I can think of two ways to do it, use the faster leveling mod that changes the experience multipliers and set them lower than 1 (I haven't tested it), or use the xp per level mod and just increase the xp requirement. It's probably smarter to change the experience per level, rather than change the multiplier, as it might be problematic with experience at higher levels with less side quets otherwise (but I haven't tested it). You can change the needed experience in the subfolders gameplay/abilities/geralt_levelups.xml from the xp per level mod, the format is pretty simple:
<redxml>
<custom>
<leveling>
<level number="1" requiredTotalExp="0" addedSkillPoints="0"/>
<level number="2" requiredTotalExp="1000" addedSkillPoints="1"/>
<level number="3" requiredTotalExp="2000" addedSkillPoints="1"/>
<level number="4" requiredTotalExp="3000" addedSkillPoints="1"/>
<level number="5" requiredTotalExp="4000" addedSkillPoints="1"/>
<level number="6" requiredTotalExp="5000" addedSkillPoints="1"/>
<level number="7" requiredTotalExp="6000" addedSkillPoints="1"/>
<level number="8" requiredTotalExp="7000" addedSkillPoints="1"/>
<level number="9" requiredTotalExp="8000" addedSkillPoints="1"/>
So you can tweak the experience per level based on how many side-quests there are at certain level ranges.