My mountain bike is currently more of a rough-stuff tourer than an off roader. However, as I'm labelling it touring I tend to value comfort, taking in the views and eating cake over speed, aero efficiency and bike weight. However, like you, I do have road-ish tyres, some mud protection, front suspension, hydraulic brakes, racks etc.
on-one do various non-riser bars - I used to have some of the Mary's, which were more comfortable (to me) than risers for shorter rides. The lack of hand position variety wasn't so good for longer rides, so I'm now using flat bars (not too wide) and bar ends. Running MTB hydraulic brakes does reduce the range that can be used as many of the more interesting shapes assume road diameter levers. Now hydraulic on the road is a thing I suppose you can get hydraulic levers for road bars - but that's not a thing I've considered lately. If you're feeling too upright then a longer stem seems like a good place to start in cost and complexity.
This bike will always have a different set of trade-offs to the 23mm / no guards road bike. However I've no idea how rough the tracks you're considering are though, so how far you can reasonably take the compromises I don't know.