Insubstantial seems very, very boring

[James McMurray]

+5 to all defenses is way too much. Anyone not min-maxed will be hard pressed to come anywhere near it, and completely unable to use the standard workarounds for creatures with high defenses (like Flaming Sphere and Miss: half damage attacks). Or, if you put the PCs against it when they can hit it, they're likely to be out of its league, so it'll be a candle that's hard to blow out: can't really hurt you, but takes a while to get rid of.

 

[DM_Blake]

"Radiant" I'm assuming?

Help me out: Why would fire, cold, lightning, etc cancel the insubstantial state? Be creative.

How about necrotic?

Even better qustion, is why would these cancel the state?

(nice job, Tanj, on posing a few interesting ideas).

So the MM gives ghosts (et. al.) fewer HP, then an ability to take half damage. Net effect: same as if they didn't reduce HP and eliminated the ability. In other words, the ghost is just as hard to kill as a totally corporeal monster of equal level.

Then you come up with clever ways to remove the ability.

The danger you create is that now you have a creature with reduced HP and no ability to reduce their damage.

Your ghost just became very easy to kill.

But it has the same XP and same treasure.

Sure, it's boring as written. But if you're going to rip away the poor ghostie's defenses, at least give it something else, maybe even just raise its HP, so that it stands a fighting chance to at least scare the PCs a little.

Last thing you want is your players begging you to fight more of those super easy ghosts so they can mop the floor with them and snarf up the easy XP and loot...

 

[mattdm]

So the MM gives ghosts (et. al.) fewer HP, then an ability to take half damage. Net effect: same as if they didn't reduce HP and eliminated the ability. In other words, the ghost is just as hard to kill as a totally corporeal monster of equal level.

Then you come up with clever ways to remove the ability.

The danger you create is that now you have a creature with reduced HP and no ability to reduce their damage.

Your ghost just became very easy to kill.

But it has the same XP and same treasure.

So, yeah — my plan is to actually leave the ½ damage thing as-is, but add that untyped damage has no effect at all. Taking radiant damage (for ghosts, wraiths, and the like — other types of insubstantial creatures may be different) would allow normal weapons to also work for one round.

This does increase the power of the ability, especially against lone martial-source characters, and if my party didn't have paladins coming out its ears I might include something other than radiant as well. But since dealing radiant damage really won't be much of a problem, I don't think it'll be Bad Wrong Uninclusive Fun — just another opportunity to reward party coordination.

Like I said earlier, I think this additional thing would only apply to creatures with Resist: Insubstantial permanently on, not creatures or players who gain it through some effect. So basically, I'm creating this:

Incorporeal: The creature is insubstantial. In addition, it is immune to all untyped damage. If the creature takes radiant damage, the additional immunity is negated until the end of the creature's next turn.
​

And then I'm adding it to creatures I think should have it in my game. On some creatures, I might make it save ends instead of until the end of the next turn.

 

[ScottS]

Yes, if you're assuming the party will find the correct 'strategy' for defeating the creature, pretty much you'll want to use regular HP/stats for a level Z monster, rather than tweaking whatever stats are in the MM (which assume always-on damage reduction).

As far as explaining the effect, the old-school 'standing at a planar boundary' trick may work. When the creature is insubstantial, it's halfway between our world and some other plane (which I guess would be the Shadowfell in the new cosmology). Attacking its weakness drags it fully into whichever side/plane the attack is coming from (you're 'forcing it to defend itself' or whatever).

 

[Anthony Jackson]

+5 to all defenses is way too much. Anyone not min-maxed will be hard pressed to come anywhere near it, and completely unable to use the standard workarounds for creatures with high defenses (like Flaming Sphere and Miss: half damage attacks).

+5 all defenses isn't any stronger than half damage from all attacks; in fact, it's weaker. A first level PC is likely to be at least +4 vs special defenses, +6 vs AC. First level PC vs first level monster is typically 50-70% on attacks vs AC, 60% or so on attacks vs other defenses. +5 all defenses works out to about a 40% reduction in damage taken.

 

[ObsidianCrane]

How to make insubstantial creatures interesting - Traps and Terrain.

I recently had my 8th level party run into a Banshee twice.

The first time it was near a couple of short drops (10') - this made its push attack more threatening. The party got immobilised and pushed off the first ledge and then battled the Banshee and its Shadow Bat (Fire Bat's changed to Necrotic instead of Fire) budies for a few rounds. Eventually the Banshee got its blast back and knocked several PCs down onto the next ledge, including the melee rogue and the paladin.

The Banshee fled just before it died, and the PCs then spent over a good half an hour messing about before they encoutnered it again, so I put it back at full health. This time they encountered it with the Fire Blaster trap from the DMG. Now the Banshee was able to move from one end of the trapped area to another without triggering the trap, and being able to phase was able to move around behind the party and blast them into the trap zone leaving several on the trigger squares in the first round. It then became a scramble to disable the trap and fight the monster which was able to zoom from one end of the trap to the other without fear. Including a situation where the paladin had to run the gauntlet of the trap to engage the banshee so that it didn't kill the Rogue before she could disable the trap.

They dreaded it recovering so much that when it phased through a door, even though they were down at least a daily and most of their encoutners each they chased after it, bringing the next encounter onto them as well.

In short the mechanics of Insubstantial are useful for the other things that they can do, rather than the damage side of things. Being insubstantial means dodging through pillars rather than around them, flying over chasms, and pushing PCs into them if possible and so on. Just hitting is pretty dull pretty fast (I'm starting to hate Brutes already) but messing with the flexibility of powers can make thigns really fun.

(Flying creatures with floor based traps are fun as well.)

 

[mattdm]

In short the mechanics of Insubstantial are useful for the other things that they can do, rather than the damage side of things.

Alright, again, one of us is missing something. Phasing isn't a mechanic of insubstantial — it's a separate quality that insubstantial creatures are often given. And I continue to agree that phasing is cool.

 

[James McMurray]

The Banshee fled just before it died, and the PCs then spent over a good half an hour messing about before they encoutnered it again, so I put it back at full health.

Do Banshees have regeneration? If not, shouldn't it have regained no more than 1 healing surge worth of hit points per tier?

 

[AuraSeer]

Is there some way in which taking half damage from all sources is different from just doubling hit points?

There's a difference for healing, if you use anything that has a number not dependent on your surge value. The simplest example is the warlord's inspiring word which lets you spend a healing surge and heal +1d6 additional hit points. The insubstantial creature has lower hit points and a smaller surge value, so those additional points are more significant to it.

 

[Nail]

Help me out: Why would fire, cold, lightning, etc cancel the insubstantial state?

Even better qustion, is why would these cancel the state?

Uhm....



How is your question different than mine?