That's a good point about hit points! I hadn't thought about the knockback from a hit, or just trying to flee enemies. If that's not intended to be a viable solution, then yeah, adding hp would mess things up. Thanks for taking the time to elaborate on that :)
I think up until that one room, the difficulty increases steadily, though perhaps even a little slowly. I felt very clever up until that point, haha. I'm gonna have to go back and try that room again when I've got some free time, though.