DM Tips: Tracking damage

[Philotomy Jurament]

I use dice. I play original D&D with the little brown books, so hit dice are all d6 (for monsters and PCs). I have about fifty of the smaller six-siders. I roll hit dice on the spot, and set the dice into groups behind my screen (so, if the PCs are fighting six gnolls, I have six groups of 2d6 behind my screen). As the PCs damage the gnolls, I change the dice to subtract the proper number of pips.

 

[FungiMuncher]

For my 4e game, I have a small, 8.5x11 white board behind my screen. With small groups of monsters, I try to pick out unique figures. When a monster takes damage, I write down its type and feature, ie -orc/axe or zombie/red. I simply record the damage it's taken.

If I have a larger group of monster with identical figures, I use some tiny d10s. I'll mark them with different numbers and place the die on or near the monster's base. I have my players trained well enough to pay attention to the dice when they're out.

For conditions and marks, I use pipe cleaners of various colors, cut up and bent into rings, and place them on the minis. Can't beat the price!

For initiative, I use cards. Used to keep track of the damage on the cards, but I'm finding the combo of cards/white board much easier to manage.

 

[delericho]

I keep track of monster totals on a whiteboard, and don't sweat it if sometimes damage is applied to the wrong monster. With one exception, this works well enough for our group.

But then, we're also not keen on absolute adherence to the rules, so if things slide a bit we tend not to worry about it.

 

[Krensky]

I use a small whiteboard/laminated paper/laminated NPC sheet with dry and wet erase markers. I also make sure my tokens are all numbered so I and my players can refer specifically to one or another.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

I use a Hit Point pool for each type of foe.

If the Kobold foes, have 12 HP each and there are 10, then I use a pool of 120 HP. At 108, one dies. At 96, another dies and so forth. Simply tally all damage together, which makes it seem as if all of the foes are of different strength.

 

[Pickles JG]

If I have a larger group of monster with identical figures, I use some tiny d10s. I'll mark them with different numbers and place the die on or near the monster's base. I have my players trained well enough to pay attention to the dice when they're out.

Where do you get tiny D10s? I have been looking for some for ages to er track monster HP.

At the moment when I DM I write damage to monsters on the battlemat but another group I play in we use dice to track the HP of damage we inflict. This is OK but is fiddly with 200 hp monsters & lots of D6 to add up. I want to use 3 sets of different coloured D10s to use as 100 10 units. However I cannot find any tiny ones or even small ones. (well I can get some in sets but do not want to pay £5 a dice)

Pickles

 

[Henry]

For more than four or five opponents, I use small paper chits with the damage accumulated totals (or other conditions, like penalties to hit, blindness, etc.) on them. That way, the player can tell at a glance who's fresh and who's hit, and act accordingly.

Only downside: exact DR's can't be hidden from the players in this way, so after the first hit, I'll let them know the critter has DR, and let them figure it out if they wish. (After all, if they say they did 15 damage, and I tell them to mark him down for 5 after some colorful description of why he's not as hurt as they would expect, then it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he has DR 10 versus whatever they just did.)

I've tried whiteboards, init trackers, etc. but the chits seem to work best for us. With the advent of Minion rules in 4e, and the new resistances and vulnerabilities rules, it's been working for me even better than under 3e, because the number of times I need to use some form of extended damage tracking has gone down dramatically.

 

[Henry]

For more than four or five opponents, I use small paper chits with the damage accumulated totals (or other conditions, like penalties to hit, blindness, etc.) on them. That way, the player can tell at a glance who's fresh and who's hit, and act accordingly.

Only downside: exact DR's can't be hidden from the players in this way, so after the first hit, I'll let them know the critter has DR, and let them figure it out if they wish. (After all, if they say they did 15 damage, and I tell them to mark him down for 5 after some colorful description of why he's not as hurt as they would expect, then it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he has DR 10 versus whatever they just did.)

I've tried whiteboards, init trackers, etc. but the chits seem to work best for us. With the advent of Minion rules in 4e, and the new resistances and vulnerabilities rules, it's been working for me even better than under 3e, because the number of times I need to use some form of extended damage tracking has gone down dramatically.

 

[Mengu]

When I prep my encounters, I print out all the stats on one page. On that same page I have headers for each monster, their hit points, and some white space underneath. If there is a goblin hexer, 2 goblin warriors, and 2 shadow bats in an encounter, I might have some short hand like H, W1, W2, S1, S2, with their hit points written underneath each column. I track them individually. I can usually remember what's 1 and what's 2. If there are 4 or more identical monsters, I differentiate with miniatures (but that rarely happens except for minions). My damage track for each monster is also my condition tracker, so I know what conditions I start with, how much ongoing damage I'm taking, and how many saves I have to make at the end of my turn.

I use a lot of short hand. For instance if W1 was hit with the Paladin's Enfeebling Strike for 8 points of damage, I subtract the damage, and right next to it, write down "ES -2" This reminds me of the condition when it's my turn. There are typically scribbles of "ong5", "d.rad", and the like on the tracking sheet for ongoing 5 damage, been hit by dire radiance, etc.

I can move it along pretty fast since while the player is figuring out their attack and damage, I can easily locate the target on my encounter sheet, and it's not a lot of numbers to record. For marks, curse targets, quarries, bloodied, etc, we use markers under the minis so I can usually tell at a quick galnce.

I don't think I'd ever have players keeping track of monster damage. Call me old fashioned, but I like to be in charge of that stuff. As long as my players are on top of what they want to do when their turn comes around I'm happy. They do run the initiative board for me (on a good day).

 

[NMcCoy]

I give letters to each monster, using colored tokens to indicate monster type. I track HP on that monster type's initiative card under the corresponding letter.