this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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I'm just starting to DM, do you disclose how much HP creatures have to your players? Just did a combat sim with my guys last week to see if we understood the combat system and that probably affected how they played.
A common way to get around explicitly giving the HP of a monster and telling them nothing is the "They look... " rule. When they ask how many HP the baddie has left, tell them "They look injured, but not enough to hinder them" or "they look bloody and totally messed up" etc. As a rule of thumb, you can decide their health into quarters and come up with a common phrase for each, or come up with them on the fly depending on the situation: "Grog's hammer has left some of its ribs broken, but it looks healthy enough to keep fighting for a while."
Huh, interesting. Thanks! How do you keep track of health? I was using Owlbear's character text window but, well, I think I'll adopt that system you mentioned.
I haven't really touched Owlbear before, but I booted it up and had a play. It has a reputation for being "very lightweight" and boy, it lives up to that. This is great if you don't want a lot of complicated options - but I don't see a way in it to "secretly" track a token's health.
I made this goblin as the GM and the "player" can see the character notes, I don't really see a way to turn it off (maybe there's an extension for it.) - If I were running on this, I'd use pen and paper to track health.
If all you need is a quick visualisation to move tokens around, Owlbear is pretty good for that, it's quick and lightweight and easy to use.
If you're looking for something with a little more oomph that's also free, "Roll20" is a very popular free app for running DnD games, it has quite a lot of good tools, can handle full character sheets, and it's compatable with Beyond20 (Beyond20 is an extension for DnD Beyond that lets you roll dice out of the DnD beyond website into an open vtt.)
If you're looking for something with a lot of power and flexibility behind it "Foundryvtt" is a system that does everything Roll20 does, usually better, but sometimes a little clunkier (for me, it's often a bit laggy, and the drawing tools suck - even the "good" modules) - Foundry is really for power users, as you can run independent servers, code your own modules, or install all sorts of mods from the library of modules other people have coded.
If you're looking to spend a huge number of hours building incredibly pretty 3d environments for your players to explore, "talespire" is available, and seems to be pretty comprehensive... but... oh boy it's a lot
Adding in to the way of "tracking health secretly", there's a way, but you gotta think in reverse:
Track damage, not health. Just jot down quickly on paper how much HP an enemy has and track damage dealt, which can be a public info anyway
If you figure HP needs changing, change it on the fly on the paper and adjust your description of the scene
This is an excellent suggestion that I completely forgot to mention, simply because I don't use it myself. (Online, I use Foundry and keep the total secret, in meatspace I use pen and paper behind a screen.)
Many tables really like this approach, because nobody needs to remember anything and everyone has the info to hand. If you have forgetful players, or players who don't pay attention 100% of the time, or if you need to put your information tracking in a public space (e.g. because you run on owlbear, or play on a small table with no DM screen) this lets you track monster HP while not writing down anything the players don't know.
DM's: Definitely consider this approach if your players are constantly asking you questions like "how much damage did this ogre take again?" or "which of those two minotaurs has taken the most damage?" - it can really help you out.
Yup. This covers "forgetful players", but it also helps me: a DM with ADHD that can get very lost in "meatspace" ("which of these four monsters that look exactly the same took 40 damage, again?" or "I am sure I had that monster token here somewhere...")
So I make tokens with pictures for the creatures on the top and space on the bottom to scribble the damage with dry-erase marker. Really helps.
Also: adding up is much faster than subtracting damage
Really recommend that method for anybody that wants to try and speed up combat
Oh man… I’ve DMed once and only once. I fudged a LOT of stuff in the spirit of making the game as fun as possible for my friends. All of the bad never played DnD before. I used only Excel spreadsheets for combat. I tracked health secretly and would sometime allow something weaker to die in one hit if a char rolled high and really excitedly said their damage number. I tried to be as descriptive as POSSIBLE about what their sword/mace/arrow did to the inside of the gobbo’s guts/skull.
We played verrrrry loose with rules. I wanted to run full TotM. My partner was the cartographer… they did STELLAR, and told me I described stuff really well.
It was some of the most fun I’ve had. I spent like 60 hours prepping the campaign, and let them know it’ll be kinda railroad-y at first. They made a decision to go off course near the beginning and I made up some convenient reason they couldn’t… then I began writing the next part of the story because one char was VERY intent on going that way. I just needed some time to figure it out cuz I’m new.
It was wonderful. The last thing that happened in our campaign was our friend accidentally killing our other friend with some bad rolls (we agreed critical misses should have consequences cuz it’s funny)
…before we could play again, the friend who was downed died in real life. I love you, ******.
Anyway thanks for reading my rant.
Thanks for the info! I had seen those before. This is the second time we try to get into dnd (it'd be our first game), and I tried to use Roll20 before. It was a little overwhelming, between not knowing the first thing about dnd and a poor UI (to me). We chose owlbear because of its simplicity, if my guys don't feel like dnd is for them, we didn't spend too much time or any money on software.
Next campaign though, I'd like to try roll20. If I end up rolling lowest and get stuck with DMing again.
I think owl ear would be good for a first campaign for sure- a feature-rich cry has a lot to learn, and that’s a lot to do when also learning the game.
Just a quick update. We had our first session yesterday. It was a little rough at first, everyone talking over each other but ae rolled for initiative for interactions out of combat, and everything after went without a hitch. Except the boss fight, I had some real bad rolls and my players put the aberrations down without taking a single hit. Still, they had fun, and I had fun. Owlbear was fine, it did the job. Wish it communicated heights better but, eh, making the maps in rimworld probably didn't help.
Thanks for the help! I quite like being a DM.
Pen and paper for the real number, use descriptions with the players. I even modified how fast the enemies would walk/run and how hard they hit based on how rough of a shape they were in...
Don't over think it!
Hm, alright, thanks! Think I'll use a spreadsheet. If I use notes I'll end up making a huge mess.
4e had a specific status called "bloodied" that creatures gained when they dropped below half HP, this represented that one of the attacks on them has been a telling enough blow that they're showing signs of injury. I brought this with me to 5e, because it's a useful contextualizer for players to get a feel for how well they're doing.
One advantage of this system (especially for new DMs) is that if you massively overspec an encounter and the players are in trouble, you have some time to realize it's going badly, and can drop the monster's HP pool a little to compensate.
One advantage of this system (especially for experienced groups) is that if the party are doing badly, and haven't realized it - the moment you say "right, the enemy is bloodied" they realize that they've "only" done half the dragon's HP, and are reminded that retreat is an option they can take. Remember that if the whole party decides to retreat, it can be good to drop out of combat, and make the attempted retreat a skill-based challenge, rather than trying to run the retreat on the combat grid. 5e makes it very very difficult for creatures to "outrun" other creatures that are trying to kill them, and the combat system doesn't handle retreating well.
If you want a mechanic for it, ask the player who wants to know to make a medicine check - this can add value to the medicine skill (which doesn't see a lot of play):
If they beat 10, you give them a very rough idea, like "they've been hit a couple of times but they look like they're going strong"
If they beat 15, give them a loose fraction to the closest 1/4 or so "they've lost about 1/4 of their HP" etc
If they beat 20, give them a number to the nearest 5 or 10 (depending on if you're low or high level.)
Increase these DCs by 5 if the monster is something that they'd be unfamiliar with the biology of - how easy is it to tell how hurt an air elemental is? not very.
An important thing to always remember is, every table is different, if one thing works for your group - do that, don't think that you have to follow any piece of advice just because it came from someone who sounded authoritative, or gave you a lot of numbers.
This is all extremely useful info, thanks! I want to implement something like this, because I feel like it would help my guys roleplay. It's the first time we ever do ttrpg, and I'd like to give them every help I can get.
This is in 5e, below half health an enemy or NPC is described as showing injury, below 25% is described as seriously injured, and below 10% is described as near death.
Usually not until they're below half or unless a player asks, I never give them the actual numbers though as I feel that would detract from the experience.
For me the players having a fun experienceb and building a character's story is more important than explicitly wargaming