Zothor's page

I'm hoping someone can clarify what I'm missing with the new discipline Mass Entropy from the Enhanced book. It has two different components, the first of which I think is self explanatory but the second of which seems entirely redundant and useless.

"When you use your entropic strike against a creature with the swarm defenses ability, you can deal half damage to the target instead of no damage." Makes sense. Straightforward. However:

"When you use your blast entropic attunement to deal damage to multiple targets, it deals additional damage to creatures with the swarm defenses special ability as though the weapon affected all creatures in the area."

This.... seems totally unnecessary because the interaction between entropic attunement and the swarm defenses rules already does this. When you spend the 2 points on the blast attunement, the attack specifically gets that property - you "grant your next attack the blast weapon special property with a range of 20 feet." Under Swarm defenses explanation of increased damage taken for abilities that affect all creatures in an area, blast weapons are specifically cited as one example that already get the 50% bonus. And blast properties by definition affect all creatures in the cone ("For each attack you make with a weapon with the blast special property, roll one attack against each target int he cone . . .You can't avoid shooting at allies in the cone, nor can you shoot any creature more than once.").

And what does this mean for the level 16 entropic clap/radius ability, of which there is no mention? That too, by its definition, affects every creature in the area - it says specifically "you damage each creature and object with an EAC equal to or lower than the attack result." Moreover, just thinking of the kayfabe design of how these abilities work, they are waves of force in a cone or radius, which should absolutely hit clouds of things just like any explosive or magical wave of force would. The swarm defenses from the Alien Archive say that "A swarm takes half again as much damage (+50%) from effects that affect all targets in an area, such as grenades, blast and explode weapons, and many evocation spells." The difference cannot be that entropic clap and entropic blast require an attack roll, because so do blast weapons naturally—and blast weapons are specifically included in the rule granting the damage bonus. So... why does the second half of Mass Entropy exist at all? It doesn't appear to do anything that isn't already built into the swarm rules, and I think until this book came out everyone pretty much thought one of the perks of the Vanguard AOE abilities was being a way to deal with swarms.

So one of the things I was most excited for in enhanced was the scaling equipment system; with Starfinder only providing a 10% return for sold, used equipment (and no way to meaningfully break it down into more than that in usable crafting materials) I've always found upgrading to specific designed goals a little excessively difficult. The designers seem to have appreciated this in their explanation of the system in the Enhanced book noting that looting new weapons and armor along the way "is less optimal for players who crave continuity—either because they have class abilities that rely on using certain weapon types (like many soldier gear boosts) or because using a specific weapon over the course of their character's career has narrative value."

Imagine my surprise them to realize that the list of allowable customizations is <u>very</u> limited. Certain builds that require specific categories of weapons or armor are well supported—but others are entirely omitted, either inadvertently or intentionally. What was the point of acknowledging that there are big gaps between when you can get certain types of weapons... and then not allowing for those to be filled in except in a few, specific cases?

Some were presumably omitted due to their power—reach, grapple, throttle, double, entangle, flexible line, wide line, guided, ignite, modal, polarize, tail, thought, thruster)

Others are crowd control or debuff related (aurora, echo, gravitation, harrying, reposition, sunder)

Some I cannot imagine why you're not allowed to spend a valuable BP on this property if you want to (breach, breakdown, conceal, deflect, drain, feint, force, integrated, recall)

There are a dozen critical hit effects that simply aren't available for purchase either. What happened to providing specific gear for builds that depended on it? If you need an injector weapon for your biohacker or a trip or disarm weapon, great, but I hope you haven't picked any other combat maneuver to specialize in. Surely, nobody at Paizo thought "you know what's too strong and characters definitely shouldn't be able to specialize in? Sunder."

I haven't been able to find anything out there discussing this as being intentional or why it was done, but I was curious if other people had. I understand maybe not including things from adventure paths, but a lot of these are from main books - including the core rulebook itself. Are the designers just softly walking back items and systems they've created that they would undo if they could? If this was a power creep issue, it doesn't make any sense, as the custom weapons tend to have substantially higher damage potential than pre-designed weapons. Was this a simple lack of scope? If these properties were intentionally omitted, that deserved at least a mention; realistically, perhaps they should have been available at substantially higher BP cost (2, 3, 4 BP?) or with damage die limitations (like operative, explosive/blast, and energy properties got) so as to adjust the balance accordingly. Enhanced created a scaling gear system for custom gear... that is barely customizable compared to the vast universe of Starfinder gear out there. The <u>entire category</u> of powered armor was omitted from the system, as were shields, as were I'm sure a ton of other categories of things I haven't caught because I've only played a few classes (are Solarians entirely left out in the cold as well?)

Am I crazy? Or is this system just... half finished, at best?