Insubstantial Minions

[Cendragon]

The Ghost Talon Minion from a Gloomwrought preview is a shadar-kai and has their racial ability to teleport 1x per encounter and become insubstantial. I’m not sure how often a minion being insubstantial is going to matter but I understand that if they’re being consistent then applying the racial power accomplishes that. However, the minion also turns insubstantial when it hits with its melee attack.

Can someone explain to me why this would ever matter? The only case I can think of is if somehow the minion took 1 point of damage and because it was insubstantial it was halved and rounded down to zero but I’ve never seen anyone get hit yet for 1 point of damage.

 

[Nullzone]

Blue text on black background = no bueno.

 

[nogray]

The Insubstantial property does very little by itself to a minion, but it can help if the minion has other resistances, making those very slightly more effective. A minion with Resist 10 fire and insubstantial needs to take 12 points of fire damage to be eliminated. I did notice a couple minions that had (in addition to the insubstantial property) powers like the following.

Incorporeal Form (encounter)
The first time in an encounter that a fell taint drone would take damage, roll d20, on a 10+, the fell taint drone takes no damage.

Insubstantial Defense (free action, when hit by an attack; at-will)
The ghost worg makes a saving throw. If the save succeeds, the attack passes harmlessly through the ghost worg’s form.

I used a similar property when I made some insubstantial minions. This isn't a general rule, though, and I would likely add that if a character has a way to ignore insubstantial (like the Ghost Scorpion Strike or Inescapable Force feats), they would also ignore those added defenses.

 

[Mengu]

If you do silly things like have a leader give your minions temporary hit points, then insubstantial may play a role. Otherwise it's not very meaningful.

I've used the blood phase mechanic a number of times on my minions that were based off insubstantial monsters. It's a good enough capture of flavor and mechanic.

 

[Quickleaf]

For that particular minion "insubstantial" is meaningless unless there's an outside factor like a leader granting temp HP or an effect keying off of insubstantial keyword.

I do think "insubstantial" is a trait worth house-ruling in and of itself (doing less damage is boring, slows fight, and has weird stacking with "weakened"). Something I've done is have ethereal monsters have a damage threshold - attacks which don't do enough damage don't hurt the monster and instead have another effect, like dazing, immobilizing, or removing from play temporarily. Ghost-touch weapons and other special attacks bypass this damage threshold.

Just one way to make it interesting and still relevant for minions.

 

[Colmarr]

The Compendium: Ghost Worg Packmate
Insubstantial Defense (free action, when hit by an attack; at-will)
The ghost worg makes a saving throw. If the save succeeds, the attack passes harmlessly through the ghost worg’s form.

Back when the boards were grappling with the ineffectiveness of minions in paragon and epic tiers, I proposed granting minions a saving throw to ignore damage from area attacks, close attacks and non-attacks (such as wall of fire).

While I'm not claiming credit, it's interesting to see that the idea of minions making saves to avoid damage made its way into the game somewhere.