POWER

[defensemechanisms]

impenetrable shielding
that's really it, you just can't hit him when it's up.

His shield manifests as a translucent clear-blue convex oval roughly 7 ft tall & 5 feet wide at its maximum. He needs both hands for this. Alternatively, he can separate his hands and make two smaller circular shields, both a maximum of about 2.5 feet in diameter (sort of captain america shield sized, for reference). He can make either variation smaller. His hands are required in order to direct the shield; they don't have to be open but they do have to be pointed in the direction he wants to cover -- you could zip-tie or bind his hands behind his back and he could still shield, it would just be a useless butt shield, yay.

He can't just mentally produce a shield anywhere willy nilly without his hands, so if one is looking for a weakness in combat it would most likely be that. However, he's spent several years working with an elite special forces team doing intense combat training and having that weakness exploited during drills, so he is generally aware of compensating for that weakness.

His shields are very simple, there is no electric/psychic energy or otherwise harmful effect aside from the fact that they manifest as something very physical. As such, he can use them to bash things -- no supernatural strength, he'd be bashing with his normal human strength. Still sucks to get shield-punched in the face though.

→ they stop momentum, and so block anything from bullets to cars, size or force doesn't matter, the shield itself does not depend on his strength
→ they have a texture that's incredibly strange, almost like a hybrid glass-plasma-wind to the touch.
→ it isn't particularly draining, he can hold it for long durations and the amount he's shielding doesn't really impact anything. you could, for instance, drop a building on him and he could hang out underneath his shield just the same as if he was using it to block rain
→ however, in a way it's like every other low-impact bodily human thing -- eventually his stamina will give out just like it would if he was made to stand up for an indefinite period of time. he can't hold his shield up and sleep, he can't maintain his shield if he can't keep his hands up
→ the curvature of the shield outwardly directs extreme heat or cold to protect his body from proximity-based harm; however, as his shield is not a bubble, it won't protect him from the environment as a whole. he can tank a flamethrower but not an oven, in other words.
→ despite being largely transparent, it also scatters light - ie, no lasering through it. spells cast at him, eldritch blasts, magical force balls, whatever -- no dice, impenetrable.
→ tl;dr look all he's got in the super power world is a shield, man, he can't even fly, let him have his scientifically baffling turtle shell ok.

→ they also faintly glow, making him a hit at raves or emergency Descent-style cave horror situations and that's clearly the most important part