Although I prefer 2003 to 2000 for various reasons, I hate battle character sets. One reason is that my very limited spriting skills makes it impossible for me to create my own; the second is that, while there are tons of charsets and chipsets available for download (if you know where to look) there are virtually no battle character sets.

What I do is delete the battle animation array and then move the characters' position to under the health box, though this may not be for everyone.

The only real problem with this method is that skill animations have to be redone a little, and some monsters dont look right, since they are faceing the side of the screen instead of the front.

One flaw with the 'same exp for tougher creatures' idea is that then you could level just as easily by thwacking bunnies as by fighting dragons. Just a thought.