User blog comment:LOTRMod/NPC Health/@comment-26172435-20160513165730/@comment-25101690-20160513180231

Even an unarmoured mob can survive multiple sword hits. I don't think more help would make it in any way more realistic.

Imagine Minecraft with anything above iron stuff removed (incl. enchantments) and where everything (including the player) has only half the health. In addition, you get a lot of debuffs (slowness, nausea, mining fatigue, weakness, bleeding (=damage over time)) when your health is low. But also blocking with a sword is much more useful, in most cases negating the whole damage and sometimes even getting the enemy out of balance (=can't attack for a few seconds) or disarming him. Also, armour has two values: The damage absorbtion ratio (which is already used in MC) and the damage absorbtion chance, which resembles the coverage of the armour.

Now we come closer to having a realistic combat system.

It wouldn't be impossible to do for a mod. It would be extremely hard, but imo still very enjoyable. So why not make a mod for that?