Have you ever felt that the mobs are not much of a threat even without good items? Would you like an extra reason to avoid death besides playing on Hardcore? Or do you simply want to make the game a bit harder? In any case, Progressive Life should do the trick. This small mod is fully compatible with existing worlds and characters.

Features:

Base max health of players is reduced to 10 (remember that cows have 10 health too and they are quite formidable in real life, so this amount is reasonable).
You can increase your max health back to 20 by consuming Living Hearts.
Living Hearts drop from Elder Guardians and any mobs that drop 11+ experience. In vanilla that would include bosses, baby mobs, Piglin Brutes and mobs wearing armor (the drop is not guaranteed in last case and depends on the number of armor pieces).
Consuming Living Hearts adds 2 max health (up to 20). They also heal 2 health and act as food.
Players drop up to 5 consumed Living Hearts and their max health goes back to 10 on death! Make sure to either have reserves or pick up the dropped ones in time.

The mod is created with the help of MCreator