I'm horrible at explaining things that repeat - and yes, there are much easier ways to event code this than how I did it. However, event scripting is fun like that, because if you do it the long way (as I did) you'll see how to do it the easy way later on.
You could do this with a common event, and more so. If you do decide to use this method however, I suggest checking out sandgolem/game baker's "base battle event script".
(IT CAN BE FOUND HERE)
That way, you'd only need to include the event processing once, in battle. Whenever a specific developer (you) defined script is off (default) it will carry all events in a developer defined troop, to all others (those others would keep whatever events they had as well).
Here is my event method
http://www.mediafire.com/?9mzfmzzuikn
You can play with it all you want. With other scripts you could make the "10" stay over the target, and then when it switches to "9", that would be displayed. As I have it, the "[normal]" is replaced with "[Death Sentence X]", where x is equal to the count.
Remember, you can do this for all actors and enemies easily, I'm just too lazy. You don't need to make this a battle event either, it can be a called common event - to cut down even more so.
If you do it that way, just make one event. Copy the battle event into it, and then under all of the conditional sequences, paste it again (this time edit it to a different actor), and so on.