@scarlet_wiccan: I believe he is a decent telepath, but his feats are not anything other psychics haven’t done before. His most signifying trait is that he can power through most challenges through sheer force of will by the looks of his feats.
Needless to say, the feats he has sound great in a vaccum where the landscape of telepathy is almost non-existent in the F4 comics beyond cosmic beings. So, in essence, he has no real competition in that aspect, yet put him in line with the X-Men’s line-up and rogue’s gallery filled with psychics or telepaths outside of that, and you get a different story:
•Telepathically Projecting across space for galaxies spanning has been done by Rachel Summers, Mantis, Moondragon, and Charles Xavier in the past. By scaling of Mantis, that puts a lot of telepaths on that same level, despite lacking that range because as Mantis shows, you don’t necessarily have power with range.
•Telepathically projecting across time and into other dimensions is the same deal. Jean Grey, Charles Xavier, Rachel Summers, Moondragon, Base Cable, Sersi, Cosmo, Mantis, and Karma have all fallen in one or both categories as far as range goes, with Karma being the lowest of the bunch seen capable of projecting across dimensions.
•Enough power to destroy the solar system is powerful, but not consistent with the average Psilord portrays. And it is ambiguous to say that Reed Richards thought Franklins telepathic power was capable of destroying the solar system and not just reality warping, telekinesis, or a simple psionic burst. All fall under the sector of psychic abilities that would probably make more sense for solar system destruction than telepathy, imo.
•Some feats are diving too much into reality warping territory or pure cosmic energy to be fully considered telepathic, like separating the amalgamation Franklin was being absorbed in or Rachel from her possession by causing a cosmic feedback with blending his energies with the Phoenix’ energies. They are great feats, but telepathic might be stretching it when you consider he can still reality warp like others in his astral form, like Nate Grey or Legion could.
•Separating the mind of Dreadface and Thing is noteworthy, but has been replicated by other telepaths in the past. Jean Grey, Charles Xavier, Rachel Summers, Betsy, and even Storm (as in Ororo Munroe) in Emma Frost’s body. To his credit, these are all powerful psychics (with exception of Storm using a powerful psychics power), but his struggle with it does not spell him to be as good as they are.
•Planetary telepathy has a laundry list of telepaths, to the point where I don’t think it will be worth listing for how many there are.
•Interacting with the mind of cosmic entities is something done by a good list of telepaths to Franklin’s credit, but the list still follows: Jean Grey, Charles Xavier, Emma Frost, Rachel Summers, Moondragon, Quentin Quire, Sersi, Cosmo, and Mantis.
•Psychically affecting Hell Lords is a good feat in a lot of aspects, done by very few telepaths: Charles Xavier, Emma Frost, the 3-In-1 Stepford Cuckoo’s, and Karma.
•The Morgan LeFay feat is very, very good, but needs more discussing. Needless to say, even if it turns out to be better than the best psychics, it would come off as an outlier.
This isn’t his entire feats list, but it’s the just of what stands out the most. A lot of his feats are very basic bare bones and the very two psychic fights he does have are with Agatha Harkness. Not a bad psychic and not a bad feat, but not the most impressive when comparing her feats.
So overall, he in my eyes, he is a mid-tier somewhere below Teen Jean Grey, (still deciding where) based on the fact that a lot of what he can do consistently has been done to a better degree by Teen Jean, she has more psychic fights with more experienced opponents, and her only caveat are that his absolute best feats that could be considered outliers are the only ones that she cannot replicate.
But consistency is more of a factor as to what a psychic’s placement is with me in aspects of both power and skill. If they lack in one area, that usually affects their ranking. Franklin is lacking in the skill area and his power feats are not good enough to carry him beyond the lower mid tier ranking.
People that are in mid tier would be characters like (in no particular order): Base level Cable, Quentin Quire, Teen Jean Grey, the 3-in-1 Stepford Cuckoo’s, Madelyne Pryor, Pre-Shaman Nate Grey, Xorn Jean Grey, Sersi, Mantis, Karma, Cosmo the Spacedog, and Gamemaster. There are more, but the overall just is that this tier are where you would put average skill leveled characters with some impressive power showings more noteworthy than low tier. Don’t make any mistakes, low tier isn’t a bash to anyone in that tier, but it’s a stiff competition of telepaths. Pretty much nearly everyone in mid tier has some form of planetary grade range and if they don’t, they usually have good psychic combat experience, are ones who scale off of powerful telepaths (whether from high or other mid tiers) to make the criteria, or are just pure powerhouses that are carried solely by that power.
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