Hey #DnD DMs (might as well try and toss out to @matthewmercer @mattcolville while I’m at it) How do you track HP for multiples of the same creature? If you have, say, 5+ Goblins, how do you track and remember which is which for initiative, HP, and the like? For me, I group Initiative to Enemy Types for ease (4 goblins of the same stats? On the same count. A goblin leader with different stats? A different count). For tracking HP, I write down a Marker on my sheet relative to where they are on the battle map, like a mini radar ping.
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) October 10, 2021
If I have a good monster wrangler player, I don't even need to manage positioning. The monster wrangler player manages them and calls out "You got one attack" and I roll.
— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) October 10, 2021
While they move around afterward, I can still maintain a thread of who-is-who based on the initial placement and where they are now. If it gets messy/crowded, I might redraw that radar ping with numbers assigned to each HP tracking point and update the number locations each round
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) October 10, 2021
Would you be willing to give a visual aid my brain is having a hard time imagining what your saying (I’m going to be DMing my first game soon) Totally! pic.twitter.com/1FXifNVWR7
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) October 10, 2021
This is how I tend to do it too, but I’ve started just adding up damage taken instead of subtracting from HP total. Once damage is equal to max HP, they’re dead. Aye, same! I do the mental math on how much damage has been taken via those “-3, -6” type notes, and once it equals the total HP, then BOOM. Down!
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) October 11, 2021
For me as DM, it’s quite helpful. Saves the stress of juggling all those numbers (of monsters as well) in an already quite DM heavy part of the game, the start of battle. The calm of a simple highest to lowest list soothes the moment a bit. Plus it makes for a tidier notepad 😉 Thiiiiiis. 🙂 For battles with smaller numbers, just asking can work great! For bigger battles, having to plug in all the varying bits can get a bit unwieldy/chaotic for myself.
— Matthew Mercer (@matthewmercer) October 10, 2021
I've been using the D&D Beyond Combat Tracker and a text-based combat position tracker in Discord. It works pretty well! Of course, my games have been online since early 2020. pic.twitter.com/YRGQANPxmb
— SlyFlourish.com (@SlyFlourish) October 11, 2021
I’ve always done what Coleville does. Players just vibe with it.
So, personally I’ve moved almost exclusively to online mediums for play, but seeing as those are more or less self explanatory I won’t go into them. Back when I was playing in person more often then not, what I used to use to mark monsters were d6s. You can buy rather large sets of tiny ones at most game shops, and in varying colors, so with that in mind if there were multiple of the same creature I would either set one or two of these d6s by them, or more often then not use them to denote monsters without figurines at all.
I had a DM do what DAMON Hunter MATUS said. He used dice to represent enemies. Then he would use like say D4’s are one creature time, D6’s are another, and D8’s are the 3rd type. Don’t go past that often, but you could do the same with D10, percentile, D12, & D20. Work your way through all 7 types. But yeah, if you got a few sets of the mini D6’s, that’s a cool way to mark them on the map, and then make a key on your HP tracker.