Another vote for counting up. Addition is easier than subtraction.
My piece of paper for tracking the monster looks something like this: Thornwhip (325): 244458647989 112
As for the health metadata, my table uses triage terms. Anyone can look at a combatant (PC or non PC) and tell its health is GREEN (over half health left), YELLOW (below half) or RED (probably going down in the next hit). Players are not allowed to tell each other the HP numbers at the table - just the colour.
We use almost the same, except ours say "I'm good (lost less than a third), I'm a bit bashed up (middle third), I'm looking hurt (lower than a third)," and finally "I'm about to collapse" when in single digits.
That's for in combat though, outside of combat I don't really mind that when distributing healing spells my players say "On a scale of one to eighty-three, I probably look about twenty-six" because I think it's a bit punishing on the two healers if they blow their spell slots on uncertainty.
We use Roll20 maps even when we play in person, using a big screen, and for some encounters I just show the monster hit points. The players will take on a zeppelin in the next session which has 500 hit points and I want them to be able to see how effective their attacks are (probably not that effective! They are better off boarding it or taking on the crew). I also plan to show the final bosses' hit points in the last encounter of the campaign - it has 720. So I activate the health bars and let the players see them. That way they'll know how they're doing, and that I can't fix the hit points mid-battle.
Also I want them to look at 720 hit points and think "Holy crap."
I saw a tee-shirt once, it said "I'm 8th level, I have 157 hit points, and a bad attitude." Near as I can figure, they must have had a heck of a Con bonus. Takes a score of no less than 28 to get there for a Barbarian, and they had great rolls.
What does that have to do with anything? Well, the initial question was asked and answered, but the thread goes on, so why not discuss monster hit points a bit. Monsters are, and always have been, things the players were supposed to defeat. Not necessarily kill, but overcome somehow, and usually monsters weren't about to surrender. The game has come rather a long way. Now you deal with things that might be evil, but don't always have to act that way, and things that are good that you still have to kill sometimes, like a fanatic to an arguably good cause.
So how many Hit Points should a monster have? This is the guideline I plan to use. They give you a number, and they give you a range, so if they have no particular importance to the story, I leave them at the number. That's normal animals, common minions, whatever. That stuff is supposed to die pretty easy, and in my games I don't even bother to roll anything, I can just gloss over the fight. The Necromancer's horde of undead is just like that unless there is more than about 12 of them. The Necromancer himself needs a total, minor bosses need one as well. For anything under a medium level encounter, that's about where it stays, I keep them inside the range they have, and maybe put them at max. Anything vital to my story, and that's the BBEG ought to have more. In this case, I decide based on my required level of challenge, and it's got fairly little to do with the listed CR for monsters, those need to be more like player characters, and they get full benefit from their Con and as much more as I feel comfortable with. That's for a Deadly fight, the kind where all the characters might die, and it's going to take heroic effort and great tactics to bring the BBEG down. I see D&D as a game that does Heroic Fantasy best of all.
So if I was having trouble, and kept blurting out the numbers, oh well, I'd adapt. I'd go right ahead and have all hit point totals shown for everyone, and let people know exactly what they were doing so they could base their tactics from there. It's a legitimate style of play, and as long as everyone is having fun, there is no wrong way to play D&D. I get puzzled when I suggest something and people jump all over me about it. Why exactly is how I like to play the game wrong? Sometimes people are able to make valid points, and I do try to listen to good advice. I can be hard headed, but eventually, I'll listen.
When I generate a player character's score, I have found that the most popular way to do it is some version of random rolls. The really old school players take 3d6, roll them, get a total, do this in order, and make a character from there, and that is a perfectly valid way for an old school game. Some people miss that. They have fond memories of those long ago games and they love the challenge of making the best of low numbers or cheering when they get a high score. Whatever is fun for everyone. That's the only thing that matters. I'll let the players generate their scores however they like. They can pick anything right out of the air and put it down in whatever order they like, and I'll deal with it. I have a simple rule of my own for dealing with problem characters and players.
The second most popular system was point buy. Honestly, it makes mediocre characters to start with, and requires some ASI's before it starts to click, and I've been in a game where I used point buy, and nobody else did. The DM was in a hurry to get me into the game, she forgot to tell me anything about her game, and I made a very weak character by comparison when we first got started. She's been very nice and let me change pretty much everything other than my base class trying to accommodate me. I'm sure if I'd asked to play a different class, she'd have been fine with that too, but they needed a tank, and they still do.
I'll be happy to tell you anything more you like. Send me a private message, but be warned, I tend to give way too much detail when anyone asks me any question at all.
What's wrong with people knowing how many hit points a monster has left? When the players do damage at least you have to know how many points they did. It is fair to hide something from them that they have to tell you?
Intelligent tactics requires that you have some way of knowing how bad off your enemy is. Technically, in D&D at this point, nobody is wounded physically at all until they drop down to zero. If you have a habit of letting the information slip out, just go ahead and let everyone know all hit point totals, including the other characters in the party. The healers will know who needs help the most, the warrior types will know which monsters to concentrate on, there's nothing wrong with that style of play as long as everyone is having fun.
Knowing how much HP a creature has is metagaming. Creatures have a potential range of HP based on their hit dice, so knowing that Dragon [X] started with 291 HP and that Dragon [Y] started with 307 should not be a given. Even if (and I would say especially if) you use the fixed HP number, players shouldn't be making tactics based on a creature having a certain number of hitpoints remaining, at least not directly.
For one of my campaigns my players know the hit points of all the monsters, we usually leave the monster manual open in the middle of the table, mainly because they are all experienced DMs who between them know most of the information anyway and guess what, it doesn’t affect the fun at all, they don’t focus on what is left and instead just roleplay there way through the combat. I usually roll the hit points up so there is a little bit of unknown but generally they just have all the information to hand, it isn’t meta gaming, meta gaming is saying I know who the big bad is so my character does, or I know how to get to space so my character does. these characters are experienced fighters who can tell if a monster is on its last legs or not, who have heard stories round camp fires of how tough a troll is, or how long it took to kill a beholder. I really don’t see the problem with players knowing this information after DMing for 25+ years there are better ways of surprising players then making them guess at how many hit points a monster has.
We use almost the same, except ours say "I'm good (lost less than a third), I'm a bit bashed up (middle third), I'm looking hurt (lower than a third)," and finally "I'm about to collapse" when in single digits.
That's for in combat though, outside of combat I don't really mind that when distributing healing spells my players say "On a scale of one to eighty-three, I probably look about twenty-six" because I think it's a bit punishing on the two healers if they blow their spell slots on uncertainty.
We use Roll20 maps even when we play in person, using a big screen, and for some encounters I just show the monster hit points. The players will take on a zeppelin in the next session which has 500 hit points and I want them to be able to see how effective their attacks are (probably not that effective! They are better off boarding it or taking on the crew). I also plan to show the final bosses' hit points in the last encounter of the campaign - it has 720. So I activate the health bars and let the players see them. That way they'll know how they're doing, and that I can't fix the hit points mid-battle.
Also I want them to look at 720 hit points and think "Holy crap."
I saw a tee-shirt once, it said "I'm 8th level, I have 157 hit points, and a bad attitude." Near as I can figure, they must have had a heck of a Con bonus. Takes a score of no less than 28 to get there for a Barbarian, and they had great rolls.
What does that have to do with anything? Well, the initial question was asked and answered, but the thread goes on, so why not discuss monster hit points a bit. Monsters are, and always have been, things the players were supposed to defeat. Not necessarily kill, but overcome somehow, and usually monsters weren't about to surrender. The game has come rather a long way. Now you deal with things that might be evil, but don't always have to act that way, and things that are good that you still have to kill sometimes, like a fanatic to an arguably good cause.
So how many Hit Points should a monster have? This is the guideline I plan to use. They give you a number, and they give you a range, so if they have no particular importance to the story, I leave them at the number. That's normal animals, common minions, whatever. That stuff is supposed to die pretty easy, and in my games I don't even bother to roll anything, I can just gloss over the fight. The Necromancer's horde of undead is just like that unless there is more than about 12 of them. The Necromancer himself needs a total, minor bosses need one as well. For anything under a medium level encounter, that's about where it stays, I keep them inside the range they have, and maybe put them at max. Anything vital to my story, and that's the BBEG ought to have more. In this case, I decide based on my required level of challenge, and it's got fairly little to do with the listed CR for monsters, those need to be more like player characters, and they get full benefit from their Con and as much more as I feel comfortable with. That's for a Deadly fight, the kind where all the characters might die, and it's going to take heroic effort and great tactics to bring the BBEG down. I see D&D as a game that does Heroic Fantasy best of all.
So if I was having trouble, and kept blurting out the numbers, oh well, I'd adapt. I'd go right ahead and have all hit point totals shown for everyone, and let people know exactly what they were doing so they could base their tactics from there. It's a legitimate style of play, and as long as everyone is having fun, there is no wrong way to play D&D. I get puzzled when I suggest something and people jump all over me about it. Why exactly is how I like to play the game wrong? Sometimes people are able to make valid points, and I do try to listen to good advice. I can be hard headed, but eventually, I'll listen.
When I generate a player character's score, I have found that the most popular way to do it is some version of random rolls. The really old school players take 3d6, roll them, get a total, do this in order, and make a character from there, and that is a perfectly valid way for an old school game. Some people miss that. They have fond memories of those long ago games and they love the challenge of making the best of low numbers or cheering when they get a high score. Whatever is fun for everyone. That's the only thing that matters. I'll let the players generate their scores however they like. They can pick anything right out of the air and put it down in whatever order they like, and I'll deal with it. I have a simple rule of my own for dealing with problem characters and players.
The second most popular system was point buy. Honestly, it makes mediocre characters to start with, and requires some ASI's before it starts to click, and I've been in a game where I used point buy, and nobody else did. The DM was in a hurry to get me into the game, she forgot to tell me anything about her game, and I made a very weak character by comparison when we first got started. She's been very nice and let me change pretty much everything other than my base class trying to accommodate me. I'm sure if I'd asked to play a different class, she'd have been fine with that too, but they needed a tank, and they still do.
I'll be happy to tell you anything more you like. Send me a private message, but be warned, I tend to give way too much detail when anyone asks me any question at all.
<Insert clever signature here>
Put up a posted note saying "Shut Your Yap You Are About To Give Away the Stat!"
Seriously though put up a posted note as a reminder and somewhere you will always see it.
For one of my campaigns my players know the hit points of all the monsters, we usually leave the monster manual open in the middle of the table, mainly because they are all experienced DMs who between them know most of the information anyway and guess what, it doesn’t affect the fun at all, they don’t focus on what is left and instead just roleplay there way through the combat. I usually roll the hit points up so there is a little bit of unknown but generally they just have all the information to hand, it isn’t meta gaming, meta gaming is saying I know who the big bad is so my character does, or I know how to get to space so my character does. these characters are experienced fighters who can tell if a monster is on its last legs or not, who have heard stories round camp fires of how tough a troll is, or how long it took to kill a beholder. I really don’t see the problem with players knowing this information after DMing for 25+ years there are better ways of surprising players then making them guess at how many hit points a monster has.
i let the players know the AC and HP of the monsters. If I am lucky, i talk someone else into tracking their damage while I running combat.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.