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.
I also noticed that the blast ability doesn't do anything the blast property didn't already give you. It's not terribly rare for Starfinder books to have mistakes like this that fundamentally mistunderstand a rule, unfortunately.
Starfinder Enhanced had a handful of references to game concepts that only exist in PF1 or PF2 and not in Starfinder.