Mercule
Adventurer
One of the few things that I carried over from 4E was the mental concept of "bloodied" at half hit points. Above half, I narrate any hit as a near miss, slap to the armor, etc. As soon as an attack drops a bad guy to/below half, though, real blood has been drawn and I start to narrate things like you're saying. It's a way of announcing "poop just got real" and even my players have started announcing when they're bloodied (there's no prohibition against sharing current hp or damage, it's just a warning chime that people sound).Hit Points as a measure of anything but Meat Points. It makes more sense and is more dramatic for the DM to narrate successful attacks as nicks, close shaves, and momentum shifts until the final blow lands true. But that takes so much more mental effort that everyone quickly slides back into simple "your arrow thuds into the bandit's shoulder" and "the orc's axe blow crashes into your side and sends blood flying" even if it's only a fraction of the target's total HP and everything goes away with a short rest and some healing surges.
As a side note, to gauge anything more accurate than bloodied/not bloodied on an NPC, I make a PC take an action and make a medicine (or whatever it's called) check to get a "percent dead" read on the critter. The difficulty depends on how close to human (or other PC race) the physiology is. Sometimes, say when a dragon almost bites someone in half, I'll let a PC make the check as a reaction. Hardly anyone bothers, though. Bloodied seems to be enough info for everyone to gauge how tough things are.