Quote Originally Posted by Dork_Forge View Post
Is this a table rule you normally play with? It seems like you're tracking negative hp to get back up?
Yep, basically. There's two things here, an accounting change and a rule change.

As a matter of accounting, when a monster takes 17 points of damage and then 48 HP of damage and then 7 HP, I just write down "17, 48, 7". Then if I want to know if the monster if dead, I compare that number to its HP, doing math if necessary. If it has 100 HP then it's obviously still alive; if it has 60 HP then it's obviously dead; if it has 71 HP then I need to do math. (17 + 48 = 65; 65 +7 = 72... it's dead, barely.) Addition is easier than repeated subtraction so this way is faster for most people.

As a matter of rules, when you've taken more damage than your HP, instead of vanilla "you can't take any more damage, just track death saves", instead you die when damage = 2 x HP. Each round until you're stable, you make a death save. On a success you stabilize. On a failure you take damage equal to 20% of your HP (rounded up).

This is equivalent to "tracking negative HP" but because of the accounting change it's the other way around: continuing to track damage above HP.