Menoth's Fire wrote:
Picking up a marker, removing the cap, writing on a card, then replacing the cap and setting the marker down always works well as a visual cue to me. Turning a die: not so much.
Smartypants!
The "visual cue" sort of got mixed into the wrong idea. I know you wrote something, but who knows what you wrote. There's always someone who forgets whether they're writing the total damage or the remaining HP and accidentally subtracts damage instead of adding it, or applies 20 damage instead of 30 when I had Cunning Attack and specifically said 30 damage and so on. The fact that I can't see what you're writing means discrepancies, even accidental (we'll ignore cheats) don't get caught instantly like when you add 2 beads instead of 3, or similar.
I saw Aaron's method at Gencon. It works. But it's hard to see across the table, and all that changing with a thumb-wipe on a character like Luke & Yoda specifically is likely going to be a mess.
Hate was perhaps a bit of a strong word. It's much more pleasant to play someone using a method that's easily visible from across the table both for the ability to catch mistakes immediately, and to get an idea of the opposing pieces status at a glance.