Tracking character health...

I'd like suggestions for the best/most efficient way to handle this in play. In the Witch Hunter RPG, characters have 4 "health tracks", usually between 4 and 10 points each. As the character takes damage to deplete one track, it drops to the next lower track and suffers the appropriate penalties. Several other games, including Shadowrun i believe, use a similar system. If a player wanted to track this via his or her token, what sort of solutions have you found work best? Having 4 status bars seems like overkill. Currently I just have the player track the points on his end and add a color dot each time they start a new track. I do wonder if there is a better way, though. Thanks!

Without having access to the API, you've really come up with the best soloution at this point.

Your method is pretty good. Here's an alternative (I use this method for a game where characters have 4 statistics, and all stats go up and down during the session, so I need to see at a glance what each stat is): Create four card decks, each set up to be infinite. Create one item in each deck, a simple image, like say the name of that health track. Use the same image for the back of the deck. Now, when a character takes damage on one track, deal that many 'cards' of the appropriate deck to the player. You will see the card in their hand, with a number over it showing how many of that card they have. With this method, you can see at a glance how many pips of each health track the characters have. If the steps above don't make clear how easy this is for your purpose, try it out, you'll see.

How high do the numbers get? If they are no larger then 9 just use four colored dots and leave them up on all tokens all the time, when someone takes damage in a certain health track just add the number to the dot.

G G: Interesting idea. Can dealing cards be set up in a macro? That is, can I build that into my weapon damage macros, or must I do it manually (I sound so lazy!) John: Actually, I don't even really care about them keeping track of the numbers, just the track. And I have better things to do than make sure they are tracking damage properly. So right now, just the dot will do. We haven't played through enough combats to find any real holes in the method – but I'm always curious as to what tricks other folks have discovered.

As far as I know you cant deal cards directly into someones hand. However, looking again at your initial post, what you can do is at the start of the session, deal each play a number of cards of each type equal to their health bar's pips (4-10) and have them discard them when they get damaged so you can see how many health they have remaining at a glance

The GM can deal cards directly into someone's hand by hovering over the deck and then hitting "deal". Input the number and the recipient(s) and hit "deal". You cannot deal cards in a Macro. However, the API might be able to do that. I would ask the API forum.

Yeah, when I replied "As far as I know you cant deal cards directly into someones hand." I was replying to the question about using a macro. The technique I described above relies on manually dealing a bunch of cards into the player's hands as needed. One potential gotcha: on a deck, you have the option to recall all cards. However, it will only recall a number of cards equal to the cards in the deck. If you create a deck with just one card in it, it will only recall one card, which is irritating. You can create a deck with as many identical cards as you need (you dont need to upload extra pics, just copy the same pic to the deck several times). So, let's say you have damage track A, track B, track C, and track D set up, each with 10 identical cards. One player has 5 points in each track, so you deal 5 cards from each deck to that player and will see something like this: Then when someone takes 3 points of damage from one of them, you choose the deck, click Recall, and enter 3 cards from that player. Or if the players can manually discard the health tokens to a discreet place on the playing table (to be picked up again when they heal).