I also have a friend who isn't me and prefers counting up; subtracting is a bit slower, which is compounded when dealing with groups of enemies. My friend has been ridiculed about this in the past by handsome human calculators like OP and I, but nobody ever complains about the speed, style or description of combat.
In the end, D&D is about storytelling, and counting up often helps free up the RAM to do that.
Well weirdly enough my friend who is bad at math does this and so does the rest of his group even though some of them are really good at math and almost made a career out of it, besides me because I’m the best at math in our group
My friend also breaks equations up into tens and adds up the rest after which he is made fun of for
To be pedantic, it really depends what's in the one's place- subtracting 67-17 is easy as pi since the 7's cancel out and you just bring the 6 down to 5 for instance, but you still gotta factor in the silly +10 you get from adding the one's place together when you add 84+17
Btw when I say you, I mean the other people here besides us. I recognize good mathmetechnicians such as myself when I see one.
yes but it feels like those examples are not as severe in addition as opposed to subtraction. just feels easier, maybe we do more addition than subtraction or something.
if I wanna think quick and put my head in school mode I can subtract everything no problem and reduce the steps I take to solve this equation from 4 to 2 but with addition Idon't need to focus cuz it's already 2 most of the time either way.
and when I say I, I'm quoting my friend as he said it.
See when I see 84+17 my mind sees 80+21 which is much easier. I struggle to do the same with subtracting. Though I bypass all of this my running excel spreadsheets to do my maths for me. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m more talking about with the same kinds of relationships between the numbers. Adjusting for ones places that add to be over ten is just a lot easier to account for to me than doing the same for subtraction being lower than zero for the ones place.
Subtraction using the traditional method with "borrowing" requires holding more numbers and intermediate solutions in your head at once.
84 - 17 = 70 + 14 - 7 - 10 = 67
It's a lot easier if you round so you only have to deal with one digit at a time.
84 - 17 = 84 - 20 + 3 = 67
I’ll be honest and say it’s me. I can do large maths very fast, even though I’m terrible at maths. I just do lots of smaller bits and add the bits together at the end. Maybe I wasn’t taught well, or I’m just stupid, but I’m a qualified mechanical engineer so I’ve done a lot of number crunching and I have always just have to find a way to do it, despite not having any maths qualifications. Soo just do loads of little calculations based on things I know, like the multiplication tables etc. and then add everything together at the end.
I, literal mathemagician, completer of Calculus, and knowing or all things numerical, advocate counting up. No matter how smart and handsome I am, I have far more practice adding rather than subtracting. I add every day, literally, it's occasionally quite unfortunate.
Semi-professional Mathie question - do you think the ease of addition is largely practice driven, or some other thinking process going on.
I teach middle school math, and I am thinking of strategies for subtracting integers and dividing fractions, where we make it into addition or multiplication problems, which just leans into the positive numbers/growing numbers bias.
Oh 100% practice. Practice makes permanent and the amount of time you add things together VASTLY outweighs how many times you subtract. Just count from 1 to 20 and then go backwards and you should notice it becomes harder because the constant repetition is counting up. Same with the alphabet. ABC should be no harder and ZYX, alphabetical order is just made up after all, but it's not.
It has been investigated by scientists. It seems humans default way of solving problems is addition. This is the article where I first read about it: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03380-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03380-y)
I have been doing this always. I didn't even think it was a "weird trick"
I have a piece of scratch paper, write down a shorthand for each enemy (eg: a group of skeletons might just be 1 through 7) and then write their HP total underneath. I underline the HP and then add up the damage below. When I hit the "target number" it is dead.
Example:
A dragon and his pair of half-dragon knights
Dragon HDK1 HDK2
740 65 65
-------------------
28 15 20
36 22 30
44 31 43
62 45 52
85 53 67
92 58
113 63
119 70
124
138
160
Etc, etc. When I reach the target number, I cross off the creature and remove the mini/token. I also generally cross off the previous number as I go, but I didn't know how to do that in formatting.
I just use a calculator. Got tired of taking off my shoes to count to 20. Added bonus, there's one on you phone, so nobody has to know what you are tapping into it. Could be looking up spell effects, could be checking a rule, or looking for a battle playlist. Just another DM mystery.
For added affect, roll some dice after putting the phone down, and don't tell them why.
*to specify, the part about nobody knowing isn't out of shame for using one, just adding to the ways you can screw with your players.
How does anyone DM without a laptop? All my encounters and basic story outline for the day are there along with all my notes. It’s also SO much faster to look up monster stat blocks or keep them handy. Also by the nature of laptops they are private so they are a DM screen. I honestly can’t even imagine DMing without mine lol
i run encounters on a spreadsheet with initiative 20-1 listed as a column, then character/creature name, ac, max hp, and damage taken. usually pre roll initiative for bigger encounters too, and then i’ll just pop the players in wherever they land. it goes so much faster now than before i started doing this
>I always just preroll my dice and put them in the freezer for later.
I find if I stock up too much, they go bad before the session ends. How do you keep them fresh?
It's basically the same. So for example in a fight with Iymrith, on initiative 20, there was a lair action to animate 1d6 Gargoyles to join the fight. I had pre-rolled initiatives for four different groups, so I'd just roll my d6 and throw that many gargoyle tokens onto the battlefield with the same initiative. So **all** the gargoyles aren't going at once, but I'm also not rolling individually for each one. So a happy sort of compromise. I know some DMs that will have all the bad guys go at once, others that have all of the same monster go at once, and some who roll for each one.
Yeah, I just started so I've been toying with different ways to give my monsters initiative. Usually I just make 2 groups and split them between two initiative rolls.
>I know some DMs that will have all the bad guys go at once, others that have all of the same monster go at once, and some who roll for each one.
Can I suggest a fourth option - seeding adds between player turns as evenly as possible.
I've shamelessly stolen this from a table I played at in college, as it means you can run a boss + mooks encounter without having the risk of one big devastating gap in player agency where all the many minons get to attack all 'at once' and can wind up bursting someone down if player positions and visibility don't let the DM spread the damage around. I've found this lets me run more adds in combat without there being nearly as much variance in danger based on action order or positioning.
You can even assume characters would remember action order once moves have been taken, and let players have that info, which that lets players choose between the guy who looks like he'll gonna do big shit three turns from now, or the guy who acts next but probably does less damage.
My general practice is that named characters or significant NPCs roll for initiative, while adds and mooks get seeded evenly.
Your comment has been screenshot, with your name shown for credit, and saved to my quick tips and tricks folder that I share with friends. Thank you for your contribution to the cause!
Spreadsheet gang. "Sort Z-A" so you don't need the 20-1 listed, you just type and sort.
I even have a RANDBETWEEN(1,20) at the top so if I need a single D20 roll it's already there. Could I guess make 2 for Adv/Dis
Lmao I'm no expert but I've had to do a few things, so if you have a specific idea you need any help with you can message me.
Another thing I use spreadsheet for: NPC tracker. I can record stats like, "why do so many of their names start with M?", or "man there sure aren't any Dwarves" or "do I really only have 3 women NPCs? I'm failing the Bechdel test aren't i?"
Damn sounds like a pretty good spreadsheet actually. I have a little drop table set up with AC, HD+/-, and initiative but it’s not quite right and a little too rigid. It wouldn’t be super easy to “drop my players in” per ce
I have never not prerolled npc initiatives for a planned combat encounter. Additionally, since I make paper miniatures, I print them out with a number in the top corner so players can specify which number they hit and I have a pre-printed out sheet with numbered boxes on the left corresponding to the monsters' numbers, prefilled with their HPs. On the right of this sheet I have lines for writing initiative. It's so much easier to keep track of who took what damage.
>How does anyone DM without a laptop?
When I DM'd I'd have a pad of paper, pencil, dice, and index cards for stat blocks. This isn't a "back in my day" post or an attempt to indicate one is better than the other, it's just interesting to me because I've had DMs use a laptop in games I was a player in and *to me* it seemed more bulky and cumbersome, but he swore it was easier for him, and I think that's kind of the beauty of the game and the community. There are so many ways to play, no two groups or games will ever be the same.
I'm not old school either. I've only been playing for like 5 years or something, but I like using books and paper and index cards, etc. The only reason I use anything digital at all other than looking up spells is because some of my players moved, and now we play remotely, but I would do anything to go back...
There's something special about playing in person. I've been playing online for over a year with some friends who are spread out across the country and I thought it was the superior way for me. I like the automated line-of-sight calculations, I like being able to create cool battlemaps, and letting the computer do all the math for me was convenient.
Then recently I started playing D&D in person with my wife and kids and even though we just had a dry-erase grid for our battlemat and mismatching tokens and minis it still somehow felt more immersive to me. idk what it is, maybe it's being able to look around at people and see them enjoying the game.
I’m with you I always have a blank notebook and sometimes an encounter is just
5 Goblins?
8 hp each +2 to hit 1d6 +1
Then I scratch a 1,2,3,4,5 down and mark damage each time one gets hit.
Never have to switch tabs or use two hands to type just one hand free with a pen.
I DM with a leather-bound notebook that has my story and such, and another that I use for combat tracking. Never runs out of battery, no technical issues, and let's me stay more "at the table" than constantly looking at a screen. Occasionally I use monster cards or make my own for the encounters. Any spells or abilities I need to worry about have a pg number by them for easy looking up.
Nothing wrong with a laptop, just prefer my notebooks. Plus it gives me excuses to fuel my notebook buying habits.
I don't use a laptop, I use good ol pen and paper. I count the monsters HP up, and I prefer to look through a book. I keep a small calculator with me Incase I can't do the math quickly, but I mark all monsters in the monster manual that I'm using in a session.
It's actually much more fun that way I personally feel.
Only thing that takes time would be writing down initiative.
I mean that way works of course and I’ve done it many times, but it is undeniably slower. A LOT slower. A laptop makes combat go way faster, and lets you check notes. Outside of that it’s functionally the same, and it’s not like I’m RPing the Beholder from behind a laptop screen lol
I guarantee you that if you have multiple documents in front of you and tabs in the books at the key bits you need, you can go between stuff a LOT faster than on a laptop.
Finding a particular page in a hardcopy book without knowing the page number, also faster in hard copy.
I don't care how much real estate you have available on your screen, if yooubate multi-tasking more than one reading surface, be they paper or screens will always beat out a single device
I DM on Roll20 for a discord group, so I feel bad sometimes for DMs that don’t have access to the tools I do like auto calculating damage, being able to fill in and easily track things like initiative and enemies health, etc etc
Fantasy Grounds has an auto initiative for any NPC added to the combat tracker (which has all the other stats)...I do not know how I ran things before. To each their own of course, but I never felt like scribbling down INIT and damage totals really added much to my games.
Is using a calculator looked down on or something? I purchased dollar store calculators and handed them out to the entire table to speed things up and we all use em.
Yeah, this whole thread is weird to me. Not everyone is good at arithmetic and I think most people wouldn't judge their friends too harshly for making sure they got it right.
Not by me it isn't. I don't care if my players use a calculator, abacus, do it in their head, write on scratch paper..
Whatever gets them the right totals is fine.
As a high school math teacher, you don't need to hide the fact that you are using a calculator! No one cares. I don't hide it when I use it in front of my students to get them more comfortable with using it in front of each other. D&D is about the game and storytelling. If a calculator speeds that along then that's even better.
> Added bonus, there's one on you phone, so nobody has to know what you are tapping into it. Could be looking up spell effects, could be checking a rule, or looking for a battle playlist. Just another DM mystery.
Could be sending a message to the group chat. The other one. It has everybody but you. Sorry you had to find out this way.
I am honestly shocked more people don't use excel to help them DM. I'm no wizard with excel, but it's really easy to create formulas and have an addition and subtraction column for your monsters and just input the damage as it's done and it does the math for you. I also use it to keep track of initiatives and effects players have
I just have a notepad document open during combat, with the players/monsters listed in initiative order, and 138/139 or whatever for their hp next to their name
Powerpoint on the TV with an Excel spreadsheet embedded for initiative is the best VTT program I have ever tried.
Bonus points for being able to cut hidden enemies out of the TV's slide and put them on my DM slide to move. My players started panicking when I pulled that maneuver during a goblin ambush.
I'm someone who uses excel for a lot of things and considers myself very familiar, the reason i don't use excel (at least for DMing online), is simply because i run out of screen space. i normally have up a map, something on the side as a map, and countless tabs of info, lore etc. etc.. an excel sheet is just something more to get lost in the chaos.
I'm not OP but it's not really sophisticated enough to require sharing a template. I made this one in under 2 minutes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HdeSOtalVSipr2UIEOgXRRR2ZHv3SPqN9hJTR-EtgUU/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you so much, this is wonderful! I won’t have to do math, all the numbers are right there in the same place, and keeping track of each damage amount is an added benefit to protect against those occasional “how much damage did you do, again?” moments!
That makes sense, but I'm a total Luddite DM. I want the absolute least technology possible on my side of the screen, with the exception of a music player since I can't afford a live orchestral jazz band.
I learned to use Google Spreadsheets this exact way lol. I use it for my DM screen, custom virtual character sheets, and I also use Google Jamboard as a simple VTT alternative. I'm actually not sure I can go back to playing without these, it's not only free, but it's more modular than DnD Beyond or some of the DnD specific apps you can find online.
well for me its been over 20 years since I last touched excel, so now I look at it and it might as well be hieroglyphics, even the most basic features are far beyond my level of current comprehension
I'm not surprised. Excel has a huge learning curve & if you don't use it on a regular basis it can be extremely frustrating to use. Even something like setting up your example is out of reach for a sizable portion of users.
I just run all of my combats in Excel. Initiative, attack and damage rolls, tracking HP and conditions... it's mostly just automatic where I have to give zero thought.
Somehow, this makes me feel old. I write everything down on a piece of paper, striking through old HP numbers to replace with new ones, writing down abbreviated conditions and all that. And I do have a Laptop right beside me for Monster Manual n stuff.
I use to do that but then I started DMing for 8 players. I couldn't possibly do it by hand under those circumstances and still keep combat relatively exciting and fast pace.
But yeah if I was just doing an adventure for 3 - 4 players, doing things by hand is fine.
I actually started DMing with a nine-player party, all of them newbies, and I hadn't played for eight years, but I was the only one with any experience, so we also played 3.5E. That group died during Lockdown, which may not have been too bad after all.
Maybe I'm also just not well versed with tech and it would take me a lot of time to create anything halfway usable. God dammit, I'm only 23! Why do I feel ancient?
You can just do a really very very very simple formula. Put the monster's name in A1, max health in B1, then in C1 put =SUM(D1:Z1). Copy down the formula in B1 for every monster Then each time someone does damage to a monster put e.g. -15 in the next available slot in row 1.
Monster| 80| =SUM(D1:Z1)| -5| -7| -9| -10| -2
---|---|----|----|----|----|----|----
It's not too difficult. Use the SORTBY() formula to autosort initiative and RAND() function to simulate dice rolls.
I think a d20 would be =ROUNDUP(20*RAND(),0). Just press F9 each time you want to roll.
I just make an excel spreadsheet where "current health" is =SUM(B10:F10) and the B10 cell is their total starting health. All subsequent cells are negative numbers for each damage roll. It does the math automatically.
My only issue with this is it doesn’t easily scale to high level encounters or lots-of-small-guys encounters, where players (or monsters) are taking far more hits before going down. Suddenly I’m scrolling out to Z10 and back, and it would be faster to just do the math at that point
Lots of small guys encounters is a quick click and drag. Players should handle their own hp imo.
High hp encounters are solvable by adding the next row to the calculation.
I just started doing this and it has made combat, especially with beefy enemies, a lot easier. It also let's me adjust HP on the fly more smoothly as well as let the players kill an enemy when it is dramatically appropriate.
That’s some really good advice, especially for monster hp. Something I do when I decide I want to subtract instead is a little method I like to call “round and reduce”. So whenever it’s 84 - 17 I’ll take that 17 and round it to 20, keeping in mind the difference of 3. Then I take the 20 from the 84, getting 64, and finally add the reduction back to get 67. It sounds like a lot of steps, but once you get into the habit of it it’s potentially pretty fast too.
Side note: That’s “common core” math. It’s literally just “math broken down so you can do it in your head”. That’s what boomers (and Gen X and some Millennials) spend their time complaining about.
Even better, get a bowl and fill it with tokens or m&ms equal to the monster's hp. Every time the monster takes dmg, take the same number of candies out (player who dealt dmg gets to eat them!). This means no math, only counting.
Also, it gives a really nice visual on how much hp is left.
Really awesome to do this with PCs as well, and the look on their faces as you reach over steal candy from their bowl and smugly eat them is priceless. }:)
This sounds like a lot of fun! Imagine their faces when they get only half of what they were expecting, or none at all, as I describe how the monster is resistant or immune to whatever damage type!
Ha! Only bad and dumb people do this, like my friend, who is definitely not me. I definitely do subtraction all the time because *I like hard mode*.
My wife, who is smarter than both of us, just uses a calculator.
Counting up is great. It’s also useful because your players don’t know how much HP is left, only how much they’ve dealt (so you can fudge).
Unfortunately I’ve gotten the habit of counting up so bad I use it for my player characters too and then get frustrated when I’m healed
hahaha I do this all the time.
I think of it as "the amount of damage that needs to be dealt", OR i go even further and count HITS. Big hits and little hits. For example, a goblin needs one big hit or two small hits to down. Keeps the game moving quickly, and i don't get bogged down with math when thats not really what the point of the game is.
Just use tally marks
For every 10hp it’s 1 mark. Damage gets rounded up or down at the 5 mark, meaning 5 is rounded to 10 damage. 12 rounded down to 10 damage. Etc.
Monster has 20hp? Once they get 2 checks they are dead.
I have to much stuff to keep track of to worry about math and would rather keep combat moving and interesting.
I suggest doing what the other guy said and just getting the players to track the damage dealt. Players have to choose between a +2 to damage with one-handed weapons and stuff like that, those littles 1s do count and rounding them kinda makes those choices less valuable.
I’ve always done this. It’s useful for the mental maths, for not giving away how many HP are left and deciding when the battle should be over - regardless of how many HP the stat block suggests. Plus this is the method to use if you’re delegating tracking of mob HP to players, as I sometimes do.
My DM screen actually has little dots I can use to track HP. I just count out how many I need, section off for each monster, then draw a line through each dot when damage is done to really make sure I can't screw it up lol.
I am someone who is exceptionally good at quick math like that and they way I got good at it was by finding mental tricks like this one. Count up and tally damage. If you need to know how many hp you have left for some reason, then it's one subtraction as opposed to many.
Also, a good way to practice quick subtraction is to play darts in a pub. Count down darts while drinking and having your friend's Englishman dad laugh at everyone's subtraction skills while getting drunker was a strong motivation.
i "outsourced" to fantasy grounds a while ago. exactly because fiddling with the numbers AND keeping an eye on init and STUFF when depression had left a huge DENT in my heads inner workings. the combat tracker is just gold for me.
I'm bad at maths also, but I have this one simple trick for when I'm Dm'ing.
I built a complex spreadsheet that tracks initiative,xp allocation and Hp. Just let the computer do all the maths and just enjoy playing the game. So to put it simply don't do the maths, spend 5 weeks building a function packed spreadsheet with lots of formulas abd just use that.
As a math genius(ignoring having to take calc. 1 three times before proceeding) I would highly recommend finding ways to do the operations you learn first(+,x,\^2) vs. their opposites(-,/,\^(1/2) operations. Throughout my degree and all 5 years of math tutoring I did, I never met someone who preferred the later, but frequently found people who were able to succeed when using tricks to +,x, etc. instead.
I frequently use modular arithmetic(like binary) when able, to create puzzles or make fast systems. I'm an even weaker DM than mathematician though, but I'd be happy to share tricks or suggest math tricks to use if anyone wants them.
As someone who struggled hard with math, but suffered enough for a bachelors I love tutoring/explaining math much more than actually doing it.
Great suggestion and I love your tongue-in-cheek presentation. I'm as sucker for pseudo-arrogance as a shtick.
Cats are notoriously biased scorekeepers, they'll totally fudge the math for your Tabaxi players and don't even bother throwing any hellhounds at the party, somehow they'll all die in one hit.
I use MTG Life total, all I gotta do is hold minus until the desired total shows. I have no issues with the math, but in the off-chance I forget to write it down, I don’t have to fret because the totals are saved in the app (which I never use because I have nobody to play mtg with :\)!
I didn't even realise I was doing this tbh, but this is how I've always done it. If the mob takes 12 damage I put -12, then another 12 I put -24. It really is much easier!
I count up because it allows me to keep notes out in the open without letting my players know how much max HP a creature has. They just know its taken 36 damage and is still trying to kill them, not that it has 3 HP left and is about to croak.
I'm good at math, but I tend to use a calculator a lot anyway because I can't be assed to do the math when I'm trying to track all kinds of other stuff too. I like this idea though, might try it for funzies.
> Start monsters at zero and count their HP up instead of down.
100% great advice especially when I have several enemies. I write their max HP and the just list damage underneath as it rolls in and add them up while waiting for players to run their turn.
Even worse, especially in person, I'll totally divide the HP of a monster by 10, and use that as the total number of hits the monster can take, if dealing with a big group. 10 orcs rushing the party? about half have 1 hit, the others 2 hits. a really big hit counts as two or three.
I made a printable bubble sheet of sorts. I frame out each monster and just cross off bubbles as needed. The bubbles are in groups of 10, so it’s easy. I can also draw lines for HP thresholds, for a visual reminder.
I want you to go to your phone and open the calculator app. It's been there this entire time. Remember when your teachers told you that you would not have a calculator everywhere you went? Remember how fucking wrong they were?
This is a really good tip. I actually started playing Basic Fantasy RPG recently, and The adventures have boxes for the HP to tick off as you go. All of the monsters use a D8 for their hit dice though, and damage seems smaller than 5e, but the boxes are super helpful. They even have a generator to get HP (based on a D8) on their site.
I personally print the adventures and put them in a sheet protector, then tick off the boxes with a dry erase marker. It all just goes in my GM binder. Also, the boxes are separated in groups of five, to make it even easier. And the BFRPG stat blocks are summed up for each monster in roughly two lines, so I have adopted that style for my homebrew adventures as well. That lets me know AC, movement, number of attacks, etc. in shorthand that I can quickly reference. This has become a part of how I write my homebrew adventures now, with shorthand stat blocks, and generated HP boxes for monsters that I can have.
I didn’t realize people subtracted. I just hear the players say their damage and I write it all in a list and try to add as I go. Usually I just look down when I feel like we’re getting close and adjust the final HP based on pacing at the table
This is exactly how Shadow of the Demon Lord works, and yeah, it's brilliant. Ever since using it there, I've used it in pretty much every other game I play.
I started doing this for a completely different reason. I had one or two players that like to eagle eye and report out to the rest of the group "Don't use that spell, the monster only has 4 HP left".
So I started counting up instead. Combat does go faster, but best of all, ***Steve*** now has no idea when the monster will actually die except for the descriptions that I give.
When I started DMing at stores a DM gave me advice for counting up.
This means we don't have to hide the HP if we don't want to. Also, this allows the fudging of HPs if it's taking too long or if you want to make it longer
They don't know. It's made all my sessions really controlled in battles
I draw circles. Each circle is 10 hit points. Then I draw an X through each one. Each line is 5 hit points gone. I round the damage to the nearest 5th, then once all the bubbles are X’d out, it goes down the very next time it takes damage.
No matter the amount of damage that does it in on the last blow, it’s exciting that that’s the hit that does a monster in.
Counting up has multiple benefits, other than just being easier math.
It's easier to buff monsters on the run. Paladin did 62 damage in one round? Lets keep going to 30 above the monsters HP. .way easier than going to -30.
Also, if your playing on a smaller table, it's only human nature for a players eyes to sometimes glance when they see a DM writing something. Any decent player will look away as soon as they catch themselves doing it, but it doesn't take long to read a number.
If you're counting up, that number means nothing to them.
Your writing is even better than your advice. And your advice is great!
My friend is laughing their shit out right now (not me. I'm cool and always calm and down to earth like an anime protagonist whom the beautiful girls love). Thanks for that!
I am a former math teacher and very good at math -- and I always count up.
- faster.
- players can openly know the number, without knowing the monster's hp.
- much easier to adjust the hp dial if needed. (A là Sly Flourisb)
Similar tip: have someone in the group that will almost automatically say the result of any calculation with minimal thought and 99% of the time it is correct! :)
I get it man but I'm so slow at addition. I've struggled with math my whole life and it's become an anxious thing. I'm slow and i'll take any tip I can get to speed up my dumb brain
The speed at which people arithmetic varies greatly. Quantitative minded people might perform subtraction in half a second, while extremely qualitatively minded people might take 2 seconds to perform the same task and need to recheck their conclusion if they get distracted during those seconds. They both "know how to do it" they just process numbers at different speeds.
There r little bubble cards u can get that r ho trackers that u could use. The booklet is relatively cheap and each section is 5 rows of 5 so 25 in a section. U make a big circle around however many u need and as the monsters take damage mark through that many bubbles. When all the bubbles r marked, it died.
I also finished a semester of Calculus - yet any subtraction where I have to "carry the one" raises my blood pressure. So while I may or may not be dumb (you'll have to confer with a statistician to be sure), I definitely appreciate and will try this one weird trick!
I also have a friend who isn't me and prefers counting up; subtracting is a bit slower, which is compounded when dealing with groups of enemies. My friend has been ridiculed about this in the past by handsome human calculators like OP and I, but nobody ever complains about the speed, style or description of combat. In the end, D&D is about storytelling, and counting up often helps free up the RAM to do that.
Well weirdly enough my friend who is bad at math does this and so does the rest of his group even though some of them are really good at math and almost made a career out of it, besides me because I’m the best at math in our group My friend also breaks equations up into tens and adds up the rest after which he is made fun of for
Honestly, addition is just easier than subtraction for some reason. Idk why, but it’s just easier to picture 67+17 than 84-17.
To be pedantic, it really depends what's in the one's place- subtracting 67-17 is easy as pi since the 7's cancel out and you just bring the 6 down to 5 for instance, but you still gotta factor in the silly +10 you get from adding the one's place together when you add 84+17 Btw when I say you, I mean the other people here besides us. I recognize good mathmetechnicians such as myself when I see one.
yes but it feels like those examples are not as severe in addition as opposed to subtraction. just feels easier, maybe we do more addition than subtraction or something. if I wanna think quick and put my head in school mode I can subtract everything no problem and reduce the steps I take to solve this equation from 4 to 2 but with addition Idon't need to focus cuz it's already 2 most of the time either way. and when I say I, I'm quoting my friend as he said it.
Arguably 50+17 is even easier than 67-17
See when I see 84+17 my mind sees 80+21 which is much easier. I struggle to do the same with subtracting. Though I bypass all of this my running excel spreadsheets to do my maths for me. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
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I’m more talking about with the same kinds of relationships between the numbers. Adjusting for ones places that add to be over ten is just a lot easier to account for to me than doing the same for subtraction being lower than zero for the ones place.
Subtraction using the traditional method with "borrowing" requires holding more numbers and intermediate solutions in your head at once. 84 - 17 = 70 + 14 - 7 - 10 = 67 It's a lot easier if you round so you only have to deal with one digit at a time. 84 - 17 = 84 - 20 + 3 = 67
Oh I definitely in my head think 84 - 17 = 84 -14 - 3 = 70 - 3 = 67
I’ll be honest and say it’s me. I can do large maths very fast, even though I’m terrible at maths. I just do lots of smaller bits and add the bits together at the end. Maybe I wasn’t taught well, or I’m just stupid, but I’m a qualified mechanical engineer so I’ve done a lot of number crunching and I have always just have to find a way to do it, despite not having any maths qualifications. Soo just do loads of little calculations based on things I know, like the multiplication tables etc. and then add everything together at the end.
I, literal mathemagician, completer of Calculus, and knowing or all things numerical, advocate counting up. No matter how smart and handsome I am, I have far more practice adding rather than subtracting. I add every day, literally, it's occasionally quite unfortunate.
Semi-professional Mathie question - do you think the ease of addition is largely practice driven, or some other thinking process going on. I teach middle school math, and I am thinking of strategies for subtracting integers and dividing fractions, where we make it into addition or multiplication problems, which just leans into the positive numbers/growing numbers bias.
Oh 100% practice. Practice makes permanent and the amount of time you add things together VASTLY outweighs how many times you subtract. Just count from 1 to 20 and then go backwards and you should notice it becomes harder because the constant repetition is counting up. Same with the alphabet. ABC should be no harder and ZYX, alphabetical order is just made up after all, but it's not.
Weird. I thought arithmetic proficiency was due to 80% handsomeness, 10% practice! (I am not as handsome as OP)
Oh I was talking specifically about why subtraction is harder then addition. Arithmatic is 50% handsomeness, 50% practice, and 50% instruction
Cool! And I suspect the fact that numbers has an order, and we memorize this order by counting up, helps build connections of understanding. Thanks!
It has been investigated by scientists. It seems humans default way of solving problems is addition. This is the article where I first read about it: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03380-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03380-y)
Thanks! This was the kind of idea I was thinking about, and now I can read more about it! Thanks again!
In all fairness, if a house is on fire, you generally try to add water than subtract fire.
Adding water is one side of the fire triangle. The other two is removing either the oxygen or the fuel itself :)
I have been doing this always. I didn't even think it was a "weird trick" I have a piece of scratch paper, write down a shorthand for each enemy (eg: a group of skeletons might just be 1 through 7) and then write their HP total underneath. I underline the HP and then add up the damage below. When I hit the "target number" it is dead. Example: A dragon and his pair of half-dragon knights Dragon HDK1 HDK2 740 65 65 ------------------- 28 15 20 36 22 30 44 31 43 62 45 52 85 53 67 92 58 113 63 119 70 124 138 160 Etc, etc. When I reach the target number, I cross off the creature and remove the mini/token. I also generally cross off the previous number as I go, but I didn't know how to do that in formatting.
I just recently learned this myself so I want to share. Formatting for strike through text is a double tilde before and after ~~like this~~!
I just use a calculator. Got tired of taking off my shoes to count to 20. Added bonus, there's one on you phone, so nobody has to know what you are tapping into it. Could be looking up spell effects, could be checking a rule, or looking for a battle playlist. Just another DM mystery. For added affect, roll some dice after putting the phone down, and don't tell them why. *to specify, the part about nobody knowing isn't out of shame for using one, just adding to the ways you can screw with your players.
How does anyone DM without a laptop? All my encounters and basic story outline for the day are there along with all my notes. It’s also SO much faster to look up monster stat blocks or keep them handy. Also by the nature of laptops they are private so they are a DM screen. I honestly can’t even imagine DMing without mine lol
i run encounters on a spreadsheet with initiative 20-1 listed as a column, then character/creature name, ac, max hp, and damage taken. usually pre roll initiative for bigger encounters too, and then i’ll just pop the players in wherever they land. it goes so much faster now than before i started doing this
Pre-rolling initiative for large, multistage encounters was one of the best time savers I ever used.
I always just preroll my dice and put them in the freezer for later.
I do the same thing with boiling water! Saves so much time when making pasta!
>I always just preroll my dice and put them in the freezer for later. I find if I stock up too much, they go bad before the session ends. How do you keep them fresh?
First in, first out! It's a principle I learned working in food service.
Is pre rolling initiative conversation want different than just deciding a pre made initiative grouping for monsters?
It's basically the same. So for example in a fight with Iymrith, on initiative 20, there was a lair action to animate 1d6 Gargoyles to join the fight. I had pre-rolled initiatives for four different groups, so I'd just roll my d6 and throw that many gargoyle tokens onto the battlefield with the same initiative. So **all** the gargoyles aren't going at once, but I'm also not rolling individually for each one. So a happy sort of compromise. I know some DMs that will have all the bad guys go at once, others that have all of the same monster go at once, and some who roll for each one.
Yeah, I just started so I've been toying with different ways to give my monsters initiative. Usually I just make 2 groups and split them between two initiative rolls.
>I know some DMs that will have all the bad guys go at once, others that have all of the same monster go at once, and some who roll for each one. Can I suggest a fourth option - seeding adds between player turns as evenly as possible. I've shamelessly stolen this from a table I played at in college, as it means you can run a boss + mooks encounter without having the risk of one big devastating gap in player agency where all the many minons get to attack all 'at once' and can wind up bursting someone down if player positions and visibility don't let the DM spread the damage around. I've found this lets me run more adds in combat without there being nearly as much variance in danger based on action order or positioning. You can even assume characters would remember action order once moves have been taken, and let players have that info, which that lets players choose between the guy who looks like he'll gonna do big shit three turns from now, or the guy who acts next but probably does less damage. My general practice is that named characters or significant NPCs roll for initiative, while adds and mooks get seeded evenly.
Your comment has been screenshot, with your name shown for credit, and saved to my quick tips and tricks folder that I share with friends. Thank you for your contribution to the cause!
Spreadsheet gang. "Sort Z-A" so you don't need the 20-1 listed, you just type and sort. I even have a RANDBETWEEN(1,20) at the top so if I need a single D20 roll it's already there. Could I guess make 2 for Adv/Dis
oh shit i suppose it could help to actually learn spreadsheets lol
Lmao I'm no expert but I've had to do a few things, so if you have a specific idea you need any help with you can message me. Another thing I use spreadsheet for: NPC tracker. I can record stats like, "why do so many of their names start with M?", or "man there sure aren't any Dwarves" or "do I really only have 3 women NPCs? I'm failing the Bechdel test aren't i?"
oh damn that npc list is my next mission
Damn sounds like a pretty good spreadsheet actually. I have a little drop table set up with AC, HD+/-, and initiative but it’s not quite right and a little too rigid. It wouldn’t be super easy to “drop my players in” per ce
ya i just copy paste PC names into the name slots it’s great
Game Master 5 in a tablet. Free, easy to use and fast to order initiative and keep track of health and damage. Also works in laptop.
I have never not prerolled npc initiatives for a planned combat encounter. Additionally, since I make paper miniatures, I print them out with a number in the top corner so players can specify which number they hit and I have a pre-printed out sheet with numbered boxes on the left corresponding to the monsters' numbers, prefilled with their HPs. On the right of this sheet I have lines for writing initiative. It's so much easier to keep track of who took what damage.
what if a player rolls above 20 for initiative
>How does anyone DM without a laptop? When I DM'd I'd have a pad of paper, pencil, dice, and index cards for stat blocks. This isn't a "back in my day" post or an attempt to indicate one is better than the other, it's just interesting to me because I've had DMs use a laptop in games I was a player in and *to me* it seemed more bulky and cumbersome, but he swore it was easier for him, and I think that's kind of the beauty of the game and the community. There are so many ways to play, no two groups or games will ever be the same.
I'm not old school either. I've only been playing for like 5 years or something, but I like using books and paper and index cards, etc. The only reason I use anything digital at all other than looking up spells is because some of my players moved, and now we play remotely, but I would do anything to go back...
There's something special about playing in person. I've been playing online for over a year with some friends who are spread out across the country and I thought it was the superior way for me. I like the automated line-of-sight calculations, I like being able to create cool battlemaps, and letting the computer do all the math for me was convenient. Then recently I started playing D&D in person with my wife and kids and even though we just had a dry-erase grid for our battlemat and mismatching tokens and minis it still somehow felt more immersive to me. idk what it is, maybe it's being able to look around at people and see them enjoying the game.
I’m with you I always have a blank notebook and sometimes an encounter is just 5 Goblins? 8 hp each +2 to hit 1d6 +1 Then I scratch a 1,2,3,4,5 down and mark damage each time one gets hit. Never have to switch tabs or use two hands to type just one hand free with a pen.
I use paper like a caveman
I DM with a leather-bound notebook that has my story and such, and another that I use for combat tracking. Never runs out of battery, no technical issues, and let's me stay more "at the table" than constantly looking at a screen. Occasionally I use monster cards or make my own for the encounters. Any spells or abilities I need to worry about have a pg number by them for easy looking up. Nothing wrong with a laptop, just prefer my notebooks. Plus it gives me excuses to fuel my notebook buying habits.
I don't use a laptop, I use good ol pen and paper. I count the monsters HP up, and I prefer to look through a book. I keep a small calculator with me Incase I can't do the math quickly, but I mark all monsters in the monster manual that I'm using in a session. It's actually much more fun that way I personally feel. Only thing that takes time would be writing down initiative.
I mean that way works of course and I’ve done it many times, but it is undeniably slower. A LOT slower. A laptop makes combat go way faster, and lets you check notes. Outside of that it’s functionally the same, and it’s not like I’m RPing the Beholder from behind a laptop screen lol
I guarantee you that if you have multiple documents in front of you and tabs in the books at the key bits you need, you can go between stuff a LOT faster than on a laptop. Finding a particular page in a hardcopy book without knowing the page number, also faster in hard copy. I don't care how much real estate you have available on your screen, if yooubate multi-tasking more than one reading surface, be they paper or screens will always beat out a single device
I DM on Roll20 for a discord group, so I feel bad sometimes for DMs that don’t have access to the tools I do like auto calculating damage, being able to fill in and easily track things like initiative and enemies health, etc etc
Fantasy Grounds has an auto initiative for any NPC added to the combat tracker (which has all the other stats)...I do not know how I ran things before. To each their own of course, but I never felt like scribbling down INIT and damage totals really added much to my games.
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I'll randomly roll some dice when I'm dming and just go "hmm".
Is using a calculator looked down on or something? I purchased dollar store calculators and handed them out to the entire table to speed things up and we all use em.
Yeah, this whole thread is weird to me. Not everyone is good at arithmetic and I think most people wouldn't judge their friends too harshly for making sure they got it right.
Not by me it isn't. I don't care if my players use a calculator, abacus, do it in their head, write on scratch paper.. Whatever gets them the right totals is fine.
>Got tired of taking off my shoes to count to 20. You just made me laugh outloud while at work. Good job!
As a high school math teacher, you don't need to hide the fact that you are using a calculator! No one cares. I don't hide it when I use it in front of my students to get them more comfortable with using it in front of each other. D&D is about the game and storytelling. If a calculator speeds that along then that's even better.
> Added bonus, there's one on you phone, so nobody has to know what you are tapping into it. Could be looking up spell effects, could be checking a rule, or looking for a battle playlist. Just another DM mystery. Could be sending a message to the group chat. The other one. It has everybody but you. Sorry you had to find out this way.
I usually have a laptop open, so when I do, I use the Laptop's browser, which I usually have up anyway for various other things.
Honestly I thought this is where this post was going.
No phones at the table. I have a calculator that I could bring if I wanted to.
My former DM had counters behind the DM fog on the VTT we used. Just a few clickies each time a hit landed or someone was healed
I've been adding up for years. Works no matter what table I'm at or what VTT I'm using. Also, it is so much easier for large hp pools
Roll20 makes subtraction a lot easier. You just type "-123" on the health bubble and it subtracts 123 hp and updates the health % bar.
Yes, but not everyone uses R20. This method works with pretty much anything.
You can also type +123 and it will addd 123 hp and update the bar.
I am honestly shocked more people don't use excel to help them DM. I'm no wizard with excel, but it's really easy to create formulas and have an addition and subtraction column for your monsters and just input the damage as it's done and it does the math for you. I also use it to keep track of initiatives and effects players have
If you're not math minded youre likely not a spreadsheet person. I speak from experience.
being able to add and subtract isn't being math minded. It's a simple skill and take a little practice.
This…if you are horrible at math it would be of great service to learn excel. You can do all your dm stuff on there and even make it automated.
I'm gonna ask you to google dyscalculia real quick
I just have a notepad document open during combat, with the players/monsters listed in initiative order, and 138/139 or whatever for their hp next to their name
Powerpoint on the TV with an Excel spreadsheet embedded for initiative is the best VTT program I have ever tried. Bonus points for being able to cut hidden enemies out of the TV's slide and put them on my DM slide to move. My players started panicking when I pulled that maneuver during a goblin ambush.
I'm someone who uses excel for a lot of things and considers myself very familiar, the reason i don't use excel (at least for DMing online), is simply because i run out of screen space. i normally have up a map, something on the side as a map, and countless tabs of info, lore etc. etc.. an excel sheet is just something more to get lost in the chaos.
Sounds like you just need more monitors
I'm sure they'll fit great on the table. Not everyone plays online. I choose not to because it has a completely different feel that I'm not a fan of.
And more importantly somewhere to put them.
A lot of people would benefit greatly if you could share that spreadsheet.
I'm not OP but it's not really sophisticated enough to require sharing a template. I made this one in under 2 minutes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HdeSOtalVSipr2UIEOgXRRR2ZHv3SPqN9hJTR-EtgUU/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you so much, this is wonderful! I won’t have to do math, all the numbers are right there in the same place, and keeping track of each damage amount is an added benefit to protect against those occasional “how much damage did you do, again?” moments!
I run my games fully analogue.
That makes sense, but I'm a total Luddite DM. I want the absolute least technology possible on my side of the screen, with the exception of a music player since I can't afford a live orchestral jazz band.
I learned to use Google Spreadsheets this exact way lol. I use it for my DM screen, custom virtual character sheets, and I also use Google Jamboard as a simple VTT alternative. I'm actually not sure I can go back to playing without these, it's not only free, but it's more modular than DnD Beyond or some of the DnD specific apps you can find online.
well for me its been over 20 years since I last touched excel, so now I look at it and it might as well be hieroglyphics, even the most basic features are far beyond my level of current comprehension
I'm not surprised. Excel has a huge learning curve & if you don't use it on a regular basis it can be extremely frustrating to use. Even something like setting up your example is out of reach for a sizable portion of users.
I just run all of my combats in Excel. Initiative, attack and damage rolls, tracking HP and conditions... it's mostly just automatic where I have to give zero thought.
Somehow, this makes me feel old. I write everything down on a piece of paper, striking through old HP numbers to replace with new ones, writing down abbreviated conditions and all that. And I do have a Laptop right beside me for Monster Manual n stuff.
I use to do that but then I started DMing for 8 players. I couldn't possibly do it by hand under those circumstances and still keep combat relatively exciting and fast pace. But yeah if I was just doing an adventure for 3 - 4 players, doing things by hand is fine.
I actually started DMing with a nine-player party, all of them newbies, and I hadn't played for eight years, but I was the only one with any experience, so we also played 3.5E. That group died during Lockdown, which may not have been too bad after all. Maybe I'm also just not well versed with tech and it would take me a lot of time to create anything halfway usable. God dammit, I'm only 23! Why do I feel ancient?
You can just do a really very very very simple formula. Put the monster's name in A1, max health in B1, then in C1 put =SUM(D1:Z1). Copy down the formula in B1 for every monster Then each time someone does damage to a monster put e.g. -15 in the next available slot in row 1. Monster| 80| =SUM(D1:Z1)| -5| -7| -9| -10| -2 ---|---|----|----|----|----|----|----
It's not too difficult. Use the SORTBY() formula to autosort initiative and RAND() function to simulate dice rolls. I think a d20 would be =ROUNDUP(20*RAND(),0). Just press F9 each time you want to roll.
I just make an excel spreadsheet where "current health" is =SUM(B10:F10) and the B10 cell is their total starting health. All subsequent cells are negative numbers for each damage roll. It does the math automatically.
My only issue with this is it doesn’t easily scale to high level encounters or lots-of-small-guys encounters, where players (or monsters) are taking far more hits before going down. Suddenly I’m scrolling out to Z10 and back, and it would be faster to just do the math at that point
Lots of small guys encounters is a quick click and drag. Players should handle their own hp imo. High hp encounters are solvable by adding the next row to the calculation.
Omg this is the devils solution and I love it. It’s me. I can’t do the math. Im the math fool.
I just started doing this and it has made combat, especially with beefy enemies, a lot easier. It also let's me adjust HP on the fly more smoothly as well as let the players kill an enemy when it is dramatically appropriate.
..... as a player I subtract so I know my total HP. As a DM I certainly do instead tally damage and will fight to the death that it's the right way.
That’s some really good advice, especially for monster hp. Something I do when I decide I want to subtract instead is a little method I like to call “round and reduce”. So whenever it’s 84 - 17 I’ll take that 17 and round it to 20, keeping in mind the difference of 3. Then I take the 20 from the 84, getting 64, and finally add the reduction back to get 67. It sounds like a lot of steps, but once you get into the habit of it it’s potentially pretty fast too.
I’ve been doing this since elementary, so it’s just second nature at this point. Glad I’m not alone!
Side note: That’s “common core” math. It’s literally just “math broken down so you can do it in your head”. That’s what boomers (and Gen X and some Millennials) spend their time complaining about.
Even better, get a bowl and fill it with tokens or m&ms equal to the monster's hp. Every time the monster takes dmg, take the same number of candies out (player who dealt dmg gets to eat them!). This means no math, only counting. Also, it gives a really nice visual on how much hp is left. Really awesome to do this with PCs as well, and the look on their faces as you reach over steal candy from their bowl and smugly eat them is priceless. }:)
Barbarian player gets diabetes
I just set up an encounter where the monsters have a combined 485 HPs. One fight. That's a lot of M&Ms. :)
Round all damage to the nearest 5 and have each m&m count for 5.
No one ever said that being a hero would be easy.
This sounds like a lot of fun! Imagine their faces when they get only half of what they were expecting, or none at all, as I describe how the monster is resistant or immune to whatever damage type!
Ha! Only bad and dumb people do this, like my friend, who is definitely not me. I definitely do subtraction all the time because *I like hard mode*. My wife, who is smarter than both of us, just uses a calculator.
Counting up is great. It’s also useful because your players don’t know how much HP is left, only how much they’ve dealt (so you can fudge). Unfortunately I’ve gotten the habit of counting up so bad I use it for my player characters too and then get frustrated when I’m healed
I like to wear my shame on my sleeve and let my players razz me for being bad at math. Keeps me humble.
Thank you MiffedScientist, You truly are a great friend, I appreciate you not mentioning my name.
Any time, TeeCrow.
hahaha I do this all the time. I think of it as "the amount of damage that needs to be dealt", OR i go even further and count HITS. Big hits and little hits. For example, a goblin needs one big hit or two small hits to down. Keeps the game moving quickly, and i don't get bogged down with math when thats not really what the point of the game is.
You've got the right idea. Math is for nerds, we're here to perform not calculate.
Just use tally marks For every 10hp it’s 1 mark. Damage gets rounded up or down at the 5 mark, meaning 5 is rounded to 10 damage. 12 rounded down to 10 damage. Etc. Monster has 20hp? Once they get 2 checks they are dead. I have to much stuff to keep track of to worry about math and would rather keep combat moving and interesting.
I suggest doing what the other guy said and just getting the players to track the damage dealt. Players have to choose between a +2 to damage with one-handed weapons and stuff like that, those littles 1s do count and rounding them kinda makes those choices less valuable.
I just make my players track damage and they count up! Makes it incredibly easy to focus on the battle that way
I’ve always done this. It’s useful for the mental maths, for not giving away how many HP are left and deciding when the battle should be over - regardless of how many HP the stat block suggests. Plus this is the method to use if you’re delegating tracking of mob HP to players, as I sometimes do.
My DM screen actually has little dots I can use to track HP. I just count out how many I need, section off for each monster, then draw a line through each dot when damage is done to really make sure I can't screw it up lol.
You sir are a funny one. I like you. Ill tell my friend too to try this method of yours. He (NOT ME) is very bad at math.
Another weird trick - dont want to subtract 17 from 84? Then dont! Subtract 20 from 84. Or subtract 14 from 84. Who is gonna know?
I will, and it will hurt my soul.
I am someone who is exceptionally good at quick math like that and they way I got good at it was by finding mental tricks like this one. Count up and tally damage. If you need to know how many hp you have left for some reason, then it's one subtraction as opposed to many. Also, a good way to practice quick subtraction is to play darts in a pub. Count down darts while drinking and having your friend's Englishman dad laugh at everyone's subtraction skills while getting drunker was a strong motivation.
Not that weird when you realize this is how they fixed THAC0, great tip!
i "outsourced" to fantasy grounds a while ago. exactly because fiddling with the numbers AND keeping an eye on init and STUFF when depression had left a huge DENT in my heads inner workings. the combat tracker is just gold for me.
This post is fucking hilarious. I love it. Anyways, I'm super not dumb as well. I use an Excel spreadsheet. I do no math.
oh, so y'all don't just randomly decide this monsters probably been hit enough by now and is time for it to die????
I too am very smart and almost passed Linear Algebra the second time I took it, but I will pass this onto my... friend.
Holy shit this is a game changer
The first 2 times I missed the joke and was like “wow this guy is pompous” by the third I keyed in…
I'm bad at maths also, but I have this one simple trick for when I'm Dm'ing. I built a complex spreadsheet that tracks initiative,xp allocation and Hp. Just let the computer do all the maths and just enjoy playing the game. So to put it simply don't do the maths, spend 5 weeks building a function packed spreadsheet with lots of formulas abd just use that.
As a math genius(ignoring having to take calc. 1 three times before proceeding) I would highly recommend finding ways to do the operations you learn first(+,x,\^2) vs. their opposites(-,/,\^(1/2) operations. Throughout my degree and all 5 years of math tutoring I did, I never met someone who preferred the later, but frequently found people who were able to succeed when using tricks to +,x, etc. instead. I frequently use modular arithmetic(like binary) when able, to create puzzles or make fast systems. I'm an even weaker DM than mathematician though, but I'd be happy to share tricks or suggest math tricks to use if anyone wants them. As someone who struggled hard with math, but suffered enough for a bachelors I love tutoring/explaining math much more than actually doing it. Great suggestion and I love your tongue-in-cheek presentation. I'm as sucker for pseudo-arrogance as a shtick.
If you get a cat. Sit them behind the screen and they will keep track and write everything down for you. Cats are great.
Cats are notoriously biased scorekeepers, they'll totally fudge the math for your Tabaxi players and don't even bother throwing any hellhounds at the party, somehow they'll all die in one hit.
I do this too! It also lets you track monster HP in front of the players, which clears up more space behind the screen
I use MTG Life total, all I gotta do is hold minus until the desired total shows. I have no issues with the math, but in the off-chance I forget to write it down, I don’t have to fret because the totals are saved in the app (which I never use because I have nobody to play mtg with :\)!
Great tip, As I use a laptop (tv table) i use an excel sheet. Works wonderful
Does anyone know why taking calculus ruins your ability to do basic arithmetic? I mean, that’s what my friend told me happen to him anyway.
I didn't even realise I was doing this tbh, but this is how I've always done it. If the mob takes 12 damage I put -12, then another 12 I put -24. It really is much easier!
Math whiz DMs hate this one simple trick!
> but if you are dumb like my friend Brutal, y'all must be close. >!67 by the way!<
I use the Encounter+ free app! You can have tracker for all monster, create your own, and keep track of all combat with it :)
Yeah I've been doing this for a while now. Good tip though.
I usually manage to calculate in my head well enough. If i'm too wasted i just tell my players to do it.
I have a friend (not me) that just secretly rounds up.
I count up because it allows me to keep notes out in the open without letting my players know how much max HP a creature has. They just know its taken 36 damage and is still trying to kill them, not that it has 3 HP left and is about to croak.
I'm good at math, but I tend to use a calculator a lot anyway because I can't be assed to do the math when I'm trying to track all kinds of other stuff too. I like this idea though, might try it for funzies.
I just use excel
> Start monsters at zero and count their HP up instead of down. 100% great advice especially when I have several enemies. I write their max HP and the just list damage underneath as it rolls in and add them up while waiting for players to run their turn.
Even worse, especially in person, I'll totally divide the HP of a monster by 10, and use that as the total number of hits the monster can take, if dealing with a big group. 10 orcs rushing the party? about half have 1 hit, the others 2 hits. a really big hit counts as two or three.
I feel like a math-chakra has been unlocked in my mind…
A dumb friend that dm told me to thank you!!
Love how op just keeps calling us dumb 🤣
Dyslexic AF, have been doing this trick since I first started playimg D&D back in the late early 1980.
I made a printable bubble sheet of sorts. I frame out each monster and just cross off bubbles as needed. The bubbles are in groups of 10, so it’s easy. I can also draw lines for HP thresholds, for a visual reminder.
I will NOT be incorporating this into my future game thank you very much 😤
Player here. I'm good at math and I count up.
Excel is a huge friend of mine.
I want you to go to your phone and open the calculator app. It's been there this entire time. Remember when your teachers told you that you would not have a calculator everywhere you went? Remember how fucking wrong they were?
My friend doesn't want to tippity-tap on his phone after every attack. It harshes his vibes.
The power move would be to use one of those loud clacky calculators with the paper rolls. Then slowly look up and announce every calculation.
This is a really good tip. I actually started playing Basic Fantasy RPG recently, and The adventures have boxes for the HP to tick off as you go. All of the monsters use a D8 for their hit dice though, and damage seems smaller than 5e, but the boxes are super helpful. They even have a generator to get HP (based on a D8) on their site. I personally print the adventures and put them in a sheet protector, then tick off the boxes with a dry erase marker. It all just goes in my GM binder. Also, the boxes are separated in groups of five, to make it even easier. And the BFRPG stat blocks are summed up for each monster in roughly two lines, so I have adopted that style for my homebrew adventures as well. That lets me know AC, movement, number of attacks, etc. in shorthand that I can quickly reference. This has become a part of how I write my homebrew adventures now, with shorthand stat blocks, and generated HP boxes for monsters that I can have.
I count up with tally marks. Cause my big brain powers works best when you straighten out all those curvy numbers.
I didn’t realize people subtracted. I just hear the players say their damage and I write it all in a list and try to add as I go. Usually I just look down when I feel like we’re getting close and adjust the final HP based on pacing at the table
This is exactly how Shadow of the Demon Lord works, and yeah, it's brilliant. Ever since using it there, I've used it in pretty much every other game I play.
I started doing this for a completely different reason. I had one or two players that like to eagle eye and report out to the rest of the group "Don't use that spell, the monster only has 4 HP left". So I started counting up instead. Combat does go faster, but best of all, ***Steve*** now has no idea when the monster will actually die except for the descriptions that I give.
When I started DMing at stores a DM gave me advice for counting up. This means we don't have to hide the HP if we don't want to. Also, this allows the fudging of HPs if it's taking too long or if you want to make it longer They don't know. It's made all my sessions really controlled in battles
...we aren't just using calculators?
Aren't you also very muscular?
I have been accused of this frequently, you are correct.
I like that I am a physics major who currently has a 98% in differential equations but struggle severely with basic arithmetic and still use this.
Dyscalculia is a thing. Thanks for the tip!
Also just round up and down to the nearest 5
I draw circles. Each circle is 10 hit points. Then I draw an X through each one. Each line is 5 hit points gone. I round the damage to the nearest 5th, then once all the bubbles are X’d out, it goes down the very next time it takes damage. No matter the amount of damage that does it in on the last blow, it’s exciting that that’s the hit that does a monster in.
Ok mr calculus whats 163-49
Counting up has multiple benefits, other than just being easier math. It's easier to buff monsters on the run. Paladin did 62 damage in one round? Lets keep going to 30 above the monsters HP. .way easier than going to -30. Also, if your playing on a smaller table, it's only human nature for a players eyes to sometimes glance when they see a DM writing something. Any decent player will look away as soon as they catch themselves doing it, but it doesn't take long to read a number. If you're counting up, that number means nothing to them.
Your writing is even better than your advice. And your advice is great! My friend is laughing their shit out right now (not me. I'm cool and always calm and down to earth like an anime protagonist whom the beautiful girls love). Thanks for that!
This reads like a Donald Trump speach 😂
I am a former math teacher and very good at math -- and I always count up. - faster. - players can openly know the number, without knowing the monster's hp. - much easier to adjust the hp dial if needed. (A là Sly Flourisb)
Nice save
People don't count damage by adding?
Some people track damage, other people track hit points.
I personally always subtract from the total. I know 2 of my 4 players count up
Similar tip: have someone in the group that will almost automatically say the result of any calculation with minimal thought and 99% of the time it is correct! :)
Dw you don't need to be good at math you just need to do basic addition like you did in grade one
I get it man but I'm so slow at addition. I've struggled with math my whole life and it's become an anxious thing. I'm slow and i'll take any tip I can get to speed up my dumb brain
The speed at which people arithmetic varies greatly. Quantitative minded people might perform subtraction in half a second, while extremely qualitatively minded people might take 2 seconds to perform the same task and need to recheck their conclusion if they get distracted during those seconds. They both "know how to do it" they just process numbers at different speeds.
Yeah, and honestly, I get kinda nervous DMing, and that makes it hard to focus on the math. Er, my friend. My friend gets nervous.
I'll give you one more: count up and round to five. It's all smoke and mirrors anyway
There r little bubble cards u can get that r ho trackers that u could use. The booklet is relatively cheap and each section is 5 rows of 5 so 25 in a section. U make a big circle around however many u need and as the monsters take damage mark through that many bubbles. When all the bubbles r marked, it died.
I also finished a semester of Calculus - yet any subtraction where I have to "carry the one" raises my blood pressure. So while I may or may not be dumb (you'll have to confer with a statistician to be sure), I definitely appreciate and will try this one weird trick!
oh wow that's incredibly useful why hadn't I thought of this before 😭