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<blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 5303928" data-attributes="member: 7737">I suppose if the monster is getting healing or temp hp regularly, this is okay, but in general I think it's a terrible idea. Here's why.I've seen several DMs track monster hit points by writing down the damage the monster took (express as either a negative or a positive number), intending to add up / subtract down the damage en mass at some point. It never works, and it takes longer than just adding / subtracting as you goThe DM will be staring at a list of numbers like this and trying to determine if the monster is bloodied or dead:23178-5356I honestly don't understand why anyone would ever track hit points that way.That's what I do for my PCs. In 4e D&amp;D, I started using red chips to indicate the bloodied half of my hit points, and white chips to indicate the unbloodied half. (Instead of the typical convention that red = 5 points.)With low level PCs, I create one big stack of poker chips. Say, 12 red and 12 white for a 1st level PC with 24 hp. As the PC takes damage, I remove white chips from the stack. When I get down to the red part of the stack, the PC is, obviously, bloodied. It's a nice visual representation.I use blue chips for temporary hit points.With high level PCs, the stack gets too tall, so I have the white chip stack in front of (towards the rest of the players) the red chip stack. For example, a PC with 90 hp would have a white stack of 45 in front of a red stack of 45.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Joshua Randall, post: 5303928, member: 7737"] I suppose if the monster is getting healing or temp hp regularly, this is okay, but in general I think it's a terrible idea. Here's why. I've seen several DMs track monster hit points by writing down the damage the monster took (express as either a negative or a positive number), intending to add up / subtract down the damage [I]en mass[/I] at some point. It never works, and it takes longer than just adding / subtracting as you go The DM will be staring at a list of numbers like this and trying to determine if the monster is bloodied or dead: 23 17 8 -5 35 6 I honestly don't understand why anyone would ever track hit points that way. That's what I do for my PCs. In 4e D&D, I started using red chips to indicate the bloodied half of my hit points, and white chips to indicate the unbloodied half. (Instead of the typical convention that red = 5 points.) With low level PCs, I create one big stack of poker chips. Say, 12 red and 12 white for a 1st level PC with 24 hp. As the PC takes damage, I remove white chips from the stack. When I get down to the red part of the stack, the PC is, obviously, bloodied. It's a nice visual representation. I use blue chips for temporary hit points. With high level PCs, the stack gets too tall, so I have the white chip stack in front of (towards the rest of the players) the red chip stack. For example, a PC with 90 hp would have a white stack of 45 in front of a red stack of 45. [/QUOTE]

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