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Well, I know broaching physics is going to elicit an "It's fantasy" response or two, but I figure I should ask anyway. It seems that telekinesis does not follow Newton's Third Law. So, if someone used the psionic TK to pick up a REALLY heavy object, it doesn't require that person to brace him or her self. That person wouldn't be pushed into the ground because of the added weight. So, in theory the controlled object maintains its mass but doesn't have the same weight. I guess TK has some gravitational field attached to it. So, you should be able to pick up something heavy and walk across a rickety bridge or stay afloat on a raft. Also, being on horse and using TK wouldn't suddenly overburden the animal.

Now if it DOESN'T negate Newton's Third Law, then the psionic user would have to brace, or would be propelled in the opposite direction of the force moving the object. In theory, you could use this to push yourself quite a distance, by applying a large amount of ISP into the TK, but at an object that is still too heavy for that amount of ISP to affect. If you worked on it, you could control this and bounce around a room or push yourself up like a force jump.

-Vek
"Or it doesn't work in either of those fashions."

While Regular/Super-TK in terms of movement do suggest the possibility of a violation of Newton's laws of motion, the Psionic powers of TK: Punch or TK: Leap inflicting damage to the psychic IMHO suggest there is some type of feedback consistent with Newton's laws of motion.

It is possible though from a realistic physics POV that that Regular/Super-TK also "braces" the psychic as part of its function or the counter reaction generated by TK movement isn't sent back to the psychic but is distributed somewhere else and over such a large area that it isn't noticed by the psychic or others.

I do not think that TK violates Newton's Third Law. The question, though, is where is the force that is interacting with the object; where is the reaction happening?

The psychic is initiating the action, but, to an extent, it is more like they are pushing a button to make the thing happen, rather than using their own body to pick it up. So, the psychic doesn't need to brace... the psychic force needs to, and I assume that is part of the lifting force.

Seems like I have read some series of novels where the worst thing about telekinesis was making sure your brain didn't run out your ears from the pressure. Maybe you could make mental endurance checks to keep your brain in your skull while lifting things at the upper end of tk capacity...

Well, my next question is how would that affect someone on a raft? Would using TK to pick up something heavy force the raft underwater? What if the PC is flying? How would it be braced if in mid air?

-Vek
"Just covering all bases."

User of telekinesis also creates a telekinetic point to brace from. Wasteful of energy but life saving.

Well, I wonder what that bracing force is bracing against. If your mind mage is standing in the middle of a trampoline, and you use TK to pick up a 200lb rock, does the trampoline sag more? If you’re sitting in a tree and you pick up said 200lb rock, does the branch potentially break? What happens if you’re in water and you want to reach out to a floating crate and pull it to you, or push it towards someone else? Where is the bracing force acting? If you’re standing on a flying carpet, or you are under the effects of levitation or a flying spell, and thus are in midair, can you pick up that rock? Where is the countervailing force acting? What happens if you are using TK to handle this rock and a giant picks you up? Are you 200lbs heavier?

-Vek
“Never trust a mind mage.”

I'd assume the brace point is something like what the psi shield creates creates, but the psi shield makes me think that psionic powers do not transfer force to the wielder at all.

i think that TK, just like magic, breaks any semblance of physics. all the laws of the real world disappear with use of magic and psi powers.

TK operates partly out of the physical plane (that energy's coming from SOMEwhere) so it's possible the 6D version of physics are not, in fact, being violated but we're unable to percieve where the fulcrum is. or what it is.

kiralon wrote:I'd assume the brace point is something like what the psi shield creates creates, but the psi shield makes me think that psionic powers do not transfer force to the wielder at all.

TK: Punch and TK: Leap (both PF2E psi-powers) indicate some force transfer to the wielder. Psi-Shield/TK-Forcefield are different manifestations of the TK power so they might not be the best to consider here.

Veknironth wrote:Well, my next question is how would that affect someone on a raft? Would using TK to pick up something heavy force the raft underwater? What if the PC is flying? How would it be braced if in mid air?

-Vek
"Just covering all bases."

A lot of these questions are going to come down to how the reaction force is distributed. If the TK-reactionary force can be distributed over a larger area, the resulting force experienced might not require any bracing at all. For example, if the force can be redistributed evenly over a circular area with a radius equal to the range of the power (TK or TK:S) even if a psychic put every possible point of ISP into movement of one heavy object (nearly 2000lbs at 15th level IIRC for a human Mind Mage w/maximum rolls related to ISP) the resulting pressure (force/area) would be negligible (we are talking less that 0.5lb/ft^2, lower ISPs mean lower lift capacity which means lower pressure generated) vs if it had to be channeled into the psychics two feet (lets say 12"x4" each for simplicity, that would give you ~3,000lbs/ft^2).

Most of you seem to be interpreting Telekinesis as something like a tractor beam, which would apply force directly between two objects and would result in equal and opposite reactions per Newton's third law. That's not at all how I would handle it, and it doesn't seem consistent with rules as written. Ok, time to go full technobabble:

Gravity bends space and time, and while its effects are well understood in terms of what we can see, feel, and measure, the modern physics community isn't really sure how it works. I don't follow theoretical physics closely, but the most-popular hypothesis is via some particle called a graviton which is so absurdly tiny it slips into different dimensions, but we have no way to measure or detect a graviton, so there's no way to prove or disprove that idea.

Anyway, if telekinesis were to be a thing, I would treat it as the manipulation of gravity/gravitons such that gravity gets nullified and subject to manipulation for a specific object. Since space-time gets bent, this isn't a conventional Newtonian force. Rather, it's a dimensional manipulation of gravitons, effectively teleporting them past an object and/or creating tiny rifts that only gravitons can pass through. As gravitons pass in and out of these rifts, they move in different directions and speeds through that object. The "equal and opposite reaction" you would expect to feel from a telekinetic force being applied is getting applied in dimensions that we don't normally interact in, but in which gravitons do. The cost of this reaction transference comes from psychic or magic energy applied, which becomes more and more efficient with practice and experience.

Thus, a person who gets picked up by telekinesis feels weightless, the same way one might feel in the first second of jumping off a cliff. If the person gets thrown, the person will feel the air passing by and the impact, but it will feel essentially the same as feeling the air rushing by and the impact with the ground after jumping off a cliff.

A fun side-effect of this interpretation is that, somewhere in the Megaverse, there's a dimension that's almost impossible to reach where all kinds of random and crazy forces get applied. Imagine what it might be like to live in such a dimension.

Tk like all other psychic powers is a manipulation of ectoplasm allowing some to break through the astral plane I to the material plane as it is anchored in the astral plane the entirety of the three dimensions there is negotiable as far as being "air" or "ground" or for that matter a fixed point. So it is possible for the possition within the Astral plane to be moving or the portal into this world to be moving or both.

As to imagine a place where random and crazy forces are applied... it's called the astral plane.

Oh look the base of that to pillar is in the air... nope that's the ground and now it's over there.

Where'd the force from that explosion go? Into the astral plane where it doesn't effect anything... native.

Okay, I am late to this party. However, I have always viewed TK as the psychic using ISP to install kinetic energy in an item. Instead of having to generate the energy of motion by picking up, pushing, or throwing an item, the TK user installs the energy in the item through force of will and then can manipulate that energy to move the item around. This mind set helps me work through a variety of in game issues with the application of TK.