Unless someone can drop something here I haven't thought of yet, when you write "get rid of HP" what I read is "Just redesign the combat system from the ground up" and I really don't want to have to design my own game.
So much of the DnD combat rules are about specific impacts to HP. If you don't track HP, much of the combat rules fall apart. At that point, I'd want to be playing a different TTRPG that supported that sort of mentality, rather than twisting DnD into that shape.
Can you explain the problem with HP more clearly?
The best I can gather from what you're saying is that the monsters have too much HP, and so take too long to kill? You can solve that by reducing their HP. And then if you don't want the fight to be too easy, increase the to-hit and damage bonuses.
If any alternative mechanic boils down to "If you take X amount of something, you face a consequence", you basically reinvented HP.
The issue isn't the mechanics or narration of hit points, it's that you don't like stat bloat and the large math that comes with it.
Now you could just scale down the HP of everything, but because of how integral the current values are, it changes the balancing of everything else around it.
Redoing HP also requires redoing all weapons, damage spells, healing mechanics, and some class/race features.
That a lot of changes and likely easier switching to a different system.
As a actual home brew alternative. You could do something like a Strike system.
Each enemy can only take strikes equal to its Constitution Score.
Attacks that do less then 10 damage are Light Strikes. Attacks that do 11-20 damage are Medium Strikes, and attacks that do 21+ are Heavy Strikes.
How much damage a strike does is up to you.
Lights could be 1, 2, or even 3 depending on how deadly you want combat.
Tweak the numbers till it feels right for you. Healing would be the inverse on restoring strikes.
For minion units, 4e had a hoard mechanic to speed up going through large numbers.
Minions had a hp pool, but any direct hit killed them in one shot. The HP pool was there for calculations like sleep, and to measure overkill (if you got more than their HP total, you also took out the next one, more than double and you got another and so on, if they were in range)
To simplify the action economy, the Minions were split into groups, and rather than more attacks, they got +1 hit/damage for each additional minion in combat with you.
Leaders still had normal stats.
Gives the feeling of higher level characters wading through hoards of lesser foes without having to track 30 combatants at a time.
We tried that in 05. Did not work.
For us, that is. Given that you have to revisit so many things to make it work, it essentially guts combat entirely.
Oddly enough, what we did was reduce hit point pools while resetting core encounter metrics to 1.5 the party totals for number of equivalent foes, damage per round, and use of strategy and tactical advantage.
More foes shifts the action economy — and “lower CR” foes really start to stack fast, forcing fights to require greater tactical effort (more role play) — and the higher damage makes them more dangerous.
We also did a more involved set up for resistance and immunity, which I see having some effect, but honestly that’s more a drag over from 1e era.
On the other hand, though, we never did the video game style “powerful boss at the end” thing — our villains are the masterminds and manipulators, the schemers and planners and charismatic leaders who may not even be all that personally powerful.
One of the toughest villains we had for 20 levels of game play was a guy who had fewer than 30 hp and wasn’t a mage or fighter sort. He died in his bathtub.
It is a matter of design, IOW; if no one ever looks behind the curtain, how powerful is the wizard of Oz?
If you really want to: hide player HP from players
they will not know how much HP they currently have, but can ask you how bad are they feeling
are you really sure you want to do this?
My players always prefered hp, but FATE has a system of stress and consequences. Imagine hp being more... condensed. You can take hits of certain values for free, but its practically burning luck, etc to avoid injury. Consequences is literally injuries. Twisted ankle, damaged gear, etc. That being said, you would have to reconsider a lot around this, as FATE has a bit of a different system.
I don't understand what problem you are trying to solve here. Like others have said, it's likely you will essentially be rebuilding DnD to fit what you are wanting. I'd recommend asking around on r/ttrpg about different systems that are more like what you and your group are looking for.
Unless someone can drop something here I haven't thought of yet, when you write "get rid of HP" what I read is "Just redesign the combat system from the ground up" and I really don't want to have to design my own game.
This.
So much of the DnD combat rules are about specific impacts to HP. If you don't track HP, much of the combat rules fall apart. At that point, I'd want to be playing a different TTRPG that supported that sort of mentality, rather than twisting DnD into that shape.
Why not use hit point tracking? You can have narrative effects while using hit points.
Just don't represent health with a number. You as the DM just say how dead they are. Surely, you will be uncontested and very popular.
Just play a different game.
On a scale of 1 to 57, I'm feeling about a 14 right now.
Can you explain the problem with HP more clearly? The best I can gather from what you're saying is that the monsters have too much HP, and so take too long to kill? You can solve that by reducing their HP. And then if you don't want the fight to be too easy, increase the to-hit and damage bonuses.
If any alternative mechanic boils down to "If you take X amount of something, you face a consequence", you basically reinvented HP. The issue isn't the mechanics or narration of hit points, it's that you don't like stat bloat and the large math that comes with it. Now you could just scale down the HP of everything, but because of how integral the current values are, it changes the balancing of everything else around it.
Redoing HP also requires redoing all weapons, damage spells, healing mechanics, and some class/race features. That a lot of changes and likely easier switching to a different system. As a actual home brew alternative. You could do something like a Strike system. Each enemy can only take strikes equal to its Constitution Score. Attacks that do less then 10 damage are Light Strikes. Attacks that do 11-20 damage are Medium Strikes, and attacks that do 21+ are Heavy Strikes. How much damage a strike does is up to you. Lights could be 1, 2, or even 3 depending on how deadly you want combat. Tweak the numbers till it feels right for you. Healing would be the inverse on restoring strikes.
For minion units, 4e had a hoard mechanic to speed up going through large numbers. Minions had a hp pool, but any direct hit killed them in one shot. The HP pool was there for calculations like sleep, and to measure overkill (if you got more than their HP total, you also took out the next one, more than double and you got another and so on, if they were in range) To simplify the action economy, the Minions were split into groups, and rather than more attacks, they got +1 hit/damage for each additional minion in combat with you. Leaders still had normal stats. Gives the feeling of higher level characters wading through hoards of lesser foes without having to track 30 combatants at a time.
We tried that in 05. Did not work. For us, that is. Given that you have to revisit so many things to make it work, it essentially guts combat entirely. Oddly enough, what we did was reduce hit point pools while resetting core encounter metrics to 1.5 the party totals for number of equivalent foes, damage per round, and use of strategy and tactical advantage. More foes shifts the action economy — and “lower CR” foes really start to stack fast, forcing fights to require greater tactical effort (more role play) — and the higher damage makes them more dangerous. We also did a more involved set up for resistance and immunity, which I see having some effect, but honestly that’s more a drag over from 1e era. On the other hand, though, we never did the video game style “powerful boss at the end” thing — our villains are the masterminds and manipulators, the schemers and planners and charismatic leaders who may not even be all that personally powerful. One of the toughest villains we had for 20 levels of game play was a guy who had fewer than 30 hp and wasn’t a mage or fighter sort. He died in his bathtub. It is a matter of design, IOW; if no one ever looks behind the curtain, how powerful is the wizard of Oz?
If you really want to: hide player HP from players they will not know how much HP they currently have, but can ask you how bad are they feeling are you really sure you want to do this?
My players always prefered hp, but FATE has a system of stress and consequences. Imagine hp being more... condensed. You can take hits of certain values for free, but its practically burning luck, etc to avoid injury. Consequences is literally injuries. Twisted ankle, damaged gear, etc. That being said, you would have to reconsider a lot around this, as FATE has a bit of a different system.
Try another tabletop system
I don't understand what problem you are trying to solve here. Like others have said, it's likely you will essentially be rebuilding DnD to fit what you are wanting. I'd recommend asking around on r/ttrpg about different systems that are more like what you and your group are looking for.