Good Handicaps?

[Lopsidation]

I've recently taken to playing my brother in PoFV, and because he's never played a Touhou game before I have to give myself a handicap of some sort. Usually I agree to bring myself down to last life (or second-to-last life, depending on the characters) at the beginning of each match, but then I still can't use about half of the characters.

I don't want to use a handicap that tampers with the actual dodging, like no-focus, because crazy dodging is sort of the point of the game. Are there any other good ones?

[Furienify]

No Deathbomb (X), all spell cards must be charged.
No Medicine.
Play as Merlin (lol horizontal shot)

[ebarrett]

You can change your starting health on the character selection screen with shift+left/right. That's more practical than getting hit after the round starts, and doesn't give you an early advantage in gauge which can sort of even things out.

As for handicaps that don't tamper with dodging.... "no charging, only X for spells" sounds like a more interesting handicap to me than the other way around. You could also simply try "no spells".