Satyrn
First Post
What if you just gave PCs all the benefits of leveling up except for the hit points (assuming they start with some decent chunk of HP)?
That'd totally work for me.
I actually was recently fiddling with a hack that would work much like that. A character would start with his Con score in hit points and then gain from 1 ( wizard) to 4 (barbarian) hit points for each Keven ( including the first). It improves a character's hit points for tier 1, and then stays pretty static for tier 2.
It had the neat effect of working well ( in theory at least) with the Encounter building guidelines, CR and such, when it comes to the damage a PC can take. The numbers line up will enough that I'd just treat the characters as equivalent to half their level. So, level 5 characters would be facing CR 2 or 3 creatures as the standard.
On top of this, the players would still have fireball and their Extra Attack, which effectively means the monster's hit points have been reduced, too.