MobHealth ReForged

This simple but invaluable mod lets you know the damage you just caused to a mob (including other players), and how much health it has left.

MobHealth is a modern NeoForge rewrite of the classic MobHealth Bukkit plugin — the same idea it had in 2011, rebuilt for Minecraft 1.21.11, 26.1 and 26.2 with seven display modes you can mix and match.

Hit a zombie, and MobHealth tells you exactly what you did to it:

Zombie [||||||||||] 14/20 (-6)

Or shows you a floating health bar above its head. Or a boss bar. Or a name-tag bar. Or throws a red -6 into the air where you hit it. Your call — every mode is independent, and you can enable as many as you like.

Display modes

Graphical A floating bar above the mob	Toast Popup, with the weapon used	Chat Damage and health, in chat log
Action bar The readout above your hotbar	Nameplate Health bar on the mob's name tag	Boss bar Vanilla bar, top of the screen

Bars are coloured by remaining health — green, to yellow, to red.

New in 2.5.0 — damage indicators

Every other mode reports the mob's state. Damage indicators report the hit: each blow throws a red number into the world where it landed, which drifts upward and fades over about a second. The killing blow is drawn bold, larger and amber, so you can see the one that finished the job.

They follow exactly the same rules as everything else — target groups, per-entity overrides, audience, permissions and your personal /mobhealth toggle. Your client controls how they look: size, how long they live, how far they rise, how much they scatter, draw distance, a minimum damage threshold, and both colours. You can also read damage in hearts instead of health points.

Servers get two settings of their own: a minDamage floor, so poison and thorns don't fill the screen, and whether to flag the killing blow at all.

Damage indicators need MobHealth on both sides. The number genuinely only exists on the server — a client can see health drop, but a drop is not a hit, and absorption, regeneration and healing all move the same number.

The first four modes work on completely unmodified vanilla clients. Install MobHealth on your server and every player gets chat, action bar, nameplate and boss-bar health readouts without downloading anything. Players who also install the mod additionally get toasts, graphical bars and damage indicators.

MobHealth runs happily as a server-only, client-only, or both-sides install. Client-only on a vanilla server? You still get graphical bars over everything you can see — those are drawn from health the client can already read. Damage indicators are the one mode that needs both sides.

Choose what gets a health bar

• Per-group toggles for hostile, neutral, passive, boss mobs and other players (PvP).
• Per-entity overrides that beat the group setting — "minecraft:villager=false", "somemod:custom_boss=true". Works with modded mobs.
• Hide until damaged, so untouched mobs stay clean.
• Choose the audience: only the attacker, or everyone within a configurable radius.
• Per-group display timers — let boss bars linger, let chicken bars vanish.

Make the bars yours

Text bars (chat / action bar / nameplate) let you set the segment count, the filled and empty glyphs, and whether the numbers show as 14/20, 70%, or not at all.

Graphical bars have four styles — solid, rounded, segmented, tapered — plus width, height, scale, vertical offset, draw distance, optional line-of-sight checks, and optional scale-and-fade with distance so they feel anchored in the world rather than pasted on the screen.

Server-enforced graphical settings

Graphical bars are drawn by the client, but a server can enforce any of them. Each option resolves as server override if set, otherwise the client's own choice, so admins can force line-of-sight (no seeing mobs through walls), cap the draw distance, or lock a consistent look — while leaving everything else up to the player. On a vanilla server, nothing is enforced and the client keeps full control.

Commands

Permissions

MobHealth uses NeoForge's permission system, so it works out of the box with vanilla operator levels — and if you run LuckPerms you can manage the nodes per-group with no extra setup.

/lp group guest permission set mobhealth.see false

Configuration

Two TOML files are generated on first run, and both are editable in-game via Esc → Mods → MobHealth → Config:

• mobhealth-common.toml — server side: what is shown, to whom, and how.
• mobhealth-client.toml — client side: the appearance of your graphical bars.

Changes apply as soon as you save. The full config reference, plus ready-made recipes (vanilla-friendly server, MMO always-on bars, PvP fairness, classic chat-only, immersive graphical-only), is on the GitHub page linked below.

Requirements

Pick the file matching your Minecraft version — each jar's name carries it.

The Java version tracks Minecraft, not MobHealth — 26.1 ships its own Java 25 runtime, so the launcher handles it for you.

No other dependencies.

About

MobHealth was originally a Bukkit plugin (2011–2016, ~1 million downloads) by Sablednah. This is a complete rewrite for NeoForge by the same author — none of the original code carries over, but the spirit does. Licensed MIT.

Bug reports, feature requests and source: https://github.com/Sablednah/MobHealth-NeoForge