this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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I haven't really touched Owlbear before, but I booted it up and had a play. It has a reputation for being "very lightweight" and boy, it lives up to that. This is great if you don't want a lot of complicated options - but I don't see a way in it to "secretly" track a token's health.
I made this goblin as the GM and the "player" can see the character notes, I don't really see a way to turn it off (maybe there's an extension for it.) - If I were running on this, I'd use pen and paper to track health.
If all you need is a quick visualisation to move tokens around, Owlbear is pretty good for that, it's quick and lightweight and easy to use.
If you're looking for something with a little more oomph that's also free, "Roll20" is a very popular free app for running DnD games, it has quite a lot of good tools, can handle full character sheets, and it's compatable with Beyond20 (Beyond20 is an extension for DnD Beyond that lets you roll dice out of the DnD beyond website into an open vtt.)
If you're looking for something with a lot of power and flexibility behind it "Foundryvtt" is a system that does everything Roll20 does, usually better, but sometimes a little clunkier (for me, it's often a bit laggy, and the drawing tools suck - even the "good" modules) - Foundry is really for power users, as you can run independent servers, code your own modules, or install all sorts of mods from the library of modules other people have coded.
If you're looking to spend a huge number of hours building incredibly pretty 3d environments for your players to explore, "talespire" is available, and seems to be pretty comprehensive... but... oh boy it's a lot
Adding in to the way of "tracking health secretly", there's a way, but you gotta think in reverse:
Track damage, not health. Just jot down quickly on paper how much HP an enemy has and track damage dealt, which can be a public info anyway
If you figure HP needs changing, change it on the fly on the paper and adjust your description of the scene
This is an excellent suggestion that I completely forgot to mention, simply because I don't use it myself. (Online, I use Foundry and keep the total secret, in meatspace I use pen and paper behind a screen.)
Many tables really like this approach, because nobody needs to remember anything and everyone has the info to hand. If you have forgetful players, or players who don't pay attention 100% of the time, or if you need to put your information tracking in a public space (e.g. because you run on owlbear, or play on a small table with no DM screen) this lets you track monster HP while not writing down anything the players don't know.
DM's: Definitely consider this approach if your players are constantly asking you questions like "how much damage did this ogre take again?" or "which of those two minotaurs has taken the most damage?" - it can really help you out.
Yup. This covers "forgetful players", but it also helps me: a DM with ADHD that can get very lost in "meatspace" ("which of these four monsters that look exactly the same took 40 damage, again?" or "I am sure I had that monster token here somewhere...")
So I make tokens with pictures for the creatures on the top and space on the bottom to scribble the damage with dry-erase marker. Really helps.
Also: adding up is much faster than subtracting damage
Really recommend that method for anybody that wants to try and speed up combat