How to make telekinesis not overpowered?

It's only really "overpowered" if the plot can be solved trivially by ripping people to bits with your mind.

If it can, change either the plot or the powers.

Maybe it's not just a case of telekinesis having limits, but that the antagonists are stronger?

Like, some people can use telekinesis and if they really want to they really can rip people's organs out or telekinetically squeeze someone's brain.

However, there are also people who can generate shields or 'lock' their body in place to make themselves effectively invulnerable to telekinesis (or other things like bullets).

So, you could have a character who fights at a distance and can casually toss cars around or shred people with their mind... but they are faced against an Implacable Man who can no-sell their tricks and walk unharmed through a hail of bullets and shrug off a whirlwind of jagged metal with nary a scratch.

Or, most important people have learned how to generate protective shields around themselves to protect against telekinesis, weapons, or just bad weather. A telekinetic serial killer might be able to shred apart common thugs, but they find that the majority of policemen, politicians, or street level heroes have invested in their shields to make such a tactic ineffective against them.

Alternately, this could allow for medical doctors who have learned how to use telekinesis to perform delicate surgery on patients without cutting them open. If they have X-ray vision to look through a person's skin to see the injury, they can then use their TK to perform surgery without cutting or (necessarily) using surgical tools.

How about this, since telekinesis is basically mind over matter, we can make its limit a psychological one.

What the power's user can lift, throw, tear asunder, and squeeze juice out of, is entirely dependent on the user being completely sure he/she can do it. A matter of whether or not the user believes his power can lift a rock/boulder, twist and tear tissue/titanium, or squeezing oranges or planets for juice.

As such he/she does not believe in it completely down to the very moral-fiber of their being, they can never accomplish the task.

edited 28th Nov '15 4:41:31 PM by Wasdxz

Is this TK for a video game, tabletop game, or novel?

It's actually VERY easy to limit telekinesis. You see, it's psychic ability, which follows some rules, but these rules aren't clear or carved in stone; you can invent any limits and restrictions, and still not damage the suspension of disbelieve.

Simplest way - psychological limitations. So what if character theoretically can move the whole galaxy aside? His mind, his own world perception naturally limit him to moving only, say, bricks; he just doesn't believe - or doesn't know - that he can do better. If it's not the case where Clap Your Hands will legitimely work, then I don't know what is.

What a lot of great suggestions!

An easy way to keep telekinesis reasonably limited would be to make it so that the object to be manipulated must be exposed. One could poke someone's eye, for example, but not their brain: the surface of the body is in the way. Perhaps some materials could be TK-permeable. For example, we might say that telekinesis can pass through light-permeable (transparent) materials with little or no interference. For the most part, though, a mass interposed between the telekinetic and their target would have to be either removed or broken through, before the target itself could be touched.

Given such a limitation, a telekinetic who is caged behind bars would have no problem moving objects beyond the bars. They can project force through the gaps, but a solid wall or glassed-in enclosure would defeat them - unless they have sufficient force to break it.