Rogue's Absorbtion Power

Rogue can absorb the powers, energies, memories, knowledge, talents, personality and physical abilities (whether superhuman or not) of another human being (or members of some sentient alien races) through physical contact of her skin with the skin of the other person. She is not limited to absorbing superhuman abilities: for example, she has absorbed the strength, agility, and sharp reflexes of an enhanced human. She can also absorb psionic abilities. In absorbing another person's memories Rogue also gains the emotional responses connected to them. For the transfer of abilities to be accomplished, Rogue’s skin must contact the skin of her victim. Rogue can only absorb abilities and memories from living organic beings. She can possess the powers of several superhuman persons at once. No upper limit has yet been determined for the number of superhuman beings whose power she can maintain simultaneously, or for the amount of power that she can absorb. Rogue can even absorb gross physical characteristics from a victim. Her physical appearance does not change when she absorbs abilities and memories from a normal looking human being. The victim's abilities and memories are absorbed for a time sixty times longer than the period of time Rogue was in physical contact with that person. Those touched are rendered unconscious by contact with her, though some beings, including Juggernaut and Mojo have resisted this effect. While for most of her life, her use of this power was involuntary, Rogue has recently gained full control over it.

This transfer is usually temporary, lasting for a period of time relative to how long contact is maintained, but the transfer may become permanent in certain cases. For example, she absorbed Ms. Marvel's powers permanently due to unknown reasons (Ms. Marvel's strange mix of human and Kree DNA may have had something to do with it) and she absorbed Sunfire's powers permanently when she absorbed the last of his life force by accident. Most often the process happens instantly when Rogue touches someone, but in certain instances where a being has possessed an extraordinary level of power they are able to resist her, and she may only share part of their memories and power.

Her power is potentially lethal. Her flirtation, Cody Robbins, was in a comatose state for roughly a decade after her powers first manifested when they touched. He never fully awakened, and finally passed on instead of remaining on life support. However, Rogue has never actually killed with her powers; even under the influence of Strain 88, she only sent victims into a permanent vegetative state.

As Rogue is absorbing the total psyche of a person, there is a risk of a personality overwhelming her and taking control of her body, including Spiral and Mr. Sinister who both proved to be the dominant personality. It has also been shown that even though Rogue forgets the memories she has absorbed when a psyche returns to its body, 'echoes' of their personalities remain buried in her mind.

Rogue is able to absorb psyches and abilities of several beings at once, though the experience can be confusing and disorienting for her.

Robotic beings are mostly immune to her power. Depending on the amount of organics left, she can usually affect cyborgs. She seems able to affect techno-organic beings. Powerful enough beings can withstand her touch and attempt to impose their own will on her or cause a feedback loop. Rogue's power has grown over time. Initially she was unable to absorb the powers of Wonder Man, a being a living ionic energy. However, in recent months she has been able to absorb him when previously she could not.

Although she is capable of absorbing his powers, Colossus in metal form was able to make physical contact with her with no ill effects in one issue. However, Rogue has shown the ability to absorb him while he is in metal form in various other issues.

Rogue's powers were greatly enhanced by Pandemonium via Strain 88, making the effects of her touch instantly permanent and all-consuming. Her powers returned to their normal levels after the mutant baby touches her in X-Men: Messiah Complex. This also returned her mental status to normal, as the baby purged all previous templates and mental impressions from her being. It appears after the events in X-Men: Legacy #224 that Rogue is now able to voluntarily use her powers, now kissing Gambit and not hurting him or absorbing his powers. This appears to be because, before Professor Xavier helped her break them down, her power had formed many mental walls within her mind every time she used her abilities. As such her powers were crippled in their development freezing them in their nascent stage which severely limited Rogue's control. Yet when she, Gambit and Danger fought Ares in Utopia, her power absorption was still strong enough to weaken Ares to some level for Gambit to give the final blow, hinting that she can finally control her touch to be very deadly for enemies without hurting her friends. She later uses the much more debilitating version of her powers against the Avengers during her fight with the Avengers to defend Jean Grey School from Avengers' invasion, even making Falcon and She-Hulk immediately unconscious without any negative feedback on herself (besides the green skin from She-Hulk), stealing their powers and rendering them unconscious for quite a long time as she stated herself as "so it's time to get old school".

A new twist in Rogue's powers consists of prompting her victims of her skin-to-skin contact, for a consent on the process. Rogue's victim can either resist the absorption and suffer, like originally with Rogue's powers, or instead submit to the absorption, and so the process instead becomes entirely fluent without consequences. Rogue has used this twist extensively in the Legacy series; just two examples of it are when aiding the victims of a subway collapse absorbing all rescuers' abilities, and also when quenching a riot in a prison of mutants absorbing the existence of some mutant-volunteers.

More recently, Rogue now retains the powers and very essence of Wonder Man and can no longer freely touch others with her power. While she originally retained the consciousness of Simon Williams, the Master Scientist later removed it.