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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 7035354" data-attributes="member: 5100">I did this in a World of Darkness game, back in the 1990s. In fact, I kept all character stats from the players and rolled all the dice. It worked really, really well and everyone enjoyed it. Now, WoD is intended to be a much more immersive game than D&D. Also, we only did this once, as an experiment, and with the first WoD game most in the group had experienced. Once people started buying the books, joining second groups, etc., they had a hard time just letting the numbers out of their minds. So, while it worked extremely well for that one campaign/chronicle, we never repeated it.As far as D&D goes, the game is so combat driven and the hit point mechanic is so abstract, especially as you level up, that I would not recommend it. If that sort of thing is important to you, play a different game system. Seriously.Now, what I do, to avoid too much calculation on the part of the players is this:* Players get to know their own HPs. They track them, etc. I do, too, but only because I've got a handy-dandy initiative app on my tablet and I'm already using it to track the monsters.* All damage and healing numbers are thrown out into the open. By this, I mean that it's a game and we don't try to hide information that's being exchanged as part of the game ("I rolled 5 damage").* Monster HPs are hidden from the players. Borrowing from 4E, "Bloodied" (half hit points) is announced to the table. This tells the players they're making pretty good progress.* Monster HPs are randomized, not standard. Again, this is made easier because I use a tool. The tool also makes it trivial to do individual initiative instead of by monster type.* PCs may spend an action using the Medical skill to get a more accurate assessment of where damage sits. I give the players an eyeballed percentage of where the monster is (i.e. 39 left of 60 max is going to get a "taken 1/3 of his damage" from me). No one has ever even asked for a bunch of mooks, just BBEGs, so I might be talked into getting a nearest quartile for all monsters.* Players announce their own "Bloodied" status. Otherwise, the Cleric (or whomever might care) is generally free to ask where folks are sitting. In practice, the players generally give more narrative answers or, at least, percentile answers. I assume this is because of the tone set by how I handle monsters. I don't make any prohibitions about sharing numbers between players.* Players figure out monster AC by trial and error. It usually doesn't take very long before they figure out "AC 13 misses, but AC 14 hits". At that point, we just deal with the numbers. Before then, I do describe what kind of armor a humanoid is wearing or whether a beast appears to have thick hide, etc.The overall impact of the above is that the monsters always retain a certain level of mystery to the players. They're smart and can make some educated guesses about things. They could also track damage to monsters and, based on bloodied, know how much more needed to be done, but they don't care enough. There's very little cost -- increased complexity or slow down of play -- to these table rules. Most of us have been playing for 20 or more years, some as much as 35. We all know we're never going to get back the wonder of the first time we fought a troll and had to figure out we had to use fire. We are still learning the intricacies of the 5E rules, and open to letting subtle changes and restatting be a surprise and add back some of the wonder. But, once things get sorted out in play, we move on with life and don't try to pretend we're ignorant of something we aren't. It's a balance.</blockquote>

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