This might be a simple question, but how do you show the total number of polys on a subtool or individual object, in the new zbrush?
Zbrush doesn’t count polygons. It count points which are vertices. The counter can be found in Preferences > Misc and is called Active Points and Total Points. Active Points are the number of points of the current subtool which change depending on where the subdivision level is set. Total Points are all the points of all the subtools at their maximum subdivision level. If all the subtools are all quad polygons then simply subtracting 2 from the points will give you the amount of polygons. If they are all Tris then you would double the quad amount. If they are mixed, then it would be kind of hard to tell. So the short answer is no, it won’t give you the number of polygons.
Thanks! And yea thats what I meant actually, any type of count, as the old the previous version used to show it on the top right…didnt know where to find the display, but thanks for pointing that out 
The name Active Points is deceptive and actually refers to polys, not verts, as far as i can tell. Every time you subdivide, you will notice that one quaded poly splits into four polys. Thereby, the vert count of each polygon, which previously was 4, is now 9. So if Active Points referred to verts instead of polys, then each time you subdivided, the Active Points number displayed would increase nine fold, and not four fold. So again, Active Points actually refer to polygons, i believe. If i am wrong, please somebody at Pixologic correct me.
No, because the points are always shared by more than one polygon. The difference between points and polygons will vary between meshes but with a closed mesh each point will be shared (on average ) by four polygons. As a mesh of quads has four points for each polygon the number of points and polygons will be roughly equal. (For an open mesh, such as a plane, less so.)
You can see the points and polygons for the current mesh by mousing over the large thumbnail at the top of the Tool palette.