In most scenarios, you as the Game Master want to keep the enemy hit points hidden from the players. Sometimes, though, you have a situation where they need to have an idea of progress against a total.

In my case, I am planning a scene where the players are defending a tribe against an oncoming assault by a large group of enemies. The tribe they are defending is being treated as a ‘horde’ (sort of like a swarm) and has a collective number of hit points to represent the overall health of the entire group of barbarians. The defenses keeping the enemies out (‘gates’) similarly need a collective strength that the enemy attacks will damage. I needed to let my players know how the tribe was doing during the encounter and how close the gates are to falling. So how do you display that to the players in Foundry’s VTT?

Step 1: Tokens on the map

The first step was to make sure I had tokens for all the things I wanted the players to see. In this case a ‘Gates’ and ‘Tribe’ token.

1. Create a new NPC actor for each thing that needs to be displayed
2. Give the actor a name that you would like the players to see on the map
3. Set the total hit points to the number you want to display to the players on the map
4. Set a display token image
5. Drag to the map to display

I added these to the map just off the playable area so they could see it without interfering with the map.

Step 2: Set display names

In order for them to know what the trackers are, you want the display names showing for everyone at all times.

1. Right-click on the token on the map
2. Select the ‘gear’ icon to configure the token
3. On the ‘Identity‘ tab, set the Display Name value to “Always for Everyone“

Step 3 Display HP bar

1. From the configuration screen for the token, switch to the ‘Resources‘ tab
2. In Display Bars set “Always for Everyone”
3. In Bar 1 Attribute set Hit Points

As easy as that! Now the players can easily see the current status of the important elements as tokens on the map.