs the shield some of its stored energy, in proportion to the strength of the effect; the shield loses effectiveness as it weakens. A depleted shield will attempt to draw energy from its subject to sustain it, drawing energy faster the more depleted it is, though it can only do this when the subject's spiritual energy reserves are relatively high; if it has to counter too many effects, especially while the subject has little spiritual energy so that the shield cannot recharge, it will be destroyed. More than one mindshield can coexist on a subject, but generally only the most powerful one will be effective, and as each will be depleted by activity and then attempt to recharge, it is rarely desirable to have multiple shields active. Mindshields are less effective against effects created by the same individual who created the shield; also, some subtle effects can slip by a mindshield by avoiding detection, with the chances of this depending on the relative skill of the creators of the effects. The subject of a mindshield can deactivate the construct voluntarily; when a mindshield is first created, the next subvocalization the subject performs becomes a trigger which will deactivate the mindshield if it is repeated.

The second mindshielder ability is the mindwall, which is essentially a considerably more powerful variant upon the mindshield. It requires a fairly substantial degree of skill to construct; in most other respects it differs from the mindshield only in being more effective.

The third mindshielder ability is of a different nature: the mindtrap. This is a reactive rather than passive defense, a construct which lurks in the dark corners of the subject's psyche and waits for a psychic effect to intrude, at which time it launches an attack against the effect's source, using the contact established by the offending effect to send a backlash of psychic feedback into the enemy psychic's mind. The mindtrap expends all its energy in the process of generating this feedback and is destroyed after triggering. Unlike the mindshield and mindwall, this effect is only triggered by hostile effects, not neutral ones, and it requires a small amount of energy continually to support itself; if the subject has low spiritual energy for a protracted period and the mindtrap cannot draw energy to sustain itself, it may fail. More than one mindtrap can be placed in a psyche, but only one will trigger in response to a single effect. Like mindshields and mindwalls, a subvocalization trigger is used to deactivate it. As might be surmised, a very high level of skill is necessary to create this complex effect.

Your level of proficiency with each of these abilities is determined by your intelligence, your willpower, your perception, and your skills in the areas of metacreativity, telepathy, and redaction; the proportions in which these individual factors contribute vary according to the particular power.

To create a mindshield, visualize a silver shield around the person you wish to protect; you may use "me" to refer to yourself. To create a mindwall, visualize a silver wall around your subject. To create a mindtrap, visualize a silver snare guarding your subject. In order to apply any of these effects to another person, they must trust you first.

The talent of a mindshielder is partially telepathic in nature, and so they have access to some basic telepathic capabilities; see 'help basic telepathy' for more information.