I like the 'touch to duplicate appearance, wears off quickly power. I think I'll add another limitation, the power can't be used again until it has worn off from the use before. That sounds like a great power for an undercover spy, without making him so deadly you wonder why he's working for someone rather than ruling the world...

It's a good power as a foil to AVant Guard, too. With her vision powers, Palette can probably recognize people in disguise pretty easily - but this kind of duplication could fool her. There might be some clues she can pick up on, like, "Hey, that chick has on a man's suit!" but there is no stage makeup or wigs to give him away.

I can see some other limits too. If the spy duplicates someone who is much taller or much shorter than he, for a few minutes at least, he will be at least a bit clumsy (although a well-trained spy should have duplicated dozens of people of all body types in a well-designed training program to get practice in handling different bodies). And if he's in shape and duplicates someone out of shape, he may overestimate his physical abilities while shifted.

Thanks!

1) Super-senses that require total focus. The spy can listen to a whispered conversation or read newsprint from a football field away, but is effectively deaf and bind while doing so. Might also have a photographic/audiographic memory with the same limitation. So they could have been in a room for only a minute but hours later deliberately go into a trance to study everything going on in the time they were in the room. Again the drawback is that while in that trance someone could kick in the door, shoot the spy in the shoulder and set fire to the room and NONE of it would register.

2)More of a honey-trap approach where the spy is able to enter someone's mind during intimate moments. The dashing spy sleeps with someone in a politically sensitive position and not only can use that for blackmail, but also gets in their head. Maybe they can plant suggestions. Maybe they can pick up government secrets even without pillow talk. The drawback is that while each encounter makes the power more effective (suggestions become almost commands, fuller details of any secrets being copied from the memories) but it also causes parts of the victim's mind to influence the spy. They may begin to feel protective of the person or begin to pick up quirks the person has.

3)The spy is a shape-shifter whose power also includes a form of telepathy. They touch someone and can assume their identity. At first it is as if besides looking like the person they also can draw on the person's memories. But the longer they keep the shape the more they actually start becoming the person. Worse yet in some cases the spy may retain those "acquired traits" even if they change appearance.
Example- The spy assumes the form of Officer Smith. He actually does a good job of being Smith because he remembers that kid he let off with a warning last month, the invitation to Joe Friday's for dinner on Sunday, his first partner from his rookie days ... etc;. But after being Officer Smith for a few hours he actually passes up a chance to do his "spy mission" because he got distracted by someone trying to snatch a purse. And weeks after abandoning his guise as Smith he still gets strong cravings for donuts around noon.

Heightened pheromones, which would lead to possible pillow talk if it goes that far, although one would need to watch out for the opposite sex. Unless the pheromones work broadly on more than one sexual orientation/gender...

There's a concept I've always liked that I read in a Charlton Comics Peacemaker story once, in which radiation-affected mutants could change their appearance, but since they were monsters they couldn't ever rejoin society. What if your spy had to completely rely upon the government to supply them with some kind of radiation chemical that would keep their DNA from completely unraveling? They could use their power to disguise themselves, but were also slightly radioactive and thus forced to live a lonely life within a lead-sealed apartment whenever they weren't out on an assignment in the field. A backstory could include a time when the spy tried to find love with someone else, only to cause their eventual death through too much radiation. Tragedy usually makes for a good story/backstory.

Repurposing this thread somewhat... I'd like to make Mirror Girl's powers a bit more useful. The abilities to become intangible and invisible are useful for scouting a location before taking action, or spying on someone, and the ability to move instantly between any two mirrors familiar to her is very useful. But she's not much use in a fight. She can temporarily solidify her hands (though this is incredibly painful and requires intense concentration) and project her voice (less painful, but still difficult) but really, how useful is this. Right now, she seems best suited as a spy and a scout (and indeed, that's how she has made her reputation so far - spying on the bad guys are revealing important information to law enforcement leading to their captures). But she has to go <there>, scout around, and return before her information is useful.

So, suppose she can 'see' through remote mirrors... not every mirror, because that would lead to a massive information overload as she saw through every mirrored surface in the universe! Instead, through a kind of nebulous mental list of mirrors that are not too distant from her (I'm thinking that the practical limit is 'somewhere on the surface of the Earth', since the magic that powers her is Earth-based...) She can add a mirror to this list by focusing on it - she has to see it and actively commit it to the list, so she can't see out of the mirror in throne room in Buckingham Palace, for instance) and unless she 'refreshes' a mirror the list, again requiring seeing it, it fades rapidly with time and within, say, a day, she can no longer see through it. Mirrors she used regularly for travel (such as the mirror in her dressing room, the mirror in her best friend's office, and the mirror in the New York City FBI office) fade much more slowly, or perhaps not at all

So, to add a mirror to the list or refresh a particular mirror, she has to be physically close enough to see it in the real world, and then concentrate on it to add it to the list. As well, there is some limit to the number of mirrors that she can maintain on this list at any time, around 4 or 5, say...

What do you think? Or any other thoughts about how to make her existing powers more useful in a superhero battle?

Remote viewers?

I can think of one important use for her abilities- spying on criminal or supervillain or terrorist headquarters in order to eavesdrop on them and disclose their plans to the relevant authorities in each case.
It might be an extremely useful aspect of her crimefighting career if she enables the apprehension of aforementioned crooks and supervillains and this is coupled with paranoia within her adversary's organisations about how the cops suddenly got so lucky when it came to being on hand at their latest attempted heists and whether or not they have an informant within their ranks. As for keeping her out of such scrutiny, it'd be better if she was able to tap into any mirror in the vicinity, so even if the crooks had covered up mirrors in their meeting room or corridors, if a crook's girlfriend was using a compact to freshen up while waiting for her man to finish liaising with his colleagues, she could access that.

As for avoiding sensory overload, that might be manageable with meditative techniques. Say when MG taps the remote viewing ability, she goes into a trance state so that she can focus in on particular reflective surfaces and use their potential. Given her uniform is originally from Tibet, that would fit right in with her origin as well. So, say the monks who gave it to her also equipped her with the ability to engage in specific focused meditative techniques to enable her to use her remote viewing abilities?