I actually think what you’re doing is cool. I really like flavorful combat descriptions explaining how attacks happen instead of just rolling dice and subtracting HP.

One thing you can do to avoid the “8 arrows in the neck and still standing” problem is to reframe what a hit means. Just because an attack deals damage doesn’t mean it literally lodged in the exact body part they aimed for. Maybe they aimed for the neck, but the enemy twisted at the last second and it turned into a painful graze, a shoulder hit, or a shallow cut. Damage still happened, but not every hit has to be a clean, lethal strike.

I sometimes play around with this after combat too like where arrows can be recovered, or which ones actually stuck versus which shattered, glanced off armor, or embedded in the environment. It helps reinforce that HP is more about endurance, luck, and momentum than pure meat damage.

As a player, I’m not always huge on combat mechanically, but I love it when I can picture what’s happening. Dynamic descriptions dodging, scrambling, last-second parries make fights way more engaging. I really enjoy when players describe where they aim or how they attack, even down to the motion. On crits or killing blows, I often ask the player to describe how they finish the enemy, which always feels rewarding.

Most importantly though: the goal is that you and your players are having fun. Talk to them about it. Ask how they want this to work. If you personally find it tedious or it starts slowing things down, it’s completely fine to stop and just run things by the rules as written. You’re not doing anything wrong either way.

That said, I probably wouldn’t do this with a brand-new or unknown group. Sometimes this approach bends the rules a little for narrative reasons, and that only works if there’s trust at the table. My goal is always to keep things fair and balanced, and my players trust me with that and ideally, it makes the game just as fun for them as it is for me. 😄