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Use Slashes and Xs to Track Damage

by Mike on 16 February 2026

My friend Elizabeth at Patchwork Paladin had a cool idea to use roman numerals to track damage done to monsters. I've modified this idea slightly, tracking damage done to monsters with /s and Xs.

We already have a a few common ways to track damage done to monsters:

Subtract damage from the monster's hit points on every hit.
Add up total damage done to the monster.
Use some type of digital tool to track damage.

I've used the second one, tracking damage done to monsters, for a long time. For some reason, adding is easier than subtracting, so keeping a tally of damage done to the monster isn't too hard.

But lately I've switched to using /s and Xs. Here's how it works:

Mark a / for five damage.
Cross the /, turning it into an X, for 10 damage.
Keep a separate tally of |s for each individual point.
When the | tally hits five "||||", cross it off and mark another / in the main tally.
Alternatively, round damage up or down to the nearest 5.

Every fifty points or so, five sets of Xs, I'll start a new row. That way, I can see very easily every 50 damage done to a monster. This method worked really well in my 3x5e game where we had 20th level characters fighting monsters with 600 hit points or more. The technique isn't needed if you have monsters with, say, fewer than 25 hit points.

I found several advantages in this approach:

There's no math. Just mark damage done as it's done.
You can see visually how much damage a monster has taken by the big block of Xs.
You don't have to cross anything off or erase anything. Just mark the damage.

A Dirty Trick – Round Up or Down by 5

Here's an even faster trick that's sure to upset some folks. Round the damage the monster takes up or down to the nearest five. If they take 22 damage, mark XX. If they take 33 damage, mark XXX. For monsters with lots of hit points, the rounding error isn't likely to make much of a difference. Now you don't have to keep track of those |s at all. It's all just /s and Xs. I tried this trick out and it's super fast. Likewise, you can round the monster's hit points to the nearest five so it fits nicely, but that's not really necessary. When you cross over the monster's hit points, it's dead.

If the fuzziness of this approach bothers you, you can, of course, track the remaining damage on a separate line.

Give it a Shot

You might dig this idea or you might not. That's cool. Not every trick is for everyone. Sometimes these lazy tricks stick (like having players manage initiative, static initiative for monsters, static monster damage, "describe your killing blow", and others). Other times they aren't as useful and fade away. The only way we'll know if it works well or not is to try it.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Lazy Map Labels and Battling Trivvan – Dragon Empire Prep Session 54.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Reiterate the characters' goal in any adventure, location, or session regularly. Remind them about what's important.
Give new characters the "heroic spark" so everyone knows they can be trusted and save the time of suspicious banter.
Take note of the capabilities of the characters and use it to tune future battles as needed.
Add your own random tables when your system of choice lets you down.
Bathe random encounters with in-world history, lore, secrets, and clues.
Print physical maps or use digital maps to anchor players in the fiction.
Draw the characters into encounters they might otherwise avoid with a desire for heroism, shiny loot, or both.

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