What people keep missing is what I keep saying and what the rules say:
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Originally Posted by p. B92
The turn after you grapple a foe using TK, your TK can use a Move maneuver to pick him up off the ground, provided you have enough TK to lift his weight. Someone in this position can’t do anything that relies on ground contact (run, retreat, etc.), but can perform any other action that is possible while grappled.
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Picking someone up
does penalize his Dodge horribly – he suffers the usual -1 for being grappled
and cannot use retreat for +3! Unless your
GURPS games look very different from mine, that's lethally bad. Making it even worse is possible: Use TK for a takedown on the turn after you pick up your foe and, if you win, ascribe whatever special effects you like to the results; the
game effect is that your victim is now lying down, and gets another -3 to Dodge for that. Alternatively, use the rules for shoving people around on that turn and, if you win, declare that you turn him away from you; now he can't defend against you at all!
The key point is that the initial, one-second grapple doesn't immediately make defenses worse than if you had grappled with hands. You have to take a turn for an Attack to grapple him, then a turn for a Move to lift him, and then another turn for an Attack to put him in a bad position. The huge benefit of TK is that you operate as an invisible attacker, so the initial defense against the grapple is likely to fail. A lesser benefit is that TK can be made very cheap with limitations, so you can easily have enough effective ST to ensure victory at takedowns and shoving around. Another lesser benefit is that you can stand 10 metres away and be at zero risk from having your hands parried by weapons, or having an angry, grappled foe attack you to get free.
Players who are expecting TK to turn each grapple into three turns of actions are asking too much from their points. If they want to do that, then they should invest in Altered Time Rate with suitable limitations for mental-only actions. If they just want instant restraint (one attack and the target is defenseless), then yes, they do indeed need to take Binding . . . which, as an alternative attack to Telekinesis, is stupidly cheap.
And to be clear, a
GURPS dodge is any movement that pulls the attacked body part out of the line of attack. It may well involve nothing more than twisting the torso 10° or moving an arm 3 cm to the right. Full, bodily dodging with footwork is what retreat represents, and TK already prevents that.