Health plates

Health Indicator · hud element · Krylix

Aim at a mob or a player and a plate takes the place of its nametag: the name on top, a health line under it. The game's settings call this the Health Indicator. The client draws it by itself, so it works on any server, vanilla ones included.

A Vindicator in a meadow with a plate over its head: the name, six full and four empty hearts, 15/24 — A Vindicator at 15 of 24 health. The mob panel is in the top-left corner.

What gets a plate

The nearest living thing on your line of sight, up to 48 blocks away or up to the first block in the way. Only that one target has a plate. Every other nametag stays as the game draws it.

Hitboxes are a quarter of a block wider for this, which helps with small targets far away. The plate is drawn at full brightness, so it reads the same in a cave and at night.

Reading the hearts

A plate never has more than 10 hearts. A target with 20 health or less gets a heart for every 2 health, rounded up, like your own bar. A target with more gets 10 hearts, and each stands for a tenth of its maximum: on the Vindicator above, with 24 health, a heart is 2.4.

The numbers after the hearts are health points, current and maximum, rounded to whole numbers.

Styles

healthBarStyle in the config changes the health line. HEARTS is the default and uses the heart sprites from the game's own HUD. The other four:

A Husk with a plate made of ten red squares and 20/20 — BLOCKS: ten squares, red when filled and grey when empty.

A Husk with a plate that reads as a bar of ten vertical lines in square brackets and 20/20 — ASCII: ten characters in brackets, a line for filled and a dot for empty.

A Husk with a plate made of ten red dots and 20/20 — DOTS: ten dots, solid when filled and hollow when empty.

A Husk with a plate that has one heart and 20/20 — NUMBER_ONLY: one heart and the numbers.

In the three 10-segment styles a living target always has at least one segment filled, however little health is left.

When it's hidden

The plate obeys the game's nametag rules, so it never shows a name the game hides. You get no plate for:

anything invisible to you, and spectators
a player sneaking 32 blocks away or farther
a target beyond the server's name tag distance
a team whose nametags are hidden from you
a mob with a rider, unless it is on a team
an armor stand without a custom name
a mob that is already dying

It's also gone with the HUD hidden (F1). A score that the scoreboard puts below a player's name stays where it was, under the plate.

Press H to switch plates off and on. Other mods can feed their own health numbers into the plate through the addon API.