1. Additional skills does let them pick more first tier skills.
2. Lets say you have an encounter with lever 5 enemies. You have to level it up to 5 so it matches their level and then you can level them down. If you had 1 level 6 in the encounter it would be unaffected when you wemt up to 5 and back down. If you went all the way to 6 first your level 5 enemies would become 6 then you could level everything back down equally.
3. Sorry ill plug the standard you have to ise the engine for stuff like this. You can out the key in a reward bag and have it in your gm inventory ready to hand out. Ive jad issues with the players not able to open reward bags. You might just have to have the key handy in your gm inventory.
