Need help with a character concept.

So I'm trying to think up of a Carrie-type character. I've make up a bunch of psionic-based skills that do things like break bones, crush enemies with objects, telekinetically throw knives and sharp objects at enemies and other violent crap like that. :p Obviously, for gameplay reasons I cannot make these skills too powerful so as to make the game challenging. But thinking about it, a character like this, if they just wanted to eliminate their enemies, would simply do things like crush their hearts, cave in their skulls, and other things that would kill their enemies quickly and easily. I'm trying to think up justifications why this character would choose to make things complicated for herself by resorting to employing "less harmful" tactics like throwing knives and boulders at enemies instead of just making their heads pop.


I've considered that the character may not have full controls of her power and thus, cannot exactly pinpoint where in her opponent's body she wants her powers to affect. But if someone's got a better idea, I'm all ears.

Another idea: Whenever she uses her skills, she will hurt herself as well. And the stronger/more powerful the skill is, the more it would hurt her. So basically, her abilities are threatening her own life whenever she uses it.

   It could be as simple as saying that these 'psionic' skills don't actually work directly against living targets, so she has complete control over physical objects such as knives, boulders walls and such but cannot just turn any part of an enemy's body into her plaything. Or maybe the people that are going up against her have developed some kind of armor or charm to protect themselves against her power. (after all, if your enemy could crush your heart with a thought would you actually even try to kill her, aside from say a shot in the back where she doesn't have time to react to you? So giving her complete control over them is not only gamebreaking but negates the believability of a continued conflict as well.)

   You also should remember that in any combat game there is already a high threshold of proper disbelief and a disconnect between the story and the gameplay. Trying to bridge that gap is great, but remember it's always going to exist unless you are doing a very punishing rogue-like.

We could say psionic skills require the user to see precisely WHERE the effect is going to take place, and the more precise the effect, the more focus required.  So, to make someone's head pop or heart stop beating, she would have to have X-ray vision (which she does not) to clearly see the target.

So, she might be able to cause blindness (damage the eyes), or paralysis (freeze the skin in place), or silence (hold mouth shut), but one-hit-kill techniques would be OUT because either 1. she doesn't know biology well enough to see the target or 2. she can't see exactly what she's doing.  Causing a heart attack, for example, requires a clear visual of the human heart --- and NOT the idealized heart we use.

So she would need to resort to throwing knives, etc, because she can SEE those.   This also lets opponents weaken or disable her ability by Blinding her in return...which could justify how such a powerful being could be captured.