The small hp pool can be remedied by leveling up, unless you specifically were trying to stay low level. I personally would like to see some midgame equipment that give a static increase to hp or mp. For lower level runs, the percentage increase items are quite underpowered. Obviously the mod wasn't designed for being low level, but a lot of the weapons and armor lack abilities and are inferior to similar weapons found later, so it might be interesting to have abilities that scale differently for early or mid game equipment.