I think the avatar container should and will remain static because auto-resizing which is fine but adding additional data would pose issues. You never can tell what size any one persons avatar will be. The container keeps that consistency.
I modified a couple of templates to get that smaller avatar which is now set at 96px square. Just to give you a feel what a smaller sized avatar will look like on the member card.
It should do. But doesn't at present I tried it and then applied a 200px avatar and the membercard data overlaps onto the avatar. Looks like this could be more trouble than it's worth unless I'm missing something. I'll need to investigate further on my board see if I can find a solution I haven't really spent much time with it tbh.