Hit Points... Up or Down?

[Almacov]

This.

Also that.
I think at least one of the other DMs in my group works this way too.

 

[Agamon]

- keep tally with poker chips

LOL, I can't do this, my players would kill me. I have poker chips near me, I gotta start playing with them.

 

[juboke]

When I DM I add damage to monsters and subtract damage from players. If asked to keep track of my character's hit points as a player I subtract.

 

[Ainamacar]

I count down for the reasons Umbran states (although I generally do it both as a player and a DM). Although I'm currently playing in a system with explicit damage threshold's for falling unconscious and then dying, and in that case I count up. I guess that means I start at the initial state of the variable quantity, and move toward the number where important things happen, whether up or down. I also started playing CRPGs before I played anything tabletop. In every one of those games I can think of damage was subtracted from full HP, so when I first sat at the table I would never have thought to do it any other way.

 

[Wicht]

Another reason I add up damage as a DM: it allows me to keep a tally of damage done to monsters on the gridded whiteboard I use for games without allowing the players to actually know how many hp the opponent has remaining.

 

[Jacob Marley]

When I'm GM, I add up damage to monsters.

When I play, I subtract damage from my hit points.

I do the exact opposite of this. When I DM, I usually write down the monster's starting hit point total on a note card and then subtract off of that. Whereas when I play, and given the layout of the 3.5/Pathfinder character sheets, I find it easier to just add damage until I reach my hit point total.

 

[Zhaleskra]

I subtract damage regardless of which side of the player/GM equation I'm on. Honestly, I find it confusing that some people consider addition easier than subtraction or that when comparing rolls think that it's faster to pick the bigger number over the smaller. That second one mostly because it's exactly the same action.

 

[GregChristopher]

In my game, your Strength is your HP. As you get injured, you get weaker. The same for Endurance (stamina) and Resilience (immune system). Since that is the case, I really have to track them as a countdown rather than a count-up.

I had honestly never thought about this issue before, probably because I prefer systems that track levels of injury (like WoD) instead of HP. But if I was to play in a game with HP now, having read this, I would probably count up as a GM and down as a player; for the good reasons already stated by others.

 

[Fifth Element]

When I'm GM, I add up damage to monsters.

When I play, I subtract damage from my hit points.

Why? Because when I'm GM, I generally am not so worried about exactly how many hit points each critter has remaining - what I'm most concerned about is if they are still standing.

Funny, that's the exact reason that I subtract damage when DMing. That way I don't have to refer to the monster's maximum hp to determine when it goes down - once I count the hp down to 0, then it's done.

I also subtract when tracking my hit points as a player. I don't find subtraction any more difficult that addition.

 

[dogoftheunderworld]

Keep your math skills on the bleeding edge!

Current HP = (max hit points) + damage taken - (damage taken * 2)


Okay... I'll go with subtract normal damage, add up non-lethal