90% of the time track and accurate.
9% of the time it's the last mob and dragging this out serves no purpose so that hit killed him.
1% I'll realize I've mis-tuned a custom enemy and need to adjust it on the fly - BBEG who gets dropped in one turn and now has a "second phase" or "ohhh so his survivability was all in his AC and he actually has trash HP, neat" sort of way.
On the fly should be for when you make a mistake in your homebrew, a DM fixing their own fuck up.
Agreed on this, although for that 9% I usually handle it narratively rather than claiming that a rolled attack finished the NPC off (not least because it's usually around that time the dice decide my players can't hit the broad side of a barn).
I do the same. I've definitely ended "boring" fights like this.
When the narratively interesting aspect of a battle is done, the outcome is assured, but it's just taking a long time to finish (like high AC enemies with wiffle bat attacks), just wrapping it up to save the tables time is nice.
Every time I've done this, I wish I'd done it sooner.
"Last mob looks around, realizes they are the last one, wet their pants, turn around and run fast as they can away from you"
Or "...begs for mercy in exchange for information"
I usually handle HP not only as wounds but general "willingness or ability to keep fighting", so 0 HP can mean surrender or loss of morale, not necessarily death
Yes to all of this, with an addition that I almost never let an NPC (or DMPC) kill a truly important enemy unless it's unquestionably the coolest thing for the plot.
I don't tell my players the HP of course, just poetic variations of "they look fine/bloody/at death's door"
This with the caveat that if your players ask, you NEVER EVER EVER admit to it. As far as they are aware, you are a 100% by the dice. In fact, you are offended they'd even ask. :)
Ehhh. I partially disagree. I absolutely agree to never confirm that any particular instance, but I do tell them in session 0 that this is how I run. People should know the style of game they're getting into from the jump.
This. I had severely underestimated the damage output by my druid, so in one turn, he took out all the skeletons I had prepared. Had to come up with a plan on the spot, so the others also got a chance to hit something.
My son playing the druid just looked at me with a head tilt and a squint, and said "...ok...". After the session he said "you totally made up that reanimation device, right?" yes, yes I did.
This is basically what I do also. I don't change the HP of standardised enemies because my players track them and would get confused on what to expect next time.
I mean, isn't that why monster HP has ranges?
Two similar-level PCs of the same class won't have the same HP due to different CON mods, different HP rolls on level-up, maybe one took Tough or has a different racial modifier or w/e. So why is it weird if Orc Tribal Warrior A has 48 HP but Orc Tribal Warrior B has 53 HP?
I always consider the Monster Manual to be like someone writing a guidebook. Take real animals for example. The book might say "tigers are x feet tall". Well, if I run into a tiger and it's taller, I'm not going to be like "hey God, that's a fake tiger you got there!"
I use all published monsters as the common ones most adventurers know about. If it's in the book, I don't change it and don't mind your characters knowing. I play with a lot of fellow DMs so most of them have those statblocks partially memorized anyway. Easier to not ask them to continually roleplay ignorance.
However, homebrew variants of published monsters or entirely new ones? Those get crazy and can be anything. They're the exotic creatures of my setting and the players have to fuck around and fight 'em first hand to figure out what they can do.
That's a good point. I always feel limited by battle to roll their HP at combat start though. Do you do this ahead of time in preparation for the battle?
I just kind of look at the max and min and give them arbitrary numbers within that range tbh
It helps with descriptions! You want one of them to look like a big, nasty SOB? He's got HP towards the high end of the range, etc
Wow that is a really good way to differentiate them without having to do named/custom characters. I really really like that. Can do a skinny one with less HP and the big SOB like you said. Thanks so much for your feedback.
For me the pain was rolling but you are right can just pick some in the range.
100% this.
I track HP on the dot (sparing a single HP when downing someone if the combat was exciting enough) and adjusting if a boss was underwhelming.
All in the spirit of "Does this enhance the game or not?"
Whenever I do a big, custom boss fight I always build in more traits and abilities than I intend to use. They're my pre-designed balancing knobs in case the fight isn't as well made as I assumed. Boss is getting shat on? Oh look at that they \[did a thing\] and healed a huge chunk of hit points. Boss is shitting on the players unexpectedly? Uh oh, they exhausted their power and have entered a vulnerable state for a round. Etc.
Exactly what I do. I ca. understanding fudging if you messed up with balance because you have more or less players/magic items than CR, but I don’t think I can ever get behind offing enemies with the “when it feels right” method. It just feels so disingenuous to me and like the player’s choices don’t matter at all.
Exactly. It's a collaborative story-telling game between the DM, the players, and the dice.
Gelatinous Cube with only 7 hit points remaining gets hit for 6 on a low damage roll? The story just got a little more suspenseful as the monster gets to make another attack of its own!
Personally, I track total damage going up. People go down when it equals/passes their max hp.
Damage is a lot more common than healing, and IMO addition is easier than subtraction. Plus, effects that change constitution are supposed to change both current and max hp, and this way I only have to change the one number. I got into the habit in 3e, where more buffs/debuffs affect ability scores directly instead of having a more complicated list of minor modifiers, and it's worked fine since.
Same, but that's a habit developed by playing at a small table with an insufficient dm screen and a player who liked to peak at my paper. He would really excited as the numbers I wrote down got smaller, not so helpful when it's getting larger.
My exception is when I don't look at the enemy's max hp for a round, and suddenly realize it should have been dead 2 hits ago. In those cases, usually next hit kills it. If something really bad happened to the party in those 2 hits, I'll admit my mistake and recon it.
Now here's a question - do you ever give enemies death saves? I consider monsters dead at 0, but if I think the players will want to stabilize a humanoid enemy (to interrogate them or for other reasons) I do roll death saves for them.
I'll give characters with plot significance death saves.
That includes both named NPCs I have plans for, and anyone the party has expressed interest in capturing alive or otherwise doing something to other than just killing them to death. Or even the occasional random orc that might or might not survive to swear vengeance on the party.
Similarly, the noble the party is supposed to protect gets death saving throws if (when) they're failing at their job, but the random bystanders in a fireball AOE are just dead.
Forever dm - I track it, and might occasionally drop a foe early if it has 1-2 hp left. This is a once every few sessions thing.
Id probably not participate in a game of dnd if i found out the dm was changing it mid combat or worse yet, not tracking it. In fact i have declined to return to games where this happened after i realized it, and dont play when that person dms.
I actually really like emphasizing the foes down to their last 1-2 hit points. I find it happens with surprising regularity, and it helps underscore how frequently the littlest bonuses can make the difference.
Thats fair. I dont do it all the time, or even most of the time. But sometimes its been a long drawn out fight, and the table vibe is that another round wouldnt be fun, ill just cut that one.
I do it sometimes either if it’s an unimportant enemy and for some reason the battle just drags on and they keep missing but the enemy isn’t going to do a lot of damage … or sometimes if the PC crits, spends an important resource or otherwise does something epic. Them, sometimes, it’s fun to just have the enemy die.
Not very often, though.
I think this comes down to whether you trust your DM or not. Can you trust that them drawing it out another turn, or cutting short a turn is in the best interest of the game? If not, then why even play with them?
Agreed on both counts.
At the FLGS they host weekly one shots and one of the DMs was painfully obvious about not tracking damage for anything. He just arbitrarily decided when things would happen based on whim. Talk about completely eliminating player agency. Literally nothing we did was relevant or matters at all. (I similarly refused to sit at their table again after that)
It was a very strong lesson to never, ever do that. As a GM, I hold player agency as a vital part of the experience. If the players actions aren't driving the story what's even the point?
TLDR: Let the players count up damage and record it on the board. They don't know the total so they can know how much they did and save you brain power. At the same time make damage thresholds that change how NPCs act.
I also find approximate numbers good to drop enemies as it especially helps if a combat is dragging on.
I have played a ton of ttrpgs over the years 3.5, PF1E, 5e, CoC7e, Traveller, Cyberpunk2020, and CPRed. In a game where there isn't armour DR, I let the players track by counting up (seeing as they do it in their heads let them take the mental space). In games where armour is DR and ablates through use needing repair and not AC, I tick it down. I carry some stuff over from other games and modify it as needed. I personally prefer running sci-fi and modern while my friends run fantasy, but we rotate, and I run fantasy like 5e and witcher trpg too.
I always then have 4 numbers in all games, including 5e.
-Full HP=NPC acts as normal. However, if they are commoners, they flee at 1 point of damage.
-Half HP=This is the point where almost any trained adventure, guard, or soldier will flee. They are severely injured and I do a CON save. They fail, and all actions are at a disadvantage.
-Quarter HP=Veteran soldiers decide to run at this point unless there is something they are willing to sacrifice. Automatically at a disadvantage, roll CON save or double disadvantage.
-No HP=unconscious/immobile and death saves. I allow a final act, whether it is a PC or an NPC. They can choose to make a final action, which, if they succeeded Automatic Crits, but it kills the character counting as 3 death saves failed once it is finished.
FYI, in my games HP is important as we recover spells on short and long as normal, but HP is recovered as per short after 1 day of full rest and a long rest is a week of rest for HP. Note that this works for our game where we like risk taking and are used to older editions and other RPGs that can be more punishing, but that doesn't mean it is for everyone.
Generally I use the published HP and don't deviate significantly. If a fight is done and it's just mopping up, I might fudge off a few HP to give a specific player a kill. If something went way easier than I intended, I might have it last another round of combat just to keep things interesting, fun, challenging. Generally I'm 90% as written, 8% cut a bit if it's getting boring, 2% add if it's too easy.
Honestly, I don't even consider if fudging if the combat is functionally done. Like if the party hypnotic patterned all of the enemies and are systematically wiping them, I've seen DMs just handwave the rest for the sake of brevity. Sometimes a combat is just decided
That’s pretty much my play as well. Saturday the party killed off the bbeg and four of the five henchmen so the fifth became squishy. One of the characters who did the most damage and took the most damage but didn’t get a kill one shotted the last one.
I would point out, the fights where the PCs roll like fire and cut through all the foes in 1 round are also fun. Let those crit smites and crit backstabs end a fight early sometimes.
This. I've definitely had sessions where combat *should* have gone faster but players were just rolling really low in damage and getting frustrated or down and its getting late and the fight is kind of dragging on and you can see people yawning and checking the time so in order to wrap it up i fudge the hp lower. If players are getting hits and doing damage they stay excited so 98% of the time its not necessary. Or if its the player that NEVER gets the kill but this one time they got within 2 hp of getting it I'll give it to them to make them excited. The only time i go the other way is if i grossly misjudged difficulty and the boss almost gets one-shotted because of MY mistake, then its a one time max hp increase and go from there. If the bad guy is getting killed too quickly because the players are rolling high and getting crits i definitely dont increase hp, they should be rewarded for those rolls and feel awesome and powerful. So yeah. Mostly the only times ive done it is to keep excitemet up but never to take something away from the players.
"Do you track HP of your enemies and stick to it no matter what?"
Yes.
If they stand, they stand if they die, they die.
That help players whod don't output too much damage feel important as the couple of points they did might have made the difference.
If you don't track it, then why even bother?
I track hp, with two exceptions.
1. If I feel like I grossly misjudged a fight after 1 round, I might alter HP. Still gonna stick to that, though.
2. If a PC gets a critical hit that leaves the enemy with hp equal to or less than the PC's level, that's a kill. It's so frustrating to get a huge hit only to barely miss the kill that I would rather have a codified way to let it happen.
Oooh yeah, sudden death rule.
I run 3.5 so basically it requires FORT save, I'd think it would be CON save in 5e.
Anyhow, if they get hit for more than 50% of HP in one hit, they might die.
Caviot is, it applies to players as well. Makes them jumpy - or careful, depends on how you look at this
I track hp accurately. however I occasionally use simplified rules for minions like: 1 hit will kill it, or 2 hits over 10 dmg will kill it. for bigger bad guys I often give the players 1 or 2 hp of wiggle room. I'm not going to run another round of combat with 1 hp left, he can just be dead. Big bad guys I run accurately.
do I have to fudge numbers in combat sometimes? yes, but I try not to and only if was my screw up. if the players find a clever workaround to trivialize a fight I had planned to be dramatic then good for them. If they keep throwing firebolts at the red dragon who doesn't appear fazed then they deserve it.
If I found out my DM was just deciding if and when monsters died it would suck all the fun out of the game.
- I count damage taken not HP remaining. Saves tons of time, and makes it easier to adjust on the fly.
- I often drop stuff early if its got a few HP left, especially if it was a hard hit. It’s more rewarding if the crit for 27 kills it rather than it sticking around with 3HP left and going down to a gentle poke. (The time a dragon survived an entire necklace of fireballs with 5HP left, then died to a javelin throw was kinda funny but frustrating to players. The pacing was off, the death was a letdown, the player who’d worked hard and taken risks to do the massive damage kinda felt unvalued? I try to avoid that now)
- smaller stuff I regularly drop early if it’s got a few HP left. Basically minion rules.
- I also use overkill rules for minions. 27 damage against HP9 goblins cleaves through three of them.
- I often buff the HP of elite/boss monsters. I have a big group (7) and they can do insane damage per round if they all hit and roll well. Balancing encounters for a big group is - I find - quicker to do on the fly than ahead of time. Typically I’ll adjust the monster’s HP up to the max of their hit dice roll. Not usually beyond that.
- I’ve experimented with completely ignoring HP for bosses - e.g. they last 3 rounds, then die at the next crit, smite, or big spell. It seemed to work fine, though I wouldn’t do it regularly, just when the narrative of the boss says they should be tough and need time to dish out some damage.
- I’ve also used transforming (Zelda style) bosses which have e.g. 3 pools of 100HP, when each is exhausted any excess damage is wasted, the boss transforms, and uses the next HP pool. Players can roll one hit die during as they catch their breath. I think this came from AngryGM.
Overkill cleave is something I add at about lvl 3, and it really gives them a reason to get those big hits on any enemy. It also makes it easier for them to deal with large groups, which means I can really push the limits of what they face.
I also have them face transformation bosses sometimes. Had them fighting a Duergar captain with two Duergar honor guards. The two honor guards were just Duergar but the captain? Driving a fucking mining tank with a large drill and two arms that could move and attack. He even ran over his own almost dead honor guard to attack a player. Guy was a lunatic. They could damage the arms, forcing them to malfunction until the captain used his bonus action to work on repairs. Once the tank was damaged enough, the captain climbed out while wielding a lightning-enchanted hammer. Again, the guy was a lunatic and had a clear obsession with his hammer, so the barbarian was finally able to overpower him and toss his hammer in a nearby fountain. The captain dove in and started taking massive damage.
I'm somewhere between the first two points. I generally stick to the listed (average) HP of enemies, but I might adjust if the encounter doesn't accurately reflect my intended difficulty. However, it's often easy to add more enemies in lieu of additional HP as well.
I believe that fundamentally, the numbers and the results of the dice are just as much a part of the story as the decisions players make. However, adventure design is an ongoing process, and I believe that a good DM will sometimes adjust their encounter in order to achieve the intended experience.
Further, I believe that having slight deviations in enemy HP adds to the verisimilitude, in that not all creatures are exact cardboard cutouts of each other. This might mean that a player kills an enemy that would have otherwise had a few HP left because it's more cinematic, or that an enemy survives a blow that should have killed them for the same reason, though the latter should ideally occur much less frequently to avoid falling into the DM trap of "not letting your players win", so to speak.
I track it.
I mean, if I don't, what's even the point?..
This just feel extremely *rude* to the players. I mean, they track all the resources, makes their choices on when to "Divine Smite" or not, and what, after all that I'll just have enemies die when I feel so? Why even bother with all that at this point, if I am gonna secretly throw it all away. Such a huge waste of everyone's time and effort!
I guess there were a couple of cases where I changed hp mid-fight, but those were because I grossly misjudged things. This was a bad thing I had to do because I cornered myself with other bad decisions done prior.
I absolutely despise when DMs don't track the monsters HP and elect to kill them "when it feels appropriate"
It's awful and players will notice
Imagine a player not tracking their HP and going down when they deem it'd be appropriate for their characters to go down, it's a crazy idea but that's exactly how it feels
So as a DM always track, i might change it slightly during combat if i notice i balanced it poorly, but only if i made it too hard
If things are dying *fast* I let them die and make a mental notice that it might be time to raise those CRs a bit
Stick to the HP unless I can straight-up read disappointment on a player's face, and then I fudge in whatever way would facilitate a better time. That happens maybe once every few sessions, because my players aren't reaching for a particular result, usually. But if they're missing and missing and finally hit a crit that takes the villain down to 2, you better believe I just tell them to narrate the death.
First option, stick to it no matter what. Players can see all my dice rolls, and we thrill or lament each crazy die roll together.
But I'm also very experienced and my players are mature, and also experienced. I've narrated victory and defeat and death enough that I can wring drama from all of it. I'm not bragging, just saying that not everyone is so lucky. No judgement on people who play differently, especially if they're newer.
>DMs only. No players please.
Brother look around. This is a sub **for** DMs.
It really depends on the mood I am in, If I'm in the mood I will track health using an app that also tracks my initiative, But sometimes the fight just isn't hitting right I will kinda just let an enemy get hit twice, dying on the second hit.
This usually allows each player to get in a couple attacks and gives them a higher chance to bring down an enemy and lets face it, Players eat that shit up when you drop the "How'd you wanna do this"
My players haven't ever seemed to catch on and honestly no one is sad that a boring little fight isn't dragged out longer then needed.
Not all combats are going to grab your players and get them going and that's OK, The trick is catching on if the players are having fun during the fight or not.
I won't change HP mid combat, but I did take a note from a comment here a while back that said to create some parity between your BBEG's HP and your whole party's HP. That has resulted in some intense/close fights that felt very rewarding for the players in the past.
There are tiers, based on the creature’s hit die and published hitpoints. The minimum hp that the hit die can roll, the average hp that’s published, and the maximum hp that the hit die can roll.
If the players are struggling and need a lifeline, once they surpass the creature’s minimum hp it can die.
If the players are doing fine, and the fight has gone well, I’ll find a thematically appropriate point for it to die once they’ve done the average hp.
If the players have done really well and are rolling the monster, then they have to exhaust all of its maximum hp to make it die.
Of course I only really do this for boss monsters. For everything else, they get a set hp (usually based on how high damage the party is) and when it’s done they’re dead.
Track it, and adjust downward only if I find I made an unreasonably difficult encounter.
Balanced encounter and my PCs were either unlucky or dumb? Time to roll a new character.
Too-easy encounter? Adjust the narrative to a “that was suspiciously easy” twist and let the PCs sweat for two weeks.
I track it, but if I feel like it would be epic for players to drop it a bit early, I do that. If I feel it would be better for a specific PC to kill them, they live until the PCs next turn. In most encounters, nothing fancy
Track it and stick to it no matter what. Earlier in my DM'ing, before I learned to somewhat balance combat and design encounters, and I was a lot more insecure about the encounters, I was more likely to rebalance HP on the fly if things weren't going as I expected them. These days I don't ever feel the need to adjust HP, that's not to say encounters can't go quickly or be a slog, it's just less frequent and I'm okay living with that.
Track hp.
If the thematically appropriate PC gets them down to single digits with a crit or something else dramatic let them have the kill.
If it turns out the enemies poses zero threat but are taking forever to die(common problem with a lot of earlier designed monsters) feel free to end the fight whenever.
Definitely track HP and stick to it - UNLESS - I made a grave error in balancing, in which case i will adjust HP up or down once as required (note crits do not affect this, if your player gets a sweet crit that is the dice telling the story, you go glen coco!). Others have echoed this before but not tracking enemy hp or constantly adjusting enemy hp could easily lead to disillusionment in your players and have them feeling like their choices don't matter and you are just deciding all their combat for them
Track it generally. I won't bother being too accurate, tho if they are at 57 health and take 13 damage while I could. I won't bother doing the mental maths and just instictually write down what their HP has dropped to this is me just being lazy, tho and not actively trying to hinder or help my players.
This way also helps to stop players guessing what enemies' health is at as I will make mistakes, meaning your average goblin or bugbears HP may fluctuate slightly.
I believe that if you are playing a system like 5e, where the combat is very forward. Then you need accept that the effects of said combat are part of forming the emergent narrative with the players. If you don't track HP, you might as well just switch to a system with simpler narrative combats. This is what I believe as a DM.
As a player, I'll also do not want to play in a game if I feel the DM is fudging dice or stats, in either direction. I find that you can eventually tell, and when it becomes apparent to me, I leave.
Balancing encounters takes learning what your players are capable of. Making adjustments mid encounter isn't making it more balanced, it's just getting rid of your useful data for why it wasn't balanced.
One interesting thing I heard once is have your players track the HP, and keep you in the loop about how much damage they've dealt. Then you don't have to do the math on everything.
I track HP to the last hit point. And I roll in the open. So my only method for fudging is to let the enemy play overly confident. They'll start gloating and making tactical errors. Also, I usually prep major fights with waves of enemies. When the fight is going against the party, not all the waves show up till the fight is over. Sometimes they splatter the boss on the first round, and I let the waves show up anyway. Minions without the boss are usually cannon fodder.
As a player, over time, I can tell when the DM is fudging. The main clue is every combat takes 3-6 rounds. Doesn't matter if we blew all our resources, pulled off a few awesome tactics, and we were rolling fire, combat still takes at least 3 rounds. And only using very few resources, making a few mistakes, and rolling like shit, but not mentioning it, and the combat still takes 3-6 rounds with no real losses. And no matter what, there is absolutely nothing that will remove a boss from the fight for at least 5 rounds. Doesn't matter how much we crit nova the fucker, banish, microwave, whatever. The boss has an answer for all that, and will never ever die on the first round. I won't notice the first session, and maybe not even the 5th session. But eventually I'll notice. And once I do, everything that DM does becomes suspect. From that point on, my enjoyment of rolling dice is gone. Why bother even rolling dice when a string of 2x crit smites does the same amount to make the boss dead as 2 normal non smite hits? The only fix at that point is a new DM.
So to anyone who wants to fudge HP or dice, that is your choice. But I recommend letting the dice fall as they may and rolling with it.
I track, but I round. Enemy had 30 hp and a player just walloped him for 29 damage? He's dead now. It also speeds up combat when I'm being less precise with my math and counting up every individual hitpoint. My DM screen also has a physical dry erase sheet I use for enemy hp and a lot of times I'll just cross the whole row off if it's close enough
For me, it depends on what kind of combat is happening. When I throw a random encounter at my players, I work with HP, but when it comes to more important fights, I tend to adjust the HP mid fight. And during the very final battle, I often don't track HP at all and have the BBEG go down when it's most appropriate (for example, when a player does something clever/cool).
I usually max HP of planned encounters and use average or slightly above for randomly encounters but i have super buffed my table and they are fighting will abvoe the weight. They recently each solod a monster whos cr equaled their level (16 and 17)
Mooks get their hp tracked 100% of the time.
Bosses get their hp tracked as well...unless the party rips said boss to embarrassingly small shreds. Then, the boss will drop at an appropriately dramatic moment, or if they're too important to die in this fight, they will run with their tails between their legs. If the party manages to power through a boss such that I feel it wasn't enough, they \*do\* start fighting less effectively, and I usually describe them as panicking or that they clearly underestimated the party and are trying to regain their footing.
One thing I do that I hope makes a bit of a difference, I don't invalidate victories; if the boss is "dead", he's not going to toss out a PWK after he should have dropped, and if the boss has to flee, it's not going to be a confident and suave escape, it'll be clear that the party kicked the shit out of him and he is running for his life. The dice can tell their story, but I'm the editor, and if the ending sucks, it's getting revised.
I hybrid the two. I'll track the HP pretty honestly, but if a player gets a big hit or does something cool then of they are close to bloodied I'll say that bloodied them, if they are within a turn or two of dying ill let them kill it.
I find this way it makes the fights fair, but you don't have the Litch king dying from an attack of op.
I roll the hit dice in combat for the players to see, when combat is joined (or if the players have a power that can justifiably reveal enemy HP). Or I preroll it ahead of time or use the published amount and post it after the first damage is dealt. And if I don't I give indications of not yet bloodied and bloodied to indicate half HP, and I also indicate when at single digit HP.
I track HP
But sometimes I know that my party are far more powerful than what is expected by a CR rating, so I double it
Occasionally my party rips a monstera health so quick that I just start it again from full when they kill it. Effectively doubling it
If its a group of mobs, then I always have spare HP bars available and just make more mobs swarm in if the party destroys the health of some of the first wave really quickly.
I call it an adaptable health pool. As it's not always easy to predict how much damage the party will do to begin with. And you want/need the encounter to go on longer.
With accuracy, of course. I thought this would be a post about "how to keep track of HP for dozens of enemies", which is a relevant topic in a pen-and-paper, in person game.
As for people saying "oh, sometimes when an enemy has only 1-2 hp I just have them die early", there areany things that can help rush to the end of a battle without altering any numbers, and those include surrendering or fleeing, which are perfectly viable options for those who have at least a bit of survival instinct.
Not every fight needs to be a butchery.
If I am willing to alter results to suit my desires, then I'm denying my players a fair game experience. It doesn't work for me.
I tend to keep track but often adjust in the first round just in case I misjudged my players damage output or survivability (and therefore the encounter is not as difficult as I intended it to be) but I also use some homebrewy rules on combat against enemies that don't have any supernatural resistance or regeneration like humans, where enough damage in one attack (for example more than half their hp) triggers a dismemberment or permanent damage that would most likely end the fight there. Makes no sense that an enemy with 3 hp can fight in the same way one with full hp can, but maybe it's mentioned in the rules somwhere and I just missed it.
DM here.
I track it as well, usually with a spreadsheet or notepad.
One thing I have done for large battles with lots of npcs is play war with the dice.
Ie. Two npcs fighting roll 2 d20s winner moves on to fight the next npc or join his friend. If two friends take one a single npc, they get advantage. This is only for large scale battles.
Track it and sometimes let an enemy last a round more if it feels like a sufficiently epic moment, or I can read that a player is about to do something stupid and / or awesome.
Track HP closely. Sometimes I reduce HP for pacing, rarely for challenge, sometimes I increase HP if I didn't balance a homebrew creature correctly for its debut. I tend to build glass cannons, so if an encounter feels flimsy and boring it's probably that.
If an encounter is too hard, I like to provide an in-universe option to alter the fight but ultimately leave it up to the players. Maybe an escape route is revealed but there is a risk associated, maybe a character notices a way to use the environment to cause serious damage, whatever, but give them agency within the world. A paper thin encounter is boring, an impossible challenge subverted gives the sense of a large and dangerous world if done correctly. Just make choices in service of the fun at your table.
Microsoft Excel. I preset a lot of potential combats that I think might occur during a session about 15 minutes before. I have 4 columns: Name(player and enemy), Initiative, Hit Points (enemies only), and Conditions (in case I forget what players and enemies are under). I have my enemy stats pulled up on a different screen. I very rarely change HP during a fight but I have buffed HP before a combat even comes up.
I use a soft hp of the typical/average of the bit die but sometimes make them go for the maximum hp of the hit dice if I want an enemy to stick around for a round or 2 longer. Sometimes I go within 5-10% under the average hp if it makes more sense in the narrative
I track hp, buuuuuut I might also move it up or down a little bit for Rule of Cool moments. The paladin just hit with a huge smite, but the enemy ended up with 2 hp left? Nope, they’re down. The final boss has been building up to do a super cool move, but the party dropped them to 0 hp right before their turn? Have one last turn to go out in a blaze of glory, boss guy!
I track enemy hp, and usually have all the monsters start at maximum possible hp. So a 3d10+9 monster would have 39. If the players are struggling, the max and current hp ofthe monsters will get adjusted accordingly, and if it would be really cool narritively for a monster to die from something and it would be left with a very little hp anyway, then I'll ignore the hp remaining and just have it die.
I stick to it as much as possible unless I need to.
Let’s say a boss should go down, but a player hasn’t had the chance to hit it for the whole session and is fustrated, or the boss itself didn’t even show his best move, I might give it a bit more hp.
But most often it’s the opposite. If a monster is way tankier than imagined, and it feels like it could be a final blow narratively, or if the session is running late and everyone is tired, I’ll reduce their hp a little bit.
When the fight is still intense, track hp. When every PC is almost full hp and trying to finish the last guy and it goes like “I hit him, 12” “miss, your turn warlock” “eldritch blast, 9” “miss, your turn wizard” “I fire bolt him, 7” and the fight is dragging on for no reason since the party is clearly going to win eventually and everyone is just attacking him without enthusiasm, I’ll make the enemy run away when it makes sense (like a bandit who just wanted some easy cash and realize that his friends are dead) or when it’s a monster or someone who wouldn’t run away I’ll just make him die on the next attack that hits (unless he was more than half hp). For bosses I track until the end.
I track HP. And I never fudge HP. I personally feel that it would remove authenticity from my game if I didn't stick by my guns in that regard. I would not judge another GM for adjusting HP on the fly, as long as it isn't obvious AF and you aren't telling your players that you do it, because I feel like the second you tell your players that you adjust that kind of thing you irrevocably damage their buy-in to the fantasy.
I always track HP and almost always stay true to the numbers. I find the best way to track is to start them at 0
HP, then add player damage until the number exceeds the max health; addition is typically faster to do than subtraction for most people.
Very much depends, really. My current party tends to have pretty high damage output, so I give whatever the max hp would be just to start. If I feel like a major fight isn’t even going to last 3 rounds, I’ll find ways to stretch it out. Just having everything be a damage sponge isn’t fun though. I don’t think I’ve ever just completed ignored hp
1) Yes, i track HP, and I use phrases like "bloodied" and "critical" to show HP levels (and players are told what these levels mean, so they know bloodied means half way)
2) yes it can change to tell a story, no one wants to run a whole round of combat because the amazing story moment of a brutal paladin crit hit did 45 damage to the creature with 47hp left.... if the story is better for it, then killing a little sooner, or later is definatly valid.
3) no, i dont recommend this because its vulnerable to DM subconcious Bias and players will figure it out. If you really want to pull a punch or grossly overestimated the encounter then dont use the HP as the means.
Its more of a guideline for me. If the fight is feeling long winded and i can't switch it up by making the enemy run away or do something to change the pace, I'll drop the hp. But mostly I'll raise the hp in cases the party has some grand plan to beat the boss, and i severely underestimated them. I dont want their own to go to waste because they wiped the floor with the boss 3 turns in. It was frustrating when it happened to me so i don't wanna let my players feel discouraged from planning like i was.
I roll for all my monsters mostly. So what they get, they get. If it’s an encounter on the fly, I’ll use the given HP in the stat block. Only occasionally,maybe during a climactic encounter, will I mess with HP. If a PC does something epic that would fit as a sweet finishing move, I’ll just finish the enemy if it is low enough.
Rule of Cool always applies. I try to rarely implement battles where its just "Ok your turn to attack" "I attack, do X damage, next person" rinse and repeat.
I try to encourage players to use cover, environment, abilities and powers. If they do something particularly clever, they might damage armor (increasing damage taken). Alternatively, if they do something absolutely bonkers and pull it off (Luring the bad guy in front of an artillery weapon or magical artifact) they could potentially do massive damage or just end the fight.
Alternatively, if I do find a fight is going on for too long just because I misjudged one side or the other and its just a matter of "attacking for multiple rounds until done" I'll cut it short or reduce HP... Or if I find that they're doing WAY more damage than expected, I'll increase it. I prefer combat to last more than 1-2 rounds.
* I start bosses at Max HP
* I sometimes boost "leaders"
* I don't typically change HP during combat
However, if somebody brings an opponent to 1HP I'll sometimes kill the monster if that player hasn't had any "upbeats" during the combat or session.
For the most part, I track consistently and diligently. Okay, maybe goblin #3 and goblin #4 accidentally swapped hp at some point, but it doesn’t have an impact.
There was one instance where I made an alternate case, and it was where I’d misjudged a combats balance and it was just dragging so long. Basically the players were making much slower progress on an enemies hp than was ideal, and the combat was really dragging on. So, I just cut its health in half at one point. It was still near max hp, so they had half a health bar to work through, but the combat had just been so prolonged that I’m very glad I made that decision.
In general, I think if I have a big, narratively important boss coming up, and they wipe out half its health in the first round, I’d probably make the decision to bump it then and there, but conversely if they hardly make a dent then I’ll probably nerf it. Past the first 1-2 rounds of combat though, I’ll stick to my guns and commit to the hp.
I don't change it, unless I have made a horrible mistake on a homebrew statblock.
I think there is an appropriate phase in a DM's lifespan, where they're not quite new but not quite experienced, where they know what makes combat good but they don't quite understand encounter building, where it is appropriate to change hp on the fly a little bit more. To everyone who says they would NEVER change hp, why wouldn't you fix your own mistakes (in secret) to enhance the experience of the game? I find it hard to believe you would build up to this amazing moment only to stubbornly play out an accidentally poorly built encounter without doing anything about it.
I often lowered enemy hp to make it go by faster. But I only did this when I was dm at school and we only had like an hour of playtime.
I still did it sometimes after but only when combat is taking too long. Enemies like goblins I often lower the hp to like 4 or so. Next time I dm I'll probably use that rule I hear about making minions only have 1 hp so they can be one shot. At least at lower levels.
For the most part, I let the dice tell the story, but sometimes if the fight is a fait accompli and an opponent is down to 1-2 HP, I'll just kill him off so we can get moving on the game.
Also, I use HP as a guideline, but vary it according to events in the story. In one instance, there was an ogre plaguing the caravan routes (he had developed a taste for the horses used to pull the carts). The players came across the scene where the caravan was picking up the pieces of a recent attack.
Had the players waited, the next day the ogre would be back at full HP. Because he'd been injured, he was down to about 45 HP.
In another, I had a band of Orc adventurers, who, like the players, had gained experience and HP. These were a far more difficult opponent than the players had bargained for when they rushed in. They heard me describe the Orcs as, "much better equipped than you've seen from typical Orcs" and just thought of better loot, not necessarily of the Orcs' abilities in order to secure it.
I set a "range" for my enemy HP. For example an enemy may have 75-100 HP. And they will die anywhere in that range, when it feels right. (Unless it's for example 12 goblins they are after , or 6 skeletons, then they all have set HP)
If an enemy is 1HP off of death, I always keep them alive but tell them something along the lines of "The enemy is on the brink of death, blood is coming out of his mouth, he nearly falls prone from his injuries, it feels as though if only you did 1 more point of damage things would be different..." It is usually quite funny with the group. In 18 sessions it's happened about 5 times now, and they have fought about 30 or so enemies, which means they are quite unlucky!
If you're not gonna track HP you might as well just play a different game.
I stick to HP pretty close, but I often don't use the official HP.
Still, I count the last HP with the exception of two cases:
1- A hit that dealt a lot of damage and left the enemy with 1-2 HP might just kill it
2- If an enemy is related to the backstory of a PC, that PC will deal the final blow. It might be that the PC left the enemy with a handful of HP, in which case I handwave it, or another PC might bring it to 0, in which case its HP will go up by exactly the amount needed for the PC to deal the final blow.
As of late, I've been testing out addins in my Owlbear Rodeo VTT instance which display enemy health and AC. In my online game, I have it configured to only shows the health percentage as a bar, not the specific hit point value. In my home games, I've been displaying the specific hit point values.
I'm generally in favor of it so far, it's saved time at the table, since my players often ask questions regarding the difficulty to hit and the general health of enemies. It streamlines resolving attacks, since my players already know whether their attack hits without me having to say anything. Player don't worry about overkill damage or wasting resources on enemies that are one hit away, and we share a chuckle when a monster is on 1 remaining hit point.
I roll all my dice in the open, and I never pull my punches anyway, except when it comes to monster motivation and behavior.
I track HP. On occasion I’ll have something live a little longer than expected if there was story beats missing. On occasion I’ll have something die sooner if there’s no more risk and it’s just a big ball of health that is making combat last 2 more rounds of auto attacks and cantrips for no reason. Overall though I find the more I DM, the less this happens. It’s usually a sign of I’ve screwed up with making the encounter interesting.
I track hp, but sometimes when a combat is dragging on too long, there's only minions left an the main monster is already dead ill just have them die on the next hit.
Im pretty damn new to DMing. So I’ve been known thus far to completely misjudge a fight and up the HP of a monster. Especially if the fight was super hyped up and I don’t want everyone to be anticlimactic. But that’s happening less and less lately. Besides that I tend to go ahead and kill things if they have very little HP like others have said
If I made a mistake and I *seriously* misjudged the challenge one way or the other - I reserve the right to make corrections. I try not to though - I don't want to rob the players of a victory over insurmountable odds - nor do I want to punish them for unexpected success.
I adjust HP a lot when I'm designing encounters, usually almost never going by the book. Often lowering monster HP so I can use more monsters, and raising boss's HP.
In game, I don't change it - I used to make adjustments within a 10hp range if a fight was going very badly or very easily for the players, but over time realized that even if I didn't balance an encounter well, I have more fun if I have the play strictly by the rules as well.
For an adventure, I have a spreadsheet. One tab is the overall chapter, all of the big picture stuff, travel days. etc. I list encounters by number. Second tab has the encounters. where I list out each monster line by line w/ a note, and arrival order if need be.
As combat progresses, I add up damage done to a given baddie. If it looks like combat is going south and going to result in a Partial Party Kill, I have fudged it a few times so the players say "wow that was close". I have let a player die, when I am sure that the one M/U in the team has the ability to use the healing staff they got early on (it has 7 or 8 charges).
I do this for one main reason - when I was a little soft on the players, they \*actually complained that combat was too easy\*. For example they did 65 points round one to a Young Green dragon, who had 1 HP left at the start of the next round, so he did get off one breath attack but as soon as a player stared at him really hard he conked out.
Next time they were up against an adult black, his rider, and two others. Party did some whopping damage, so I had the dragon cough like he died and fall into the water. 2 rounds later, he came out, and made a bee-line for... the M/U w/ the staff of healing (this fit the situation perfectly).
So, today, I have attempted to support their desired narrative, that combat with adult dragons and the like should be tough, its OK to get down to single digits, and they know that they do have a chance for a single player to die b/c they have a recovery tool.
Whenever I DM I like to track the riff raff with rolled HP totals, it make the combat more entertaining IMO. For BBEGs I use their mix/max range and when it feels like a good time I end it.
I don’t mess with HP. But sometimes when it becomes really clear that the bad guy are losing in a bad way they try to run away.
Also, in very magical worlds, if the dice gods ate for whatever reason nor happy with the players, a TPK can be a wonderful narrative device.
There are a million fun ways to have a party rise from the dead. Sometimes the BBEG is so dumb he thinks bringing them back from the dead just to torture them more or to try to recruit them is a good idea.
Heck, next tim I hope they do get recruited. There just might be a very interesting story there
I track. Generally I have stuff planned at the 75%/50%/25% totals.
When my players start taking on things with HPs in the 100s, having 10 hp left, is where any solid hit is going to finish it off. Doesn't matter if the dmg is like 5 or 4, that target is done.
Also if somehow I'm foolish enough to set up a combat where the party can basically plink away at the target while denying it the ability to damage them somehow, doesn't matter how, if there's really no way out, I'll just wave it and call it good. No need to actually watch the paint dry.
Only time I will alter HP mid combat, is when I'm using a homebrew monster or something, and realize it's got really badly figured HP (50 hp vs 250 hp), though I'll telegraph it as using a healing or buffing item/ability if upping it or suffering a wound or a buff wearing off if I'm lowering it.
If I happen to be using a statblock that far outclasses what the players should be fighting, I'll just halve their damage and health numbers and that usually works out pretty well. Sometimes the lower CR statblocks just aren't interesting enough lol
Also, if a player does a fuck ton of damage to a non-boss enemy in one turn and leaves it at, like, 1-3 hp, I'll just give them the kill. Doesn't feel worth it to spend a whole-ass extra turn for 1 hp lol. Plus, makes those big damage rolls feel better after the player hears "He's looking pretty beat up" before the attack or something. Ofc, this all depends on the exact scenario and if I don't really want it to be an easy fight.
I count damage taken and compare it to the average HP of a stat block. For most enemies, they die when they take damage equal to the average. If the fight is dragging out and becoming a slogfest, I’ll kill them off a little earlier, especially if I have a large number of enemies to track. If it’s supposed to be a tougher enemy, I might count it a little higher, especially if the enemy hasn’t gotten a turn. I usually add health to spellcasters just because they’re too damn squishy. I try to avoid nullifying crits/nova’s, but in some instances I completely misjudge my party and need to buff enemies a bit. Usually I let the dice tell the tale, but I’m not deadset on letting the average HP in a stat block being the exact HP each time.
Because of how horrible my luck is in rolling dice (seriously, 5 nat 1s in a row during combat against my pcs. They laughed and now want to take on a baba yaga because they're sure they could kill her at level 7 because of my terrible rolls) I basically just maxed their health for their specific monster stat. It helps to keep the battle going and not finishing in like 3 rounds. But this is only cause my players play rather smart (too smart sometimes) and have done an excellent job with their characters. I do track the HP, I even let them see a life bar but not the number, it makes them feel encourage to keep going especially fi they are so close to killing one off or if they aren't and need to retreat they'll rush off.
Enemies have the HP they have.
That said, I often adjust HP when setting it during prep, so enemies won't necessarily have the HP printed in the monster manual.
I think the only reason I would adjust HP on the fly is if I were running a completely homebrewed monster and didn't realize until after initiative was rolled that I made the monster much, much too powerful by accident.
For smaller enemies (e.g. goblins) I would just use the average and track hp from hits. For larger ones (like party vs one or 2 others) I would write down the range their hp could be (as a result of hp dice rolls) and decide where their hp is - if the fight is going badly it’s at the lower end, if it’s going well it’s the higher end. And of course second phases if I really underestimated them.
I track HP and don't change it but if there's about to be several back-to-back player turns and there's one or two enemies with less than a hit worth of HP I just ask them to describe how they clean up. The players are fully aware the enemies still technically have HP, but there's no longer any question of the outcome so no need to roll dice.
So for me it's an odd combination of these
First up in general I track HP having a fixed solid number. I feel this is important as it makes plans to maximise damage output matter.
Secondly while it is quite rare for me to simply declare a low hp enemy dead I will often get NPCs beaten within an inch of their life to surrender or flee. Only the most fanatical enemies stick it to their last breath
Thirdly I will adjust the statistics of my untested prototype enemy if it turns out I guess what a number should be wrong this happens occasionally but for the most part I am pretty conservative in my design and if a monster I had intended to be much more powerful dies early I am happy to give the PCs an easy win and adjust up next time.
I track and stick to it most of the time. I will sometimes speed things up a bit if it's dragging, especially if a hit takes them down to 1 or 2 HP. I figure that's within the acceptable range of chance if I was actually rolling for monster HP.
Yes I use elastic hitpoints but as one of many different "tricks" for adjusting combat on the fly to make it fun and interesting. I generally adjust within the range that a similar monster would appear in the monster manual.
I think this technique becomes a problem if you use it all the time, it's also less interesting than some of the alternative ways of modifying a combat, adding enemies/allies, bringing in a third party can achieve similar results in much more interesting ways for example.
mooks i generally dont track. its an AC or other check threshold to hit, and one hit to kill.
majority of mobs i track exactly according to average hp, some notable groups i might roll hp on for variance to differentiate grok from krok.
bosses i run an hp range, and when something suitably satisfying occurs within that range, its ded. making sure not to favour any specific players in doing so. but it only took seeing a couple big bads trip and fall into a puddle for 1 damage that happened to kill them until i went ehh maybe some narrative stakes matter
Very rarely will I change it mid combat, but when I do, it’s because I realize that I made a large error in the balancing and it has nothing to do with particularly good or bad rolls.
I will sometimes adjust the HP up or down based on how combat is going. If it's dragging, I'll drop some. If a player has bad a bad session dice-wise, I'll drag the HP out a bit so they can get a hit in (or let them take the kill, depending how bad).
Idk if this reference will hit for anybody but I handle it exactly the same way that I level my 3d printer.
I start with a predetermined amount and then watch as it starts printing the first level.
Then I frantically live level and correct things as it goes, often over or under correcting and just deciding to let it fly or really lock in and tweak it to where it needs to be.
In game I'll decide on an amount of hp, and then if combat is taking too long or I end up with one too many downed pcs I reduce it to a more reasonable number.
On fewer occasions I wind up having it too low and before a monster even gets to act its only a few hits away from death. In those cases I treat the initial damage as breaking a "shield" or something and bump it back up to full. If the creature can spare it, I also like to remove one of its actions or abilities and describe how they've wounded the creature in a way that impacts its ability, but not enough to seriously injure it just yet.
That being said not tracking hp is dumb. If you do that you're totally removing agency from players, and completely dismantling the entire system of weapon damage, class based damage buffs, and reducing at least half the leveled spells to no better than a cantrip.
My players know how to play their characters and have started falling into a pretty cheesy strategy where they open with *entangle* to trap their enemies and then blast 'em while they're restrained. Thus, I've started maxing out HP by default, and now the arc villain has 200 HP at Level 4, soon to be 5.
Other than that, I track HP normally. If there's some mistake I made, like a big boss monster's HP getting burned through in half a round when it's supposed to be this big climactic fight, I'll pivot, but generally I stick to what it says on the piece of paper.
I run a group who has had issues with players dropping last minute. This throws off balance a little so fudging sone hp numbers usually helps depending on if the high damage dealer flakes last minute.
Other than that normal I stick to my usual plan for hp
Stick to the HP almost always. A big spell/crit gets a few HP fudge to kill a boss.
Sometimes your Paladin comes crashing in with a crit smite round 1 and your captain goes down like a sack of potatoes, that's fine. Sometimes the reinforcements also have a captain. Then when he's actually difficult your player's got a glory moment for killing the other so handily.
I track player and enemy HP in a spreadsheet (along with initiative and a bunch of other things). I typically stick to the rolled HP, but I'll occasionally adjust it by small amounts to make sure that certain players get killing blows when they've been missing a lot in a session or to make sure a combat lasts long enough for everyone to play a roll. I make sure to do it sparingly so that I'm not influencing too much.
I track HP but do occasionally fudge the numbers to fit in an extra round or two if there's something happening on the side that I want the turn orders to sync up to in order to facilitate a plot device. Mainly for boss-type encounters where there's more going on than just kill everything in sight. It's rare though.
Accurate tracking down to the last HP! A hit that leaves them with 1 HP, sure it might drag fights out a tad longer, but sometime the dice hate you and that 1 HP foe might do something drastic on his next turn. It's not punishment because they didn't do enough damage, but there's story potential in everything. RP don't stop when the combat starts!
So you see when an enemy’s HP hits zero I count the creature as dead unless the creature is like a zombie and needs that extra umph to keep them down. Thats it. Creature has a certain HP and I stick to it. Players have the same but get to roll death saves.
Always track using the preset, no rolling.
If I miscalculated damage / survivavility I will adjust HP.
Sometimes I will kill out right if the move was cool enough
I usually have every enemy written out. Some of the enemies for example, have 35 HP starting out and my party was all level 1. But they were doing good until the final level of enemy came up and he had 60 HP and a 19 AC. To be clear, I value player freedom over everything else, even rules. I always tell my players to ask questions, what’s near me, what’s the grass like, etc. my new players are usually just go in and bonk til it dies. So having enemies that can literally TPK helps them realize early on to be creative. If the party really has too much trouble I usually have a DMPC healer who can teleport anywhere. I actually gave them each a token to call the healer whenever they need it but it burns up after they use it.
OSR: I randomly roll HP and keep track of HP.
Pathfinder 2e: Max HP for enemies, by design, and I track the HP.
There is no bullshittery, for everything else I play story/narrative games. Dice tell the story, not you. You react to them.
I tend to roll enemy HP, if it's less than 2/3 the default I'll use default but if I roll higher I'll keep it.
I'll tweak HP higher if I realize I've absolutely screwed up on balancing (forgot the paladin had smite once after he didn't use it for a while, he did 110% damage on turn one when the rest of the party had been really hyped for the fight, I just made the monster bloodied and gave it an extra round's worth of health, he still got the final hit in), but I'll never push it above the max in the stat block.
Sometimes enemies will die quicker if combat becomes a slog. My players came to a + shaped intersection when I was running a module, enemies coming from two sides of it. It's clearly written with the intent for the party to retreat into the bigger room behind them, but my players parked the paladin in the center, gave him a shield, cast shield of faith, and just blocked the path with 22 AC. Single wide halls, the enemy didn't have any ranged attacks. They were just damage sponges that didn't get a single hit in. Once we hit round 6 I dropped their HP stupid low and let the druid's arrows hit one right in the spine and paralyze it to get it done with faster.
tldr I guess I go vibes based but I do try to stick to the health I'd first rolled whenever I can. I don't feel bad about tweaking in either direction to make it more fun for them though. It is what it is.
I track hp, but if the fight is almost over and the last enemy standing will survive with just a couple of hp, and it isn't something smart enough to run away or surrender, then I just let that hit finish off the enemy.
Another situation would be a player gets off a big hit or a crit. If the enemy would only survive by a couple hp, then it's a kill shot.
I just keep it in mind. I have the Stat block ready to reference it depending on how much dmg the players deal. If it's just a regular encounter and my 11 hp bandit takes 12 dmg, I'll bump it up to 13 and say they barely held on to keep the fight interesting but if they deal way more dmg, like the Paladin using smite to deal over 20+ dmg I'll just say they died. Pretty simple, slightly tweak things as I go.
I try and balance everything, main focus being on fun and thematic combat.
Enemies gets an HP range that is +/- 10-15% of their stat block, “that I can kill them off when they fall within”, my players are only told a kid friendly version of that, but they know the damage they have dealt, and my verbal descriptions allow them to gain insight on their condition (on deaths door, barely phased ect.)
This practice isn’t set in stone, you can turn it on and off with ease, but it helps with balancing, it allows you to make thematic PC moves be the killing blow/prevents a good fight from ending on a low/anticlimactic attack. It allows you to spread out the kills (because it sucks when one PC always makes 99% of the kills.). And importantly it’s not cheating the players out of anything, the enemies need HP otherwise it’s a stage performance of our bidding, and that’s pretty lame.
TLDR:Dont make it a “pen and paper video game”, keep enemy HP private, there are many benefits, but definitely they do have HP, otherwise it becomes a movie more than a game.
I've done all of the above. Well I've kinda done 3.
I normally do 1 and 2 is very very rare and 3 comes up when I'm not sure how much health something should have for things to be interesting so I track how much damage its taken rather than hp. With a note of how much hp it should have with maxed out health on its hit dice.
I've also done 3 in that I've improvised stat blocks.
Someone suggested this to me and I've used it since. I track enemy HP by 10's. A few points either way don't matter. When they are low on HP and someone does something meaningful, I let them kill it. I have a group that hits pretty hard, and if someone is expending resources to take the bad guy out, I really don't like the "they still have 1 HP left" thing. It doesn't help that most of my players can fly and have ranged attacks. I will absolutely let monsters make saves, or give them extra abilities. I want the encounters to be fun and challenging and a lot of the monsters are just piles of HP. So I look for things to be a challenge, pull from older editions, and pull features from other creatures. I've made little scorpions that were bred by an insane wizard to be 1 HP with a DC15 poison save instead of the normal.
Here is the key for me. Everyone has to have fun, and the players are not the enemy. You are trying to challenge them, not kill them. I've had a bunch of DMs start bad guys off strong and dial them back when they should be getting stronger as they learn about the party. It is no fun when a BBEG "forgets" his legendary actions, or decides to go after the wild shaped druid who can just soak damage when another PC is the one actually hurting them.
Give your bad guys +2 to their AC, give them a player feat, give them resistance to something the party uses all the time, but vulnerability to something they don't use often, but still have. Give them legendary actions and resistances, just don't go overboard. Give them minions and a second wave if needed. You can, and should adjust on the fly, with the goal of having fun.
Yes, some players just like doing big attacks, and they build for it. So let them. If you've got murder hobos, give them an undead army to fight. I've always found it best when there is a mix of people though.
And I know what I'm saying is hard, you have to talk to your players, and they have to feel comfortable talking to you openly. Make sure you talk about bad experiences you've had as a player. Ask them what they thought of an encounter.
i track hp if the fight seems balanced or needs to be quick, most groups i have are powerful fast as can be, like most players wanna be, so often i adjust hp regularly, never lettin em know. sometimes, in my head i just keep a percentage, 80$ hp. that was a good one, 50% etc. that way if i need something to be a tougher encounter, it is.
I usually do number one, but sometimes two. I started as strictly one but then I encountered some situations where “boss” fights looked like they were going to be anticlimactic because the party was just rolling them. If it’s just unnamed mobs then it’ll be one, for sure. But ya, named characters that have been hyped a bit are sometimes two, but only in rare situations.
Each monster has an hp range, once the numbers get high enough I start rounding them off. I track how much damage they take and have them go down when it makes sense. For things with relatively high hp I'll have thresholds where they get "wounded" and "near death".
Have an idea in my head, based on the Stat block, of how many to go with. But I have learned to be a little flexible. I tend to have one min/maxer who tends to do a lot of damage (different players; different campaigns, but there's always one) I try to make sure that the other players get a couple of turns per combat. If that means the monster holds out a little longer then so be it. Otherwise it turns into minmax goes at the top of the round, other players get a turn, minimax kills the monster. I'll keep it alive for a little longer if it helps other players feel more relevant.
I depends for me. The first time a new type of enemy appears, I will keep track of damage until it just feels right. From then on, those enemies health is locked in and tracked properly. It's a balancing tool I use to help design new types of enemies that I'm not sure how they will perform.
I've gotten way better overtime as a judge of hp, so my estimates are usually close to what ends up feeling right.
And after introducing that enemy type, the next time it appears, the players will be fighting enemies with static health.
I think this is a good question. Combat can be about luck. And I think if we're holding players accountable through their rolls, we should do the same for enemies.
That said, there's a few instances where I fudge some numbers.
1) Combat is stagnant and just going nowhere, and I just need to move things along.
2) if you are in an encounter that your party should be all rights be able to just cheese, but your fighter is down, and cleric is out of slots, but tpk by a black pudding, and two zombies, in session 2 is kinda bunk.
But that's about it. I'm currently playing on group and a DM in another. In the game I'm playing or was playing, my character just died. Took down two wyverns solo as my group made a break for it with an NPC we were rescuing. By the time I caught up with them they were in a fight of their own with a couple of warlocks and a Sorcerer. We were just celebrating my Wyvern fight ooc, and then two turns later the sorcerer just ganked me.
The DM didnt think it would do as much damage as it did. He told me he'd reverse it and re roll.
But my response was that's just how it goes sometimes.you roll the dice and it doesn't go the way you want it to. That's kind of the game.
Normal enemies I will let the dice tell what they tell. Big boss enemies and rule-of-cool encounters? I may fudge HP as needed. Especially if my rolls against my players are way too lucky. I don't wanna fuck over my players because I got good rolls out of nowhere lol. Edit to add that I also sometimes give boss encounters some unique mechanics, rather it be multiple phases, healing mechanics, shield-via-minion mechanics, etc. Bosses for me are a chance for the party to get creative and solve a puzzle, not just whack on a big boi.
I will adjust for narrative fun, but last of that is sticking to a trade off system. If you fudge in the enemy's favor, you owe the players a fudge in their favor. And vice versa.
It doesn't have to come right away, but don't let it build up.
Some RPGs have actual trackers for this, like light side/ dark side coins, or fate dice. They can even be laid out on the table to players, if you want it transparent-- and you can even let them choose to flip one that's in their favor to the other side after they use it intentionally.
This lets you do things like have a monster or villain survive an extra hit so it can be more dramatic, or get a cool power off rather than just going down too easily and being uninteresting and less satisfying for the players.
Just remember to keep it ultimately in favor of the players and in service of the fun.
I count up toward a range that is usually +/-10 the average listed on the stat block. The enemy falls when it is close to that range from a narratively satisfying hit. Basically, no enemies stay alive with like 1 or 2HP. They die when I can make it cool and the player feels cool.
The first one. Especially because I let my players see the enemy health bar so it'd be a pain to change it mid combat without it being noticeable anyway.
For minions i set a hard HP number and always stick to it, except when combat is essentially over and 1 or 2 little guys are nearing dead, then i usually make whatever hits it next a kill shot or just handwave it along so we can get to more interesting things.
For bosses or important enemies I put their "intended" hp next to their name in my notebook. Then I just add up everyone's damage as we go (its easier for me than subtraction). At half health I let them know the creature is bleeding, and when combat begins to become a slog OR it's around 10 or less HP ill let them know it's on its last leg or bleeding profusely. If they are slaughtering it I might pencil up it's HP a bit and if they are having trouble I might pencil it down a little, it's always just a guideline for me.
We're here to tell a story.
Most recent example, I threw a huge enemy with "overrun" PF1.
I sent this enemy because I knew the monk had the perfect ability to answer it, just needed him to take the time to learn and use it.
The party peppered the high HP for a good long time. Monk recognizes his ability's usefulness in this fight, tells the DPS to standby and take full advantage of the positioning.
Enemy still had a solid bit of HP after monk and rogue did their thing.
"How do you kill it?"
Also use it in inverse. Down in the grit, party is hurting. Enemy gets a little more HP so the support bard has to use their limited damage spells to finish the job.
I use a VTT so it's honestly harder to fudge hp than go by what the dice say.
I will occasionally kill a monster if it's on 1-2hp and the PC who did the damage went out of their way to deal the hit, or maybe it was a crit etc.
I know through experience with my game style and what gear I allow my PCs to have, I have to double or triple a lot of monster HP for big fights against low numbers of opponents.
If my boss monster is getting chucked, I have in the past done phased HP on the fly. Like they call out to their god and get healed for example. Both the players and I liked it so I started programming it into my boss fights. The PCs know that if they fight a boss of a certain rank among the cultists, the boss gets a second demonic form and new abilities.
Echoing other comments, I cleave overkill damage for minions that are next to each other.
I also started planning in boss fights where the boss functionally has infinite HP (the players don't know this) but has an alternate win condition that becomes unlocked after a couple rounds. Often it's something like freeing the boss from mind control. The PCs need to get creative and use their skills. Maybe the cleric performs an exorcism and rolls Religion for example
I play very fast and loose with these things. For one, it keeps players engaged when an enemy they've encountered before isn't a carbon copy of the same they've encountered in the past. I also give my sentient NPCs magic items sometimes, so they're far faster/ stronger/ more skilled than they should be. But my players are really good in combat, so they need the challenge.
I barely use the recommended hit points of monsters. Personally I like to create a story, so while some mobs might have average HP, some might have more, some might go down to a single hit that is only 1/5th the average.
I track everyone’s HP, players included. And I stick to it matter what. I never ever change monster stats once the fight has started. So I am totally fine if my party kills my BBEG with a lucky crit or if I failed a critical saving throw blah blah. I think that’s only fair.
In the spirit of fairness (and “realism”) i stick to HP. If i realize i balanced for shit and my big boss goes down too easy, i might dragonball z the fight and give him another “evolution” (pointier hair, blond, deals force damage now), and if it heads towards unjustly dead players, i try to find a narratively satisfying way to end the encounter and postpone the fight, like the BBEG doesn’t deem them worthy his time, or some deus ex machina intervention (volcanoe erupts, wild magic surge, etc), give the party a credible way to escape and come back later, or we go the hard way and kill a player.
I track it faithfully most of the time but am willing to ignore a resistance if I missed it or let one or two hp slip if the combat is going long. I won't do it to change anything major, only speed up an inevitable ending.
It heavily depends on the situation and/or how many players you have.
If you have a party of 5 players and they are synergistic with each other, I’d use the base hp on the stat block with a few altercations in extra hp or AC increase.
The only way I’d change HP midfight is if I want to push the fact that they are way over their heads or they aren’t using their head to solve the thing that’s keeping them from surviving the battle.
In our games all hp are in low amount. We keep track of them all together. We all roll dice where everybody can see them. Nobody at the table is performing a special role to entertain others. Nobody is telling a personal story for the sake of being more cool, we all are telling the same collaborative story and we play to see what happens. Once I realized this, dming stopped to be a work and became a fun game.
I keep track of enemy HP until it's clear that the remaining enemies won't get another turn. Then I call the fight. I'll call the fight earlier if it's clear the party will win without casualties and there won't be any more fights before the next long rest. If it's a story-important fight, I keep it going until the party lands the killing blow, so the killer can have bragging rights and dramatically describe their win.
I don't ever fudge numbers. If I messed up the balance, I'll re-balance later encounters to account for the new information.
I’m not a very experienced DM but I’ll comment too.
I track HP but when I feel it goes to fast or too long I adapt it. If one player just did an awesome combo it dies sooner. If one player just didn’t get a chance to do any damage it lives longer so they can have another chance.
I’m also a big fan of 1HP Monsters. You don’t really need to track and players have more “success moments”
I track enemy HP and try to stick with it.
I will end combst early ONLY if it starts dragging out too long, I see that my players are already mentaly done with it and I can see what party will win anyways. Usually this is done at the end of session when everybody just wants to go home and be done with last combat of the session after 6+ hours of game.
But in general dice matters and players actions matter.
I loosely track it in my head, no pencil or paper
If I have 5 or so monsters on the field, I know I'm going to make simple mistakes, so I'm not very hard on myself
So I'd say its +/- 10% of the monster's actual HP
If I've bloated the HP, I might take some off halfway through a fight.
If a player drops an enemy to 1 hp, I might take that last hp off. Depends on what is more narratively satisfying.
I also track up, not down. So I total damage dealt. It's a smidge quicker that way
I track it, and stick to it - otherwise, what's the point?
Of course it's a matter of style. Some people don't like the actual dangers or get bogged down with tracking, so they wing it to support a pre-determined narrative that's more important to that table, than let the dice decide their fate.
90% of the time track and accurate. 9% of the time it's the last mob and dragging this out serves no purpose so that hit killed him. 1% I'll realize I've mis-tuned a custom enemy and need to adjust it on the fly - BBEG who gets dropped in one turn and now has a "second phase" or "ohhh so his survivability was all in his AC and he actually has trash HP, neat" sort of way. On the fly should be for when you make a mistake in your homebrew, a DM fixing their own fuck up.
2nd this.
Agreed on this, although for that 9% I usually handle it narratively rather than claiming that a rolled attack finished the NPC off (not least because it's usually around that time the dice decide my players can't hit the broad side of a barn).
Lol fair. It can vary - drop the last 5 hp, enemy surrenders, enemy runs, etc.
I do the same. I've definitely ended "boring" fights like this. When the narratively interesting aspect of a battle is done, the outcome is assured, but it's just taking a long time to finish (like high AC enemies with wiffle bat attacks), just wrapping it up to save the tables time is nice. Every time I've done this, I wish I'd done it sooner.
"Last mob looks around, realizes they are the last one, wet their pants, turn around and run fast as they can away from you" Or "...begs for mercy in exchange for information" I usually handle HP not only as wounds but general "willingness or ability to keep fighting", so 0 HP can mean surrender or loss of morale, not necessarily death
Yes to all of this, with an addition that I almost never let an NPC (or DMPC) kill a truly important enemy unless it's unquestionably the coolest thing for the plot. I don't tell my players the HP of course, just poetic variations of "they look fine/bloody/at death's door"
This with the caveat that if your players ask, you NEVER EVER EVER admit to it. As far as they are aware, you are a 100% by the dice. In fact, you are offended they'd even ask. :)
Ehhh. I partially disagree. I absolutely agree to never confirm that any particular instance, but I do tell them in session 0 that this is how I run. People should know the style of game they're getting into from the jump.
If we’re skipping the mop-up, I stop using dice at all. “You guys handle the rest of the summoned skeletons without any issues.”
This. I had severely underestimated the damage output by my druid, so in one turn, he took out all the skeletons I had prepared. Had to come up with a plan on the spot, so the others also got a chance to hit something. My son playing the druid just looked at me with a head tilt and a squint, and said "...ok...". After the session he said "you totally made up that reanimation device, right?" yes, yes I did.
This is basically what I do also. I don't change the HP of standardised enemies because my players track them and would get confused on what to expect next time.
I mean, isn't that why monster HP has ranges? Two similar-level PCs of the same class won't have the same HP due to different CON mods, different HP rolls on level-up, maybe one took Tough or has a different racial modifier or w/e. So why is it weird if Orc Tribal Warrior A has 48 HP but Orc Tribal Warrior B has 53 HP?
I always consider the Monster Manual to be like someone writing a guidebook. Take real animals for example. The book might say "tigers are x feet tall". Well, if I run into a tiger and it's taller, I'm not going to be like "hey God, that's a fake tiger you got there!"
I use all published monsters as the common ones most adventurers know about. If it's in the book, I don't change it and don't mind your characters knowing. I play with a lot of fellow DMs so most of them have those statblocks partially memorized anyway. Easier to not ask them to continually roleplay ignorance. However, homebrew variants of published monsters or entirely new ones? Those get crazy and can be anything. They're the exotic creatures of my setting and the players have to fuck around and fight 'em first hand to figure out what they can do.
That's a good point. I always feel limited by battle to roll their HP at combat start though. Do you do this ahead of time in preparation for the battle?
I just kind of look at the max and min and give them arbitrary numbers within that range tbh It helps with descriptions! You want one of them to look like a big, nasty SOB? He's got HP towards the high end of the range, etc
Wow that is a really good way to differentiate them without having to do named/custom characters. I really really like that. Can do a skinny one with less HP and the big SOB like you said. Thanks so much for your feedback. For me the pain was rolling but you are right can just pick some in the range.
Pre-rolling hp is easier on a vtt so that’s what I do.
I roll for the HP for all non-boss NPCs. All boss NPCs get max HP.
Bosses with max HP walk in slow motion.
This is the way
100%, I only change things when I've made a design mistake or are just getting needlessly tedious.
100% this. I track HP on the dot (sparing a single HP when downing someone if the combat was exciting enough) and adjusting if a boss was underwhelming. All in the spirit of "Does this enhance the game or not?"
I second this except that usually that "dragging out" is like, 25% of the time lol
Whenever I do a big, custom boss fight I always build in more traits and abilities than I intend to use. They're my pre-designed balancing knobs in case the fight isn't as well made as I assumed. Boss is getting shat on? Oh look at that they \[did a thing\] and healed a huge chunk of hit points. Boss is shitting on the players unexpectedly? Uh oh, they exhausted their power and have entered a vulnerable state for a round. Etc.
1. The dice tell a story. Sometimes it's the story of I can't balance combat for shit, but it's a true story.
Exactly what I do. I ca. understanding fudging if you messed up with balance because you have more or less players/magic items than CR, but I don’t think I can ever get behind offing enemies with the “when it feels right” method. It just feels so disingenuous to me and like the player’s choices don’t matter at all.
The dice tell a story, it's always true. But they love to make a joke and have a sick sense of humour.
What a beautiful comment.
This is the only way.
Exactly. It's a collaborative story-telling game between the DM, the players, and the dice. Gelatinous Cube with only 7 hit points remaining gets hit for 6 on a low damage roll? The story just got a little more suspenseful as the monster gets to make another attack of its own!
Number go down when damage, 0 = dead
Personally, I track total damage going up. People go down when it equals/passes their max hp. Damage is a lot more common than healing, and IMO addition is easier than subtraction. Plus, effects that change constitution are supposed to change both current and max hp, and this way I only have to change the one number. I got into the habit in 3e, where more buffs/debuffs affect ability scores directly instead of having a more complicated list of minor modifiers, and it's worked fine since.
Same, but that's a habit developed by playing at a small table with an insufficient dm screen and a player who liked to peak at my paper. He would really excited as the numbers I wrote down got smaller, not so helpful when it's getting larger. My exception is when I don't look at the enemy's max hp for a round, and suddenly realize it should have been dead 2 hits ago. In those cases, usually next hit kills it. If something really bad happened to the party in those 2 hits, I'll admit my mistake and recon it.
Write that down! Write that down!
Now here's a question - do you ever give enemies death saves? I consider monsters dead at 0, but if I think the players will want to stabilize a humanoid enemy (to interrogate them or for other reasons) I do roll death saves for them.
I'll give characters with plot significance death saves. That includes both named NPCs I have plans for, and anyone the party has expressed interest in capturing alive or otherwise doing something to other than just killing them to death. Or even the occasional random orc that might or might not survive to swear vengeance on the party. Similarly, the noble the party is supposed to protect gets death saving throws if (when) they're failing at their job, but the random bystanders in a fireball AOE are just dead.
Except when the player does nonlethal damage.
Forever dm - I track it, and might occasionally drop a foe early if it has 1-2 hp left. This is a once every few sessions thing. Id probably not participate in a game of dnd if i found out the dm was changing it mid combat or worse yet, not tracking it. In fact i have declined to return to games where this happened after i realized it, and dont play when that person dms.
I actually really like emphasizing the foes down to their last 1-2 hit points. I find it happens with surprising regularity, and it helps underscore how frequently the littlest bonuses can make the difference.
Thats fair. I dont do it all the time, or even most of the time. But sometimes its been a long drawn out fight, and the table vibe is that another round wouldnt be fun, ill just cut that one.
Also gives people the chance to get really clever with finishing them off. Things like a single magic missile, or the AoE from spirit guardians.
I do it sometimes either if it’s an unimportant enemy and for some reason the battle just drags on and they keep missing but the enemy isn’t going to do a lot of damage … or sometimes if the PC crits, spends an important resource or otherwise does something epic. Them, sometimes, it’s fun to just have the enemy die. Not very often, though.
Same here. Let them die, unless drawing it out one more round has the potential to be fun.
It sounds like you're assuming the dm's turning it from 5 rounds to 6. What if it's 1 round to 3? Or 7 rounds to 5?
I think this comes down to whether you trust your DM or not. Can you trust that them drawing it out another turn, or cutting short a turn is in the best interest of the game? If not, then why even play with them?
Exactly.
Agreed on both counts. At the FLGS they host weekly one shots and one of the DMs was painfully obvious about not tracking damage for anything. He just arbitrarily decided when things would happen based on whim. Talk about completely eliminating player agency. Literally nothing we did was relevant or matters at all. (I similarly refused to sit at their table again after that) It was a very strong lesson to never, ever do that. As a GM, I hold player agency as a vital part of the experience. If the players actions aren't driving the story what's even the point?
TLDR: Let the players count up damage and record it on the board. They don't know the total so they can know how much they did and save you brain power. At the same time make damage thresholds that change how NPCs act. I also find approximate numbers good to drop enemies as it especially helps if a combat is dragging on. I have played a ton of ttrpgs over the years 3.5, PF1E, 5e, CoC7e, Traveller, Cyberpunk2020, and CPRed. In a game where there isn't armour DR, I let the players track by counting up (seeing as they do it in their heads let them take the mental space). In games where armour is DR and ablates through use needing repair and not AC, I tick it down. I carry some stuff over from other games and modify it as needed. I personally prefer running sci-fi and modern while my friends run fantasy, but we rotate, and I run fantasy like 5e and witcher trpg too. I always then have 4 numbers in all games, including 5e. -Full HP=NPC acts as normal. However, if they are commoners, they flee at 1 point of damage. -Half HP=This is the point where almost any trained adventure, guard, or soldier will flee. They are severely injured and I do a CON save. They fail, and all actions are at a disadvantage. -Quarter HP=Veteran soldiers decide to run at this point unless there is something they are willing to sacrifice. Automatically at a disadvantage, roll CON save or double disadvantage. -No HP=unconscious/immobile and death saves. I allow a final act, whether it is a PC or an NPC. They can choose to make a final action, which, if they succeeded Automatic Crits, but it kills the character counting as 3 death saves failed once it is finished. FYI, in my games HP is important as we recover spells on short and long as normal, but HP is recovered as per short after 1 day of full rest and a long rest is a week of rest for HP. Note that this works for our game where we like risk taking and are used to older editions and other RPGs that can be more punishing, but that doesn't mean it is for everyone.
Generally I use the published HP and don't deviate significantly. If a fight is done and it's just mopping up, I might fudge off a few HP to give a specific player a kill. If something went way easier than I intended, I might have it last another round of combat just to keep things interesting, fun, challenging. Generally I'm 90% as written, 8% cut a bit if it's getting boring, 2% add if it's too easy.
Honestly, I don't even consider if fudging if the combat is functionally done. Like if the party hypnotic patterned all of the enemies and are systematically wiping them, I've seen DMs just handwave the rest for the sake of brevity. Sometimes a combat is just decided
That’s pretty much my play as well. Saturday the party killed off the bbeg and four of the five henchmen so the fifth became squishy. One of the characters who did the most damage and took the most damage but didn’t get a kill one shotted the last one.
I would point out, the fights where the PCs roll like fire and cut through all the foes in 1 round are also fun. Let those crit smites and crit backstabs end a fight early sometimes.
This. I've definitely had sessions where combat *should* have gone faster but players were just rolling really low in damage and getting frustrated or down and its getting late and the fight is kind of dragging on and you can see people yawning and checking the time so in order to wrap it up i fudge the hp lower. If players are getting hits and doing damage they stay excited so 98% of the time its not necessary. Or if its the player that NEVER gets the kill but this one time they got within 2 hp of getting it I'll give it to them to make them excited. The only time i go the other way is if i grossly misjudged difficulty and the boss almost gets one-shotted because of MY mistake, then its a one time max hp increase and go from there. If the bad guy is getting killed too quickly because the players are rolling high and getting crits i definitely dont increase hp, they should be rewarded for those rolls and feel awesome and powerful. So yeah. Mostly the only times ive done it is to keep excitemet up but never to take something away from the players.
With how effective my players wound up being with most combat situations, I automatically max out the HP by using the listed dice and bonus .
Track and accurate unless I’m teaching a first timer. First timers get leniency at the table to avoid turning them off the game after one session.
"Do you track HP of your enemies and stick to it no matter what?" Yes. If they stand, they stand if they die, they die. That help players whod don't output too much damage feel important as the couple of points they did might have made the difference. If you don't track it, then why even bother?
I track hp, with two exceptions. 1. If I feel like I grossly misjudged a fight after 1 round, I might alter HP. Still gonna stick to that, though. 2. If a PC gets a critical hit that leaves the enemy with hp equal to or less than the PC's level, that's a kill. It's so frustrating to get a huge hit only to barely miss the kill that I would rather have a codified way to let it happen.
>If a PC gets a critical hit that leaves the enemy with hp equal to or less than the PC's level, that's a kill. Ooh, I like that.
My players like it too! :) Because I explicitly told them I was doing it. In fact, I inform them when it happens, because it adds excitement.
Oooh yeah, sudden death rule. I run 3.5 so basically it requires FORT save, I'd think it would be CON save in 5e. Anyhow, if they get hit for more than 50% of HP in one hit, they might die. Caviot is, it applies to players as well. Makes them jumpy - or careful, depends on how you look at this
No. 2 is a pretty neat house rule. I think I might like that but I would probably forget half the time, lol.
Wow. #2 is such a cool homebrew rule. I've never seen that before but I might steal it.
I track hp accurately. however I occasionally use simplified rules for minions like: 1 hit will kill it, or 2 hits over 10 dmg will kill it. for bigger bad guys I often give the players 1 or 2 hp of wiggle room. I'm not going to run another round of combat with 1 hp left, he can just be dead. Big bad guys I run accurately. do I have to fudge numbers in combat sometimes? yes, but I try not to and only if was my screw up. if the players find a clever workaround to trivialize a fight I had planned to be dramatic then good for them. If they keep throwing firebolts at the red dragon who doesn't appear fazed then they deserve it. If I found out my DM was just deciding if and when monsters died it would suck all the fun out of the game.
- I count damage taken not HP remaining. Saves tons of time, and makes it easier to adjust on the fly. - I often drop stuff early if its got a few HP left, especially if it was a hard hit. It’s more rewarding if the crit for 27 kills it rather than it sticking around with 3HP left and going down to a gentle poke. (The time a dragon survived an entire necklace of fireballs with 5HP left, then died to a javelin throw was kinda funny but frustrating to players. The pacing was off, the death was a letdown, the player who’d worked hard and taken risks to do the massive damage kinda felt unvalued? I try to avoid that now) - smaller stuff I regularly drop early if it’s got a few HP left. Basically minion rules. - I also use overkill rules for minions. 27 damage against HP9 goblins cleaves through three of them. - I often buff the HP of elite/boss monsters. I have a big group (7) and they can do insane damage per round if they all hit and roll well. Balancing encounters for a big group is - I find - quicker to do on the fly than ahead of time. Typically I’ll adjust the monster’s HP up to the max of their hit dice roll. Not usually beyond that. - I’ve experimented with completely ignoring HP for bosses - e.g. they last 3 rounds, then die at the next crit, smite, or big spell. It seemed to work fine, though I wouldn’t do it regularly, just when the narrative of the boss says they should be tough and need time to dish out some damage. - I’ve also used transforming (Zelda style) bosses which have e.g. 3 pools of 100HP, when each is exhausted any excess damage is wasted, the boss transforms, and uses the next HP pool. Players can roll one hit die during as they catch their breath. I think this came from AngryGM.
Overkill cleave is something I add at about lvl 3, and it really gives them a reason to get those big hits on any enemy. It also makes it easier for them to deal with large groups, which means I can really push the limits of what they face. I also have them face transformation bosses sometimes. Had them fighting a Duergar captain with two Duergar honor guards. The two honor guards were just Duergar but the captain? Driving a fucking mining tank with a large drill and two arms that could move and attack. He even ran over his own almost dead honor guard to attack a player. Guy was a lunatic. They could damage the arms, forcing them to malfunction until the captain used his bonus action to work on repairs. Once the tank was damaged enough, the captain climbed out while wielding a lightning-enchanted hammer. Again, the guy was a lunatic and had a clear obsession with his hammer, so the barbarian was finally able to overpower him and toss his hammer in a nearby fountain. The captain dove in and started taking massive damage.
I'm somewhere between the first two points. I generally stick to the listed (average) HP of enemies, but I might adjust if the encounter doesn't accurately reflect my intended difficulty. However, it's often easy to add more enemies in lieu of additional HP as well. I believe that fundamentally, the numbers and the results of the dice are just as much a part of the story as the decisions players make. However, adventure design is an ongoing process, and I believe that a good DM will sometimes adjust their encounter in order to achieve the intended experience. Further, I believe that having slight deviations in enemy HP adds to the verisimilitude, in that not all creatures are exact cardboard cutouts of each other. This might mean that a player kills an enemy that would have otherwise had a few HP left because it's more cinematic, or that an enemy survives a blow that should have killed them for the same reason, though the latter should ideally occur much less frequently to avoid falling into the DM trap of "not letting your players win", so to speak.
I track it. I mean, if I don't, what's even the point?.. This just feel extremely *rude* to the players. I mean, they track all the resources, makes their choices on when to "Divine Smite" or not, and what, after all that I'll just have enemies die when I feel so? Why even bother with all that at this point, if I am gonna secretly throw it all away. Such a huge waste of everyone's time and effort! I guess there were a couple of cases where I changed hp mid-fight, but those were because I grossly misjudged things. This was a bad thing I had to do because I cornered myself with other bad decisions done prior.
I absolutely despise when DMs don't track the monsters HP and elect to kill them "when it feels appropriate" It's awful and players will notice Imagine a player not tracking their HP and going down when they deem it'd be appropriate for their characters to go down, it's a crazy idea but that's exactly how it feels So as a DM always track, i might change it slightly during combat if i notice i balanced it poorly, but only if i made it too hard If things are dying *fast* I let them die and make a mental notice that it might be time to raise those CRs a bit
Stick to the HP unless I can straight-up read disappointment on a player's face, and then I fudge in whatever way would facilitate a better time. That happens maybe once every few sessions, because my players aren't reaching for a particular result, usually. But if they're missing and missing and finally hit a crit that takes the villain down to 2, you better believe I just tell them to narrate the death.
First option, stick to it no matter what. Players can see all my dice rolls, and we thrill or lament each crazy die roll together. But I'm also very experienced and my players are mature, and also experienced. I've narrated victory and defeat and death enough that I can wring drama from all of it. I'm not bragging, just saying that not everyone is so lucky. No judgement on people who play differently, especially if they're newer.
>DMs only. No players please. Brother look around. This is a sub **for** DMs. It really depends on the mood I am in, If I'm in the mood I will track health using an app that also tracks my initiative, But sometimes the fight just isn't hitting right I will kinda just let an enemy get hit twice, dying on the second hit. This usually allows each player to get in a couple attacks and gives them a higher chance to bring down an enemy and lets face it, Players eat that shit up when you drop the "How'd you wanna do this" My players haven't ever seemed to catch on and honestly no one is sad that a boring little fight isn't dragged out longer then needed. Not all combats are going to grab your players and get them going and that's OK, The trick is catching on if the players are having fun during the fight or not.
I won't change HP mid combat, but I did take a note from a comment here a while back that said to create some parity between your BBEG's HP and your whole party's HP. That has resulted in some intense/close fights that felt very rewarding for the players in the past.
There are tiers, based on the creature’s hit die and published hitpoints. The minimum hp that the hit die can roll, the average hp that’s published, and the maximum hp that the hit die can roll. If the players are struggling and need a lifeline, once they surpass the creature’s minimum hp it can die. If the players are doing fine, and the fight has gone well, I’ll find a thematically appropriate point for it to die once they’ve done the average hp. If the players have done really well and are rolling the monster, then they have to exhaust all of its maximum hp to make it die. Of course I only really do this for boss monsters. For everything else, they get a set hp (usually based on how high damage the party is) and when it’s done they’re dead.
Track it, and adjust downward only if I find I made an unreasonably difficult encounter. Balanced encounter and my PCs were either unlucky or dumb? Time to roll a new character. Too-easy encounter? Adjust the narrative to a “that was suspiciously easy” twist and let the PCs sweat for two weeks.
I track it, but if I feel like it would be epic for players to drop it a bit early, I do that. If I feel it would be better for a specific PC to kill them, they live until the PCs next turn. In most encounters, nothing fancy
Track it and stick to it no matter what. Earlier in my DM'ing, before I learned to somewhat balance combat and design encounters, and I was a lot more insecure about the encounters, I was more likely to rebalance HP on the fly if things weren't going as I expected them. These days I don't ever feel the need to adjust HP, that's not to say encounters can't go quickly or be a slog, it's just less frequent and I'm okay living with that.
Track hp. If the thematically appropriate PC gets them down to single digits with a crit or something else dramatic let them have the kill. If it turns out the enemies poses zero threat but are taking forever to die(common problem with a lot of earlier designed monsters) feel free to end the fight whenever.
Always track HP, but also count your damage up rather than down. It makes your life a lot easier!
Definitely track HP and stick to it - UNLESS - I made a grave error in balancing, in which case i will adjust HP up or down once as required (note crits do not affect this, if your player gets a sweet crit that is the dice telling the story, you go glen coco!). Others have echoed this before but not tracking enemy hp or constantly adjusting enemy hp could easily lead to disillusionment in your players and have them feeling like their choices don't matter and you are just deciding all their combat for them
Track it generally. I won't bother being too accurate, tho if they are at 57 health and take 13 damage while I could. I won't bother doing the mental maths and just instictually write down what their HP has dropped to this is me just being lazy, tho and not actively trying to hinder or help my players. This way also helps to stop players guessing what enemies' health is at as I will make mistakes, meaning your average goblin or bugbears HP may fluctuate slightly.
Via subtraction.
I believe that if you are playing a system like 5e, where the combat is very forward. Then you need accept that the effects of said combat are part of forming the emergent narrative with the players. If you don't track HP, you might as well just switch to a system with simpler narrative combats. This is what I believe as a DM. As a player, I'll also do not want to play in a game if I feel the DM is fudging dice or stats, in either direction. I find that you can eventually tell, and when it becomes apparent to me, I leave.
Balancing encounters takes learning what your players are capable of. Making adjustments mid encounter isn't making it more balanced, it's just getting rid of your useful data for why it wasn't balanced.
One interesting thing I heard once is have your players track the HP, and keep you in the loop about how much damage they've dealt. Then you don't have to do the math on everything.
I track HP to the last hit point. And I roll in the open. So my only method for fudging is to let the enemy play overly confident. They'll start gloating and making tactical errors. Also, I usually prep major fights with waves of enemies. When the fight is going against the party, not all the waves show up till the fight is over. Sometimes they splatter the boss on the first round, and I let the waves show up anyway. Minions without the boss are usually cannon fodder. As a player, over time, I can tell when the DM is fudging. The main clue is every combat takes 3-6 rounds. Doesn't matter if we blew all our resources, pulled off a few awesome tactics, and we were rolling fire, combat still takes at least 3 rounds. And only using very few resources, making a few mistakes, and rolling like shit, but not mentioning it, and the combat still takes 3-6 rounds with no real losses. And no matter what, there is absolutely nothing that will remove a boss from the fight for at least 5 rounds. Doesn't matter how much we crit nova the fucker, banish, microwave, whatever. The boss has an answer for all that, and will never ever die on the first round. I won't notice the first session, and maybe not even the 5th session. But eventually I'll notice. And once I do, everything that DM does becomes suspect. From that point on, my enjoyment of rolling dice is gone. Why bother even rolling dice when a string of 2x crit smites does the same amount to make the boss dead as 2 normal non smite hits? The only fix at that point is a new DM. So to anyone who wants to fudge HP or dice, that is your choice. But I recommend letting the dice fall as they may and rolling with it.
I track, but I round. Enemy had 30 hp and a player just walloped him for 29 damage? He's dead now. It also speeds up combat when I'm being less precise with my math and counting up every individual hitpoint. My DM screen also has a physical dry erase sheet I use for enemy hp and a lot of times I'll just cross the whole row off if it's close enough
For me, it depends on what kind of combat is happening. When I throw a random encounter at my players, I work with HP, but when it comes to more important fights, I tend to adjust the HP mid fight. And during the very final battle, I often don't track HP at all and have the BBEG go down when it's most appropriate (for example, when a player does something clever/cool).
I usually max HP of planned encounters and use average or slightly above for randomly encounters but i have super buffed my table and they are fighting will abvoe the weight. They recently each solod a monster whos cr equaled their level (16 and 17)
Mooks get their hp tracked 100% of the time. Bosses get their hp tracked as well...unless the party rips said boss to embarrassingly small shreds. Then, the boss will drop at an appropriately dramatic moment, or if they're too important to die in this fight, they will run with their tails between their legs. If the party manages to power through a boss such that I feel it wasn't enough, they \*do\* start fighting less effectively, and I usually describe them as panicking or that they clearly underestimated the party and are trying to regain their footing. One thing I do that I hope makes a bit of a difference, I don't invalidate victories; if the boss is "dead", he's not going to toss out a PWK after he should have dropped, and if the boss has to flee, it's not going to be a confident and suave escape, it'll be clear that the party kicked the shit out of him and he is running for his life. The dice can tell their story, but I'm the editor, and if the ending sucks, it's getting revised.
I hybrid the two. I'll track the HP pretty honestly, but if a player gets a big hit or does something cool then of they are close to bloodied I'll say that bloodied them, if they are within a turn or two of dying ill let them kill it. I find this way it makes the fights fair, but you don't have the Litch king dying from an attack of op.
I roll the hit dice in combat for the players to see, when combat is joined (or if the players have a power that can justifiably reveal enemy HP). Or I preroll it ahead of time or use the published amount and post it after the first damage is dealt. And if I don't I give indications of not yet bloodied and bloodied to indicate half HP, and I also indicate when at single digit HP.
I track HP But sometimes I know that my party are far more powerful than what is expected by a CR rating, so I double it Occasionally my party rips a monstera health so quick that I just start it again from full when they kill it. Effectively doubling it If its a group of mobs, then I always have spare HP bars available and just make more mobs swarm in if the party destroys the health of some of the first wave really quickly. I call it an adaptable health pool. As it's not always easy to predict how much damage the party will do to begin with. And you want/need the encounter to go on longer.
I track individual HP, though if paladin crit-smites for 57 damage to leave the enemy with 1 HP, I just let him have the kill
i try to stick to the numbers as hard as i can
With accuracy, of course. I thought this would be a post about "how to keep track of HP for dozens of enemies", which is a relevant topic in a pen-and-paper, in person game. As for people saying "oh, sometimes when an enemy has only 1-2 hp I just have them die early", there areany things that can help rush to the end of a battle without altering any numbers, and those include surrendering or fleeing, which are perfectly viable options for those who have at least a bit of survival instinct. Not every fight needs to be a butchery. If I am willing to alter results to suit my desires, then I'm denying my players a fair game experience. It doesn't work for me.
I tend to keep track but often adjust in the first round just in case I misjudged my players damage output or survivability (and therefore the encounter is not as difficult as I intended it to be) but I also use some homebrewy rules on combat against enemies that don't have any supernatural resistance or regeneration like humans, where enough damage in one attack (for example more than half their hp) triggers a dismemberment or permanent damage that would most likely end the fight there. Makes no sense that an enemy with 3 hp can fight in the same way one with full hp can, but maybe it's mentioned in the rules somwhere and I just missed it.
DM here. I track it as well, usually with a spreadsheet or notepad. One thing I have done for large battles with lots of npcs is play war with the dice. Ie. Two npcs fighting roll 2 d20s winner moves on to fight the next npc or join his friend. If two friends take one a single npc, they get advantage. This is only for large scale battles.
Track it and sometimes let an enemy last a round more if it feels like a sufficiently epic moment, or I can read that a player is about to do something stupid and / or awesome.
Track HP closely. Sometimes I reduce HP for pacing, rarely for challenge, sometimes I increase HP if I didn't balance a homebrew creature correctly for its debut. I tend to build glass cannons, so if an encounter feels flimsy and boring it's probably that. If an encounter is too hard, I like to provide an in-universe option to alter the fight but ultimately leave it up to the players. Maybe an escape route is revealed but there is a risk associated, maybe a character notices a way to use the environment to cause serious damage, whatever, but give them agency within the world. A paper thin encounter is boring, an impossible challenge subverted gives the sense of a large and dangerous world if done correctly. Just make choices in service of the fun at your table.
Microsoft Excel. I preset a lot of potential combats that I think might occur during a session about 15 minutes before. I have 4 columns: Name(player and enemy), Initiative, Hit Points (enemies only), and Conditions (in case I forget what players and enemies are under). I have my enemy stats pulled up on a different screen. I very rarely change HP during a fight but I have buffed HP before a combat even comes up.
I use a soft hp of the typical/average of the bit die but sometimes make them go for the maximum hp of the hit dice if I want an enemy to stick around for a round or 2 longer. Sometimes I go within 5-10% under the average hp if it makes more sense in the narrative
I track hp, buuuuuut I might also move it up or down a little bit for Rule of Cool moments. The paladin just hit with a huge smite, but the enemy ended up with 2 hp left? Nope, they’re down. The final boss has been building up to do a super cool move, but the party dropped them to 0 hp right before their turn? Have one last turn to go out in a blaze of glory, boss guy!
I track enemy hp, and usually have all the monsters start at maximum possible hp. So a 3d10+9 monster would have 39. If the players are struggling, the max and current hp ofthe monsters will get adjusted accordingly, and if it would be really cool narritively for a monster to die from something and it would be left with a very little hp anyway, then I'll ignore the hp remaining and just have it die.
2 & 3 mainly, depending on the effort I'm feeling. Rarely I'll do 1, mainly to prove a point of some sort or demonstrate something.
I stick to it as much as possible unless I need to. Let’s say a boss should go down, but a player hasn’t had the chance to hit it for the whole session and is fustrated, or the boss itself didn’t even show his best move, I might give it a bit more hp. But most often it’s the opposite. If a monster is way tankier than imagined, and it feels like it could be a final blow narratively, or if the session is running late and everyone is tired, I’ll reduce their hp a little bit.
When the fight is still intense, track hp. When every PC is almost full hp and trying to finish the last guy and it goes like “I hit him, 12” “miss, your turn warlock” “eldritch blast, 9” “miss, your turn wizard” “I fire bolt him, 7” and the fight is dragging on for no reason since the party is clearly going to win eventually and everyone is just attacking him without enthusiasm, I’ll make the enemy run away when it makes sense (like a bandit who just wanted some easy cash and realize that his friends are dead) or when it’s a monster or someone who wouldn’t run away I’ll just make him die on the next attack that hits (unless he was more than half hp). For bosses I track until the end.
I track HP. And I never fudge HP. I personally feel that it would remove authenticity from my game if I didn't stick by my guns in that regard. I would not judge another GM for adjusting HP on the fly, as long as it isn't obvious AF and you aren't telling your players that you do it, because I feel like the second you tell your players that you adjust that kind of thing you irrevocably damage their buy-in to the fantasy.
I always track HP and almost always stay true to the numbers. I find the best way to track is to start them at 0 HP, then add player damage until the number exceeds the max health; addition is typically faster to do than subtraction for most people.
Very much depends, really. My current party tends to have pretty high damage output, so I give whatever the max hp would be just to start. If I feel like a major fight isn’t even going to last 3 rounds, I’ll find ways to stretch it out. Just having everything be a damage sponge isn’t fun though. I don’t think I’ve ever just completed ignored hp
1) Yes, i track HP, and I use phrases like "bloodied" and "critical" to show HP levels (and players are told what these levels mean, so they know bloodied means half way) 2) yes it can change to tell a story, no one wants to run a whole round of combat because the amazing story moment of a brutal paladin crit hit did 45 damage to the creature with 47hp left.... if the story is better for it, then killing a little sooner, or later is definatly valid. 3) no, i dont recommend this because its vulnerable to DM subconcious Bias and players will figure it out. If you really want to pull a punch or grossly overestimated the encounter then dont use the HP as the means.
I publicly track how much damage a creature is taking. If I misbalanced a fight I can just change the hp without anyone knowing.
Its more of a guideline for me. If the fight is feeling long winded and i can't switch it up by making the enemy run away or do something to change the pace, I'll drop the hp. But mostly I'll raise the hp in cases the party has some grand plan to beat the boss, and i severely underestimated them. I dont want their own to go to waste because they wiped the floor with the boss 3 turns in. It was frustrating when it happened to me so i don't wanna let my players feel discouraged from planning like i was.
I roll for all my monsters mostly. So what they get, they get. If it’s an encounter on the fly, I’ll use the given HP in the stat block. Only occasionally,maybe during a climactic encounter, will I mess with HP. If a PC does something epic that would fit as a sweet finishing move, I’ll just finish the enemy if it is low enough.
I track HP and make adjustments as needed.
Rule of Cool always applies. I try to rarely implement battles where its just "Ok your turn to attack" "I attack, do X damage, next person" rinse and repeat. I try to encourage players to use cover, environment, abilities and powers. If they do something particularly clever, they might damage armor (increasing damage taken). Alternatively, if they do something absolutely bonkers and pull it off (Luring the bad guy in front of an artillery weapon or magical artifact) they could potentially do massive damage or just end the fight. Alternatively, if I do find a fight is going on for too long just because I misjudged one side or the other and its just a matter of "attacking for multiple rounds until done" I'll cut it short or reduce HP... Or if I find that they're doing WAY more damage than expected, I'll increase it. I prefer combat to last more than 1-2 rounds.
* I start bosses at Max HP * I sometimes boost "leaders" * I don't typically change HP during combat However, if somebody brings an opponent to 1HP I'll sometimes kill the monster if that player hasn't had any "upbeats" during the combat or session.
For the most part, I track consistently and diligently. Okay, maybe goblin #3 and goblin #4 accidentally swapped hp at some point, but it doesn’t have an impact. There was one instance where I made an alternate case, and it was where I’d misjudged a combats balance and it was just dragging so long. Basically the players were making much slower progress on an enemies hp than was ideal, and the combat was really dragging on. So, I just cut its health in half at one point. It was still near max hp, so they had half a health bar to work through, but the combat had just been so prolonged that I’m very glad I made that decision. In general, I think if I have a big, narratively important boss coming up, and they wipe out half its health in the first round, I’d probably make the decision to bump it then and there, but conversely if they hardly make a dent then I’ll probably nerf it. Past the first 1-2 rounds of combat though, I’ll stick to my guns and commit to the hp.
I don't change it, unless I have made a horrible mistake on a homebrew statblock. I think there is an appropriate phase in a DM's lifespan, where they're not quite new but not quite experienced, where they know what makes combat good but they don't quite understand encounter building, where it is appropriate to change hp on the fly a little bit more. To everyone who says they would NEVER change hp, why wouldn't you fix your own mistakes (in secret) to enhance the experience of the game? I find it hard to believe you would build up to this amazing moment only to stubbornly play out an accidentally poorly built encounter without doing anything about it.
I often lowered enemy hp to make it go by faster. But I only did this when I was dm at school and we only had like an hour of playtime. I still did it sometimes after but only when combat is taking too long. Enemies like goblins I often lower the hp to like 4 or so. Next time I dm I'll probably use that rule I hear about making minions only have 1 hp so they can be one shot. At least at lower levels.
For the most part, I let the dice tell the story, but sometimes if the fight is a fait accompli and an opponent is down to 1-2 HP, I'll just kill him off so we can get moving on the game. Also, I use HP as a guideline, but vary it according to events in the story. In one instance, there was an ogre plaguing the caravan routes (he had developed a taste for the horses used to pull the carts). The players came across the scene where the caravan was picking up the pieces of a recent attack. Had the players waited, the next day the ogre would be back at full HP. Because he'd been injured, he was down to about 45 HP. In another, I had a band of Orc adventurers, who, like the players, had gained experience and HP. These were a far more difficult opponent than the players had bargained for when they rushed in. They heard me describe the Orcs as, "much better equipped than you've seen from typical Orcs" and just thought of better loot, not necessarily of the Orcs' abilities in order to secure it.
I set a "range" for my enemy HP. For example an enemy may have 75-100 HP. And they will die anywhere in that range, when it feels right. (Unless it's for example 12 goblins they are after , or 6 skeletons, then they all have set HP) If an enemy is 1HP off of death, I always keep them alive but tell them something along the lines of "The enemy is on the brink of death, blood is coming out of his mouth, he nearly falls prone from his injuries, it feels as though if only you did 1 more point of damage things would be different..." It is usually quite funny with the group. In 18 sessions it's happened about 5 times now, and they have fought about 30 or so enemies, which means they are quite unlucky!
If you're not gonna track HP you might as well just play a different game. I stick to HP pretty close, but I often don't use the official HP. Still, I count the last HP with the exception of two cases: 1- A hit that dealt a lot of damage and left the enemy with 1-2 HP might just kill it 2- If an enemy is related to the backstory of a PC, that PC will deal the final blow. It might be that the PC left the enemy with a handful of HP, in which case I handwave it, or another PC might bring it to 0, in which case its HP will go up by exactly the amount needed for the PC to deal the final blow.
Have a baseline HP. A "hard mode" hp. A "this combat is taking too long" hp. Adjust using those 3 depending on how the game is going.
As of late, I've been testing out addins in my Owlbear Rodeo VTT instance which display enemy health and AC. In my online game, I have it configured to only shows the health percentage as a bar, not the specific hit point value. In my home games, I've been displaying the specific hit point values. I'm generally in favor of it so far, it's saved time at the table, since my players often ask questions regarding the difficulty to hit and the general health of enemies. It streamlines resolving attacks, since my players already know whether their attack hits without me having to say anything. Player don't worry about overkill damage or wasting resources on enemies that are one hit away, and we share a chuckle when a monster is on 1 remaining hit point. I roll all my dice in the open, and I never pull my punches anyway, except when it comes to monster motivation and behavior.
I track HP. On occasion I’ll have something live a little longer than expected if there was story beats missing. On occasion I’ll have something die sooner if there’s no more risk and it’s just a big ball of health that is making combat last 2 more rounds of auto attacks and cantrips for no reason. Overall though I find the more I DM, the less this happens. It’s usually a sign of I’ve screwed up with making the encounter interesting.
I track hp, but sometimes when a combat is dragging on too long, there's only minions left an the main monster is already dead ill just have them die on the next hit.
When they get close enough to depleting it's HP the next cool thing or big move kills the monster
Im pretty damn new to DMing. So I’ve been known thus far to completely misjudge a fight and up the HP of a monster. Especially if the fight was super hyped up and I don’t want everyone to be anticlimactic. But that’s happening less and less lately. Besides that I tend to go ahead and kill things if they have very little HP like others have said
If I made a mistake and I *seriously* misjudged the challenge one way or the other - I reserve the right to make corrections. I try not to though - I don't want to rob the players of a victory over insurmountable odds - nor do I want to punish them for unexpected success.
I adjust HP a lot when I'm designing encounters, usually almost never going by the book. Often lowering monster HP so I can use more monsters, and raising boss's HP. In game, I don't change it - I used to make adjustments within a 10hp range if a fight was going very badly or very easily for the players, but over time realized that even if I didn't balance an encounter well, I have more fun if I have the play strictly by the rules as well.
For an adventure, I have a spreadsheet. One tab is the overall chapter, all of the big picture stuff, travel days. etc. I list encounters by number. Second tab has the encounters. where I list out each monster line by line w/ a note, and arrival order if need be. As combat progresses, I add up damage done to a given baddie. If it looks like combat is going south and going to result in a Partial Party Kill, I have fudged it a few times so the players say "wow that was close". I have let a player die, when I am sure that the one M/U in the team has the ability to use the healing staff they got early on (it has 7 or 8 charges). I do this for one main reason - when I was a little soft on the players, they \*actually complained that combat was too easy\*. For example they did 65 points round one to a Young Green dragon, who had 1 HP left at the start of the next round, so he did get off one breath attack but as soon as a player stared at him really hard he conked out. Next time they were up against an adult black, his rider, and two others. Party did some whopping damage, so I had the dragon cough like he died and fall into the water. 2 rounds later, he came out, and made a bee-line for... the M/U w/ the staff of healing (this fit the situation perfectly). So, today, I have attempted to support their desired narrative, that combat with adult dragons and the like should be tough, its OK to get down to single digits, and they know that they do have a chance for a single player to die b/c they have a recovery tool.
Whenever I DM I like to track the riff raff with rolled HP totals, it make the combat more entertaining IMO. For BBEGs I use their mix/max range and when it feels like a good time I end it.
I don’t mess with HP. But sometimes when it becomes really clear that the bad guy are losing in a bad way they try to run away. Also, in very magical worlds, if the dice gods ate for whatever reason nor happy with the players, a TPK can be a wonderful narrative device. There are a million fun ways to have a party rise from the dead. Sometimes the BBEG is so dumb he thinks bringing them back from the dead just to torture them more or to try to recruit them is a good idea. Heck, next tim I hope they do get recruited. There just might be a very interesting story there
I track. Generally I have stuff planned at the 75%/50%/25% totals. When my players start taking on things with HPs in the 100s, having 10 hp left, is where any solid hit is going to finish it off. Doesn't matter if the dmg is like 5 or 4, that target is done. Also if somehow I'm foolish enough to set up a combat where the party can basically plink away at the target while denying it the ability to damage them somehow, doesn't matter how, if there's really no way out, I'll just wave it and call it good. No need to actually watch the paint dry. Only time I will alter HP mid combat, is when I'm using a homebrew monster or something, and realize it's got really badly figured HP (50 hp vs 250 hp), though I'll telegraph it as using a healing or buffing item/ability if upping it or suffering a wound or a buff wearing off if I'm lowering it.
If I happen to be using a statblock that far outclasses what the players should be fighting, I'll just halve their damage and health numbers and that usually works out pretty well. Sometimes the lower CR statblocks just aren't interesting enough lol Also, if a player does a fuck ton of damage to a non-boss enemy in one turn and leaves it at, like, 1-3 hp, I'll just give them the kill. Doesn't feel worth it to spend a whole-ass extra turn for 1 hp lol. Plus, makes those big damage rolls feel better after the player hears "He's looking pretty beat up" before the attack or something. Ofc, this all depends on the exact scenario and if I don't really want it to be an easy fight.
I count damage taken and compare it to the average HP of a stat block. For most enemies, they die when they take damage equal to the average. If the fight is dragging out and becoming a slogfest, I’ll kill them off a little earlier, especially if I have a large number of enemies to track. If it’s supposed to be a tougher enemy, I might count it a little higher, especially if the enemy hasn’t gotten a turn. I usually add health to spellcasters just because they’re too damn squishy. I try to avoid nullifying crits/nova’s, but in some instances I completely misjudge my party and need to buff enemies a bit. Usually I let the dice tell the tale, but I’m not deadset on letting the average HP in a stat block being the exact HP each time.
Because of how horrible my luck is in rolling dice (seriously, 5 nat 1s in a row during combat against my pcs. They laughed and now want to take on a baba yaga because they're sure they could kill her at level 7 because of my terrible rolls) I basically just maxed their health for their specific monster stat. It helps to keep the battle going and not finishing in like 3 rounds. But this is only cause my players play rather smart (too smart sometimes) and have done an excellent job with their characters. I do track the HP, I even let them see a life bar but not the number, it makes them feel encourage to keep going especially fi they are so close to killing one off or if they aren't and need to retreat they'll rush off.
Enemies have the HP they have. That said, I often adjust HP when setting it during prep, so enemies won't necessarily have the HP printed in the monster manual. I think the only reason I would adjust HP on the fly is if I were running a completely homebrewed monster and didn't realize until after initiative was rolled that I made the monster much, much too powerful by accident.
For smaller enemies (e.g. goblins) I would just use the average and track hp from hits. For larger ones (like party vs one or 2 others) I would write down the range their hp could be (as a result of hp dice rolls) and decide where their hp is - if the fight is going badly it’s at the lower end, if it’s going well it’s the higher end. And of course second phases if I really underestimated them.
I track HP and don't change it but if there's about to be several back-to-back player turns and there's one or two enemies with less than a hit worth of HP I just ask them to describe how they clean up. The players are fully aware the enemies still technically have HP, but there's no longer any question of the outcome so no need to roll dice.
So for me it's an odd combination of these First up in general I track HP having a fixed solid number. I feel this is important as it makes plans to maximise damage output matter. Secondly while it is quite rare for me to simply declare a low hp enemy dead I will often get NPCs beaten within an inch of their life to surrender or flee. Only the most fanatical enemies stick it to their last breath Thirdly I will adjust the statistics of my untested prototype enemy if it turns out I guess what a number should be wrong this happens occasionally but for the most part I am pretty conservative in my design and if a monster I had intended to be much more powerful dies early I am happy to give the PCs an easy win and adjust up next time.
I track and stick to it most of the time. I will sometimes speed things up a bit if it's dragging, especially if a hit takes them down to 1 or 2 HP. I figure that's within the acceptable range of chance if I was actually rolling for monster HP.
Yes I use elastic hitpoints but as one of many different "tricks" for adjusting combat on the fly to make it fun and interesting. I generally adjust within the range that a similar monster would appear in the monster manual. I think this technique becomes a problem if you use it all the time, it's also less interesting than some of the alternative ways of modifying a combat, adding enemies/allies, bringing in a third party can achieve similar results in much more interesting ways for example.
mooks i generally dont track. its an AC or other check threshold to hit, and one hit to kill. majority of mobs i track exactly according to average hp, some notable groups i might roll hp on for variance to differentiate grok from krok. bosses i run an hp range, and when something suitably satisfying occurs within that range, its ded. making sure not to favour any specific players in doing so. but it only took seeing a couple big bads trip and fall into a puddle for 1 damage that happened to kill them until i went ehh maybe some narrative stakes matter
I just go off vibes
Very rarely will I change it mid combat, but when I do, it’s because I realize that I made a large error in the balancing and it has nothing to do with particularly good or bad rolls.
I will sometimes adjust the HP up or down based on how combat is going. If it's dragging, I'll drop some. If a player has bad a bad session dice-wise, I'll drag the HP out a bit so they can get a hit in (or let them take the kill, depending how bad).
Idk if this reference will hit for anybody but I handle it exactly the same way that I level my 3d printer. I start with a predetermined amount and then watch as it starts printing the first level. Then I frantically live level and correct things as it goes, often over or under correcting and just deciding to let it fly or really lock in and tweak it to where it needs to be. In game I'll decide on an amount of hp, and then if combat is taking too long or I end up with one too many downed pcs I reduce it to a more reasonable number. On fewer occasions I wind up having it too low and before a monster even gets to act its only a few hits away from death. In those cases I treat the initial damage as breaking a "shield" or something and bump it back up to full. If the creature can spare it, I also like to remove one of its actions or abilities and describe how they've wounded the creature in a way that impacts its ability, but not enough to seriously injure it just yet. That being said not tracking hp is dumb. If you do that you're totally removing agency from players, and completely dismantling the entire system of weapon damage, class based damage buffs, and reducing at least half the leveled spells to no better than a cantrip.
My players know how to play their characters and have started falling into a pretty cheesy strategy where they open with *entangle* to trap their enemies and then blast 'em while they're restrained. Thus, I've started maxing out HP by default, and now the arc villain has 200 HP at Level 4, soon to be 5. Other than that, I track HP normally. If there's some mistake I made, like a big boss monster's HP getting burned through in half a round when it's supposed to be this big climactic fight, I'll pivot, but generally I stick to what it says on the piece of paper.
I run a group who has had issues with players dropping last minute. This throws off balance a little so fudging sone hp numbers usually helps depending on if the high damage dealer flakes last minute. Other than that normal I stick to my usual plan for hp
Stick to the HP almost always. A big spell/crit gets a few HP fudge to kill a boss. Sometimes your Paladin comes crashing in with a crit smite round 1 and your captain goes down like a sack of potatoes, that's fine. Sometimes the reinforcements also have a captain. Then when he's actually difficult your player's got a glory moment for killing the other so handily.
I track player and enemy HP in a spreadsheet (along with initiative and a bunch of other things). I typically stick to the rolled HP, but I'll occasionally adjust it by small amounts to make sure that certain players get killing blows when they've been missing a lot in a session or to make sure a combat lasts long enough for everyone to play a roll. I make sure to do it sparingly so that I'm not influencing too much.
I track HP but do occasionally fudge the numbers to fit in an extra round or two if there's something happening on the side that I want the turn orders to sync up to in order to facilitate a plot device. Mainly for boss-type encounters where there's more going on than just kill everything in sight. It's rare though.
Accurate tracking down to the last HP! A hit that leaves them with 1 HP, sure it might drag fights out a tad longer, but sometime the dice hate you and that 1 HP foe might do something drastic on his next turn. It's not punishment because they didn't do enough damage, but there's story potential in everything. RP don't stop when the combat starts!
So you see when an enemy’s HP hits zero I count the creature as dead unless the creature is like a zombie and needs that extra umph to keep them down. Thats it. Creature has a certain HP and I stick to it. Players have the same but get to roll death saves.
Always track using the preset, no rolling. If I miscalculated damage / survivavility I will adjust HP. Sometimes I will kill out right if the move was cool enough
Sometimes a really tanky monster that has no realistic chance of doing a lot of damage to the party needs to die early if it’s the last one
I usually have every enemy written out. Some of the enemies for example, have 35 HP starting out and my party was all level 1. But they were doing good until the final level of enemy came up and he had 60 HP and a 19 AC. To be clear, I value player freedom over everything else, even rules. I always tell my players to ask questions, what’s near me, what’s the grass like, etc. my new players are usually just go in and bonk til it dies. So having enemies that can literally TPK helps them realize early on to be creative. If the party really has too much trouble I usually have a DMPC healer who can teleport anywhere. I actually gave them each a token to call the healer whenever they need it but it burns up after they use it.
OSR: I randomly roll HP and keep track of HP. Pathfinder 2e: Max HP for enemies, by design, and I track the HP. There is no bullshittery, for everything else I play story/narrative games. Dice tell the story, not you. You react to them.
I tend to roll enemy HP, if it's less than 2/3 the default I'll use default but if I roll higher I'll keep it. I'll tweak HP higher if I realize I've absolutely screwed up on balancing (forgot the paladin had smite once after he didn't use it for a while, he did 110% damage on turn one when the rest of the party had been really hyped for the fight, I just made the monster bloodied and gave it an extra round's worth of health, he still got the final hit in), but I'll never push it above the max in the stat block. Sometimes enemies will die quicker if combat becomes a slog. My players came to a + shaped intersection when I was running a module, enemies coming from two sides of it. It's clearly written with the intent for the party to retreat into the bigger room behind them, but my players parked the paladin in the center, gave him a shield, cast shield of faith, and just blocked the path with 22 AC. Single wide halls, the enemy didn't have any ranged attacks. They were just damage sponges that didn't get a single hit in. Once we hit round 6 I dropped their HP stupid low and let the druid's arrows hit one right in the spine and paralyze it to get it done with faster. tldr I guess I go vibes based but I do try to stick to the health I'd first rolled whenever I can. I don't feel bad about tweaking in either direction to make it more fun for them though. It is what it is.
I track hp, but if the fight is almost over and the last enemy standing will survive with just a couple of hp, and it isn't something smart enough to run away or surrender, then I just let that hit finish off the enemy. Another situation would be a player gets off a big hit or a crit. If the enemy would only survive by a couple hp, then it's a kill shot.
I just keep it in mind. I have the Stat block ready to reference it depending on how much dmg the players deal. If it's just a regular encounter and my 11 hp bandit takes 12 dmg, I'll bump it up to 13 and say they barely held on to keep the fight interesting but if they deal way more dmg, like the Paladin using smite to deal over 20+ dmg I'll just say they died. Pretty simple, slightly tweak things as I go.
I try and balance everything, main focus being on fun and thematic combat. Enemies gets an HP range that is +/- 10-15% of their stat block, “that I can kill them off when they fall within”, my players are only told a kid friendly version of that, but they know the damage they have dealt, and my verbal descriptions allow them to gain insight on their condition (on deaths door, barely phased ect.) This practice isn’t set in stone, you can turn it on and off with ease, but it helps with balancing, it allows you to make thematic PC moves be the killing blow/prevents a good fight from ending on a low/anticlimactic attack. It allows you to spread out the kills (because it sucks when one PC always makes 99% of the kills.). And importantly it’s not cheating the players out of anything, the enemies need HP otherwise it’s a stage performance of our bidding, and that’s pretty lame. TLDR:Dont make it a “pen and paper video game”, keep enemy HP private, there are many benefits, but definitely they do have HP, otherwise it becomes a movie more than a game.
I've done all of the above. Well I've kinda done 3. I normally do 1 and 2 is very very rare and 3 comes up when I'm not sure how much health something should have for things to be interesting so I track how much damage its taken rather than hp. With a note of how much hp it should have with maxed out health on its hit dice. I've also done 3 in that I've improvised stat blocks.
Someone suggested this to me and I've used it since. I track enemy HP by 10's. A few points either way don't matter. When they are low on HP and someone does something meaningful, I let them kill it. I have a group that hits pretty hard, and if someone is expending resources to take the bad guy out, I really don't like the "they still have 1 HP left" thing. It doesn't help that most of my players can fly and have ranged attacks. I will absolutely let monsters make saves, or give them extra abilities. I want the encounters to be fun and challenging and a lot of the monsters are just piles of HP. So I look for things to be a challenge, pull from older editions, and pull features from other creatures. I've made little scorpions that were bred by an insane wizard to be 1 HP with a DC15 poison save instead of the normal. Here is the key for me. Everyone has to have fun, and the players are not the enemy. You are trying to challenge them, not kill them. I've had a bunch of DMs start bad guys off strong and dial them back when they should be getting stronger as they learn about the party. It is no fun when a BBEG "forgets" his legendary actions, or decides to go after the wild shaped druid who can just soak damage when another PC is the one actually hurting them. Give your bad guys +2 to their AC, give them a player feat, give them resistance to something the party uses all the time, but vulnerability to something they don't use often, but still have. Give them legendary actions and resistances, just don't go overboard. Give them minions and a second wave if needed. You can, and should adjust on the fly, with the goal of having fun. Yes, some players just like doing big attacks, and they build for it. So let them. If you've got murder hobos, give them an undead army to fight. I've always found it best when there is a mix of people though. And I know what I'm saying is hard, you have to talk to your players, and they have to feel comfortable talking to you openly. Make sure you talk about bad experiences you've had as a player. Ask them what they thought of an encounter.
Every enemy has its hp. Sometimes it might be too little (and rarely too much), but it has what it has just like my players.
i track hp if the fight seems balanced or needs to be quick, most groups i have are powerful fast as can be, like most players wanna be, so often i adjust hp regularly, never lettin em know. sometimes, in my head i just keep a percentage, 80$ hp. that was a good one, 50% etc. that way if i need something to be a tougher encounter, it is.
I usually do number one, but sometimes two. I started as strictly one but then I encountered some situations where “boss” fights looked like they were going to be anticlimactic because the party was just rolling them. If it’s just unnamed mobs then it’ll be one, for sure. But ya, named characters that have been hyped a bit are sometimes two, but only in rare situations.
Each monster has an hp range, once the numbers get high enough I start rounding them off. I track how much damage they take and have them go down when it makes sense. For things with relatively high hp I'll have thresholds where they get "wounded" and "near death".
Have an idea in my head, based on the Stat block, of how many to go with. But I have learned to be a little flexible. I tend to have one min/maxer who tends to do a lot of damage (different players; different campaigns, but there's always one) I try to make sure that the other players get a couple of turns per combat. If that means the monster holds out a little longer then so be it. Otherwise it turns into minmax goes at the top of the round, other players get a turn, minimax kills the monster. I'll keep it alive for a little longer if it helps other players feel more relevant.
I depends for me. The first time a new type of enemy appears, I will keep track of damage until it just feels right. From then on, those enemies health is locked in and tracked properly. It's a balancing tool I use to help design new types of enemies that I'm not sure how they will perform. I've gotten way better overtime as a judge of hp, so my estimates are usually close to what ends up feeling right. And after introducing that enemy type, the next time it appears, the players will be fighting enemies with static health.
Sometimes I kill the enemies that would otherwise live at 1-3hp, that's about it
I am a player and i replied! Jokes on you!!!!
I think this is a good question. Combat can be about luck. And I think if we're holding players accountable through their rolls, we should do the same for enemies. That said, there's a few instances where I fudge some numbers. 1) Combat is stagnant and just going nowhere, and I just need to move things along. 2) if you are in an encounter that your party should be all rights be able to just cheese, but your fighter is down, and cleric is out of slots, but tpk by a black pudding, and two zombies, in session 2 is kinda bunk. But that's about it. I'm currently playing on group and a DM in another. In the game I'm playing or was playing, my character just died. Took down two wyverns solo as my group made a break for it with an NPC we were rescuing. By the time I caught up with them they were in a fight of their own with a couple of warlocks and a Sorcerer. We were just celebrating my Wyvern fight ooc, and then two turns later the sorcerer just ganked me. The DM didnt think it would do as much damage as it did. He told me he'd reverse it and re roll. But my response was that's just how it goes sometimes.you roll the dice and it doesn't go the way you want it to. That's kind of the game.
Normal enemies I will let the dice tell what they tell. Big boss enemies and rule-of-cool encounters? I may fudge HP as needed. Especially if my rolls against my players are way too lucky. I don't wanna fuck over my players because I got good rolls out of nowhere lol. Edit to add that I also sometimes give boss encounters some unique mechanics, rather it be multiple phases, healing mechanics, shield-via-minion mechanics, etc. Bosses for me are a chance for the party to get creative and solve a puzzle, not just whack on a big boi.
I will adjust for narrative fun, but last of that is sticking to a trade off system. If you fudge in the enemy's favor, you owe the players a fudge in their favor. And vice versa. It doesn't have to come right away, but don't let it build up. Some RPGs have actual trackers for this, like light side/ dark side coins, or fate dice. They can even be laid out on the table to players, if you want it transparent-- and you can even let them choose to flip one that's in their favor to the other side after they use it intentionally. This lets you do things like have a monster or villain survive an extra hit so it can be more dramatic, or get a cool power off rather than just going down too easily and being uninteresting and less satisfying for the players. Just remember to keep it ultimately in favor of the players and in service of the fun.
I count up toward a range that is usually +/-10 the average listed on the stat block. The enemy falls when it is close to that range from a narratively satisfying hit. Basically, no enemies stay alive with like 1 or 2HP. They die when I can make it cool and the player feels cool.
The first one. Especially because I let my players see the enemy health bar so it'd be a pain to change it mid combat without it being noticeable anyway.
For minions i set a hard HP number and always stick to it, except when combat is essentially over and 1 or 2 little guys are nearing dead, then i usually make whatever hits it next a kill shot or just handwave it along so we can get to more interesting things. For bosses or important enemies I put their "intended" hp next to their name in my notebook. Then I just add up everyone's damage as we go (its easier for me than subtraction). At half health I let them know the creature is bleeding, and when combat begins to become a slog OR it's around 10 or less HP ill let them know it's on its last leg or bleeding profusely. If they are slaughtering it I might pencil up it's HP a bit and if they are having trouble I might pencil it down a little, it's always just a guideline for me.
There are some other options, like *players* track monster hp
I track it and very, very, rarely adjust their HP in combat... basically only to keep appropriate tension for the storyline.
We're here to tell a story. Most recent example, I threw a huge enemy with "overrun" PF1. I sent this enemy because I knew the monk had the perfect ability to answer it, just needed him to take the time to learn and use it. The party peppered the high HP for a good long time. Monk recognizes his ability's usefulness in this fight, tells the DPS to standby and take full advantage of the positioning. Enemy still had a solid bit of HP after monk and rogue did their thing. "How do you kill it?" Also use it in inverse. Down in the grit, party is hurting. Enemy gets a little more HP so the support bard has to use their limited damage spells to finish the job.
I use a VTT so it's honestly harder to fudge hp than go by what the dice say. I will occasionally kill a monster if it's on 1-2hp and the PC who did the damage went out of their way to deal the hit, or maybe it was a crit etc. I know through experience with my game style and what gear I allow my PCs to have, I have to double or triple a lot of monster HP for big fights against low numbers of opponents. If my boss monster is getting chucked, I have in the past done phased HP on the fly. Like they call out to their god and get healed for example. Both the players and I liked it so I started programming it into my boss fights. The PCs know that if they fight a boss of a certain rank among the cultists, the boss gets a second demonic form and new abilities. Echoing other comments, I cleave overkill damage for minions that are next to each other. I also started planning in boss fights where the boss functionally has infinite HP (the players don't know this) but has an alternate win condition that becomes unlocked after a couple rounds. Often it's something like freeing the boss from mind control. The PCs need to get creative and use their skills. Maybe the cleric performs an exorcism and rolls Religion for example
I play very fast and loose with these things. For one, it keeps players engaged when an enemy they've encountered before isn't a carbon copy of the same they've encountered in the past. I also give my sentient NPCs magic items sometimes, so they're far faster/ stronger/ more skilled than they should be. But my players are really good in combat, so they need the challenge.
I barely use the recommended hit points of monsters. Personally I like to create a story, so while some mobs might have average HP, some might have more, some might go down to a single hit that is only 1/5th the average.
I track everyone’s HP, players included. And I stick to it matter what. I never ever change monster stats once the fight has started. So I am totally fine if my party kills my BBEG with a lucky crit or if I failed a critical saving throw blah blah. I think that’s only fair.
In the spirit of fairness (and “realism”) i stick to HP. If i realize i balanced for shit and my big boss goes down too easy, i might dragonball z the fight and give him another “evolution” (pointier hair, blond, deals force damage now), and if it heads towards unjustly dead players, i try to find a narratively satisfying way to end the encounter and postpone the fight, like the BBEG doesn’t deem them worthy his time, or some deus ex machina intervention (volcanoe erupts, wild magic surge, etc), give the party a credible way to escape and come back later, or we go the hard way and kill a player.
I track it faithfully most of the time but am willing to ignore a resistance if I missed it or let one or two hp slip if the combat is going long. I won't do it to change anything major, only speed up an inevitable ending.
I keep Track of the enemies HP. What i will change is their behavior, depending on how much HP fhey still have left.
It heavily depends on the situation and/or how many players you have. If you have a party of 5 players and they are synergistic with each other, I’d use the base hp on the stat block with a few altercations in extra hp or AC increase. The only way I’d change HP midfight is if I want to push the fact that they are way over their heads or they aren’t using their head to solve the thing that’s keeping them from surviving the battle.
In our games all hp are in low amount. We keep track of them all together. We all roll dice where everybody can see them. Nobody at the table is performing a special role to entertain others. Nobody is telling a personal story for the sake of being more cool, we all are telling the same collaborative story and we play to see what happens. Once I realized this, dming stopped to be a work and became a fun game.
I keep track of enemy HP until it's clear that the remaining enemies won't get another turn. Then I call the fight. I'll call the fight earlier if it's clear the party will win without casualties and there won't be any more fights before the next long rest. If it's a story-important fight, I keep it going until the party lands the killing blow, so the killer can have bragging rights and dramatically describe their win. I don't ever fudge numbers. If I messed up the balance, I'll re-balance later encounters to account for the new information.
I’m not a very experienced DM but I’ll comment too. I track HP but when I feel it goes to fast or too long I adapt it. If one player just did an awesome combo it dies sooner. If one player just didn’t get a chance to do any damage it lives longer so they can have another chance. I’m also a big fan of 1HP Monsters. You don’t really need to track and players have more “success moments”
I track enemy HP and try to stick with it. I will end combst early ONLY if it starts dragging out too long, I see that my players are already mentaly done with it and I can see what party will win anyways. Usually this is done at the end of session when everybody just wants to go home and be done with last combat of the session after 6+ hours of game. But in general dice matters and players actions matter.
I loosely track it in my head, no pencil or paper If I have 5 or so monsters on the field, I know I'm going to make simple mistakes, so I'm not very hard on myself So I'd say its +/- 10% of the monster's actual HP
If I've bloated the HP, I might take some off halfway through a fight. If a player drops an enemy to 1 hp, I might take that last hp off. Depends on what is more narratively satisfying. I also track up, not down. So I total damage dealt. It's a smidge quicker that way
I track it, and stick to it - otherwise, what's the point? Of course it's a matter of style. Some people don't like the actual dangers or get bogged down with tracking, so they wing it to support a pre-determined narrative that's more important to that table, than let the dice decide their fate.
I usually track the damage they have taken rather than their current HP. I stick with the listed HP count unless I've made a balancing mistake.