Insubstantial seems very, very boring

[James McMurray]

It's also different because of rounding down. Every time you roll an odd amount of damage against an insubstantial creature you lose a point of damage.

However, it should be pointed out that insubstantial creatures don't just have half hit points and take half damage. They've got ~70% of the hit points of a normal creature of their level, and take half damage on top of that. That puts their effective hit points closer to 150% of what a normal creature of their level would be (after accounting for the loss of some damage because of rounding).

Since elites have approximately double hit points, that slides the insubstantial critters somewhat nicely into the middle. I didn't do a full search to see if there were any insubstantial elites to compare to equal leveled solos, but I'm guessing their effective hit points would be somwhere in the middle as well.

 

[Keenath]

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.

Yeah, I'm getting a little tired of people confusing that after it's been mentioned so many times in this thread alone.

 

[mattdm]

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.

A good point, although I can't see the players noticing much — even if I do have an NPC healing my insubstantial monsters with a power which works this way, the PCs aren't going to be impressed much by "and it heals by the equivalent of a couple more hit points more than you would have expected!"

And it's really the "what gets noticed" issue that I'm driving at here. As we can see from the replies, phasing impresses people a lot; it'd be nice if the insubstantial quality at least had some flavor to it. (And in think the incorporeal quality outlined above does.)