How do characters lower destruction power?

[Helios518]

In the franchise, you see character that are able to destroy planets but they shoot blast powerful enough to hurt other planet buster but the destructive power isn't planetary like destroying a mountain only. How do they do it?

[Lord Beerus]

Ki control. It's all about concentrating your energy into a single point. This is actually brought up multiple times in the story.

[theherodjl]

It's simple really, they can put out one millionth of their true power to hurt an opponent that requires about most of their true power to injure and thus negate the laws of mathematics because...plot convenience.

[B]

The same way you type on your keyboard, but lower your destructive power so you don't smash it apart.

[dbgtFO]

Ki control. It's all about concentrating your energy into a single point. This is actually brought up multiple times in the story.

Multiple times? Really?
Only example I recall is Trunks explaining why Vegeta's Final Flash didn't destroy Earth:

Chapter: 384 (DBZ 190), P13.1
Context: after Vegeta fires the Final Flash
Kuririn: “W-we’re saved…!”
Trunks: “Father calculated it just right so that its range would be small…!”

Whenever someone is about to fire off planet destroyers post Freeza Arc, they always seem to take note of which angle it's fired from, so for example Vegeta here, Goku in the Cell Games and Cell in the Cell Games are all seemingly about to destroy the World as their blasts are facing downwards, but eventually the blasts are redirected, so they don't hit the Earth.
Them actually restricting the destructive power isn't really brought up, rather the focus is on how they can prevent their blasts from directly hitting Earth. By all means their blasts do have enough power to take out the Earth, but either they redirect them(see above), or the blasts are not fired from an angle, that would directly hit Earth(see Piccolo vs Cell, both fights) or they hit their target, which takes the brunt of the hit(see Vegeta vs #19 & #18).
Another aspect could be the type of ki blast fired off, as people first start to threaten for their lives, when big ki blasts are charged up, rather than the no-charge casual blasts. We do however see Kid Buu start off with a casual ki blast, that Vegeta stops, so this is where things get a bit iffy.
For example we also have Gohan's ki blast going straight through the planet, instead of detonating anywhere, which could be a quality of casual ki blasts or it was because Buu simply punched it so hard, the planet couldn't stop it from plowing all the way through.
But then there's also Gotenks' multiple ki blasts fired in the general vicinity of Buu, that don't destroy the planet.
Eh, I don't know.

[Lord Beerus]

Ki control. It's all about concentrating your energy into a single point. This is actually brought up multiple times in the story.

Multiple times? Really?
Only example I recall is Trunks explaining why Vegeta's Final Flash didn't destroy Earth:

Chapter: 384 (DBZ 190), P13.1
Context: after Vegeta fires the Final Flash
Kuririn: “W-we’re saved…!”
Trunks: “Father calculated it just right so that its range would be small…!”

Um... the Saiyan arc? Raditz makes the point about concentrating energy into a single point quite a few times when he's fights Goku and and Piccolo:

Spoiler:

[Polyphase Avatron]

Beerus apparently has the ability to nullify energy. As for the others? Blame it on plot convenience.

[dbgtFO]

Um... the Saiyan arc? Raditz makes the point about concentrating energy into a single point quite a few times when he's fights Goku and and Piccolo:

Yes, but nowhere is it stated that would lower their blasts destructive power, which is the point of this thread.

[RancorSnp]

@dbgtFO

Destroying a planet is a VERY different task than killing an opponent. Especially if that opponent is harder to damage than said planet. Like you said, nowhere is stated that concentrating energy would lower their destructive power, to be honest all the evidence showcasts that the more you concentrate enegry aka. The smaller the beam and explosion, the more destructive it is.

You can think about it that way, A fighter is capable of sending an attack that would deal 10,000 units of damage (It's just for the example purpose). Now his opponent shield up to the 8,000 units. While the ground / stones need only 500 units of damage to be completely disintegrated. In this case he can either allow the explosion to be completely free to do what it wants in this case it will scatter around just like the bomb explosion, while the radius will be great, and due to very strong attack destructive for the huge chunk of the planet, it won't really harm his opponent unless it was a direct hit before he let the energy spread. While on the other side, focusing your energy to lower the destruction radius, will trap his energy in a ball, making it unable to escape, and thus boucing back at the target. For the first case I would estiamte about 1000 units of damage. The second case... a LOT more, maybe 5,000? Maybe more, depends on compression and attack type.

And the same rule applies to beams and other moves that do not explode in the end. The wider the beam the less power in every square inch of the attack. So the same amount of energy Krillin used in Destruco Disk to cut of freezas tail, if sent as wide beam attack like Garlick gun or Kameha would deal near to no damage to Frieza.

Another point in destroying planets, is they are most likely (in the early point of the series) are not done by sheer power of the attack, but rather much like freeza did, they are kept focused to drill through ground to the core, and made explode here to destabilize the planet and thus make it fall apart / explode.

[oreos-splash]

I guess we can compare ki attacks to mass. Kind of like having a car made of foam and very light, to a toy car made of steel so heavy it cant be lifted. Both different sizes but the latter with mass so bunched up and compressed its hard to lift.

Ki attacks can be extremely densed when it explodes, or expand to encompass an entire area, or jusf explode a planet if left unchecked.

but they really really want to use all their power, it may be even harder to compress the attacks, that's why the big attacks used are said to be able to destroy planets. Because it's harder to control

[Son_Gohan]

The only place I've seen this subject alluded to was in Daizenshuu 7's entry for the Big Bang Attack, where it notes dealing heavy damage in a "specific range", in contrast to the Gyarik-ho which attacks a "wide range". They both were fired towards the Earth, and weren't too different in size, but only the Gyarik-ho was expressed to have the potential to destroy the planet, despite the Big Bang Attack being far, far more powerful.