What's the better way to handle this. (Minor spoiler HoTDQ)

[Danimal66]

Last night in likely our final HoTDQ module (store bought) the players encounter the red wizards and defeated one and put the other to sleep and tied him up. They then forgot about him and later on I had him escape and make a dash across the main court yard to warn the Ogres in the tower.

As you can imagine he was no longer in the tracker as I had removed him since the initial encounter happen in a previous session. I really couldn't figure out a way to get Azarba Jos into the tracker quickly on his own. So i had to open the encounter from the original room, put the whole thing in the tracker and then manually damage the other red wizard and gargoyle to remove them from the tracker just to have Jos in there alone.

So a few questions.

1. Can I add a single NPC from a pre-built encounter to the tracker and how? I tried dragging him from the NPC section and it didn't work.
2. How can I remove creatures from the tracker if I don't want them in an encounter. I assume I don't need to damage them to get the delete option but I really couldn't figure it out in the heat of the moment.

Thanks in advance

[Zacchaeus]

1. You can't drag someone out of an encounter into the CT but you can drag them from the NPC list (big NPC button down the right hand side) straight into the CT.
2. Right click on the creature on the CT and select the delete option.

You could also have left the wizard on the CT; just click the 'eye' icon next to him to make him invisible. Then you can drag him back onto the map somewhere else straight from the CT. If you select 'Skip hidden actor' in options then he won't show up to the players at all if he's hidden even when it's his 'turn' since he'll be skipped.

[Danimal66]

1. You can't drag someone out of an encounter into the CT but you can drag them from the NPC list (big NPC button down the right hand side) straight into the CT.
2. Right click on the creature on the CT and select the delete option.

You could also have left the wizard on the CT; just click the 'eye' icon next to him to make him invisible. Then you can drag him back onto the map somewhere else straight from the CT. If you select 'Skip hidden actor' in options then he won't show up to the players at all if he's hidden even when it's his 'turn' since he'll be skipped.

Thanks, I tried dragging him from the NPC list and it didn't work. Maybe I did something incorrectly. I would of left him in the tracker but this was a spontaneous thing to get my players moving.

[Griogre]

If the know the NPCs name then you can open the NPC List, filter/search for him and drag and drop him from there onto the tracker. From the encounter list instead of dragging the link on the right, first click it to open the NPC, and then drag and drop the top left link on the open NPC sheet onto the tracker and that should work.