I would personally go with the pauldrons without the haut guards (the pieces sticking up) ... every historical piece of armor, and the very few, that I've seen with those seem to be done as jousting reinforcement plates. I can't recall any foot combat armor with them, and it would be a truly NASTY thing to have on the field ... can you picture someone gently dropping their polearm between the haut guard and your neck, and giving that polearm a nice sideways yank? It's a nice little pivot point for a lever; instant broken neck, since that's the softest thing (between a polearm, steel armor and flesh). As such, they are also illegal in most combat groups, except sometimes as flexible material such as leather, and then only with LARPers. I don't recall seeing any gothic harnesses at all with them, only italian and english styles. But again, just my experiences and readings.
I would also ask Allan if he's willing to do a slight modification to the arm harness. Germans LOVE the point-tie styled arms (
http://www.museumreplicas.com/p-31-german-gothic-rerebrace-vambrace-couter.aspx). It is a simple 3-piece set, and each piece is pointed (tied) to the arming coat/gambeson. I have that same set, which I was hoping to have enclosed, and sent the vambraces to Allan at MercTailor. The existing pieces were essentially useless, so I had him make me a whole new two-piece floating vambrace, albeit without fluting. Allan might be willing to make a set of floating arms. He was willing to flute my vambraces, and Allan does REAL fluting with a hammer and chisel - not the bead rolled econo-flutes from the MRL pieces - and I opted to keep the vambraces plain so that the rest of the harness wouldn't look worse in comparison.
If you have the funds, you could get the vambrace and rerebrace from Allan (and hopefully he would flute them), and you could buy the MRL gothic arms and use just the elbow cop; though, I would clean up the fluting on it if you can.
If you're handy with a hammer and a dull chisel, you could give it a go at fluting some pieces yourself. The plackard should be especially easy to do since it's so wide ... but absolutely test it out on a number of scrap sheets before putting a hammer to finished armor.
The two most important bits of advice I can really say ... one has been mentioned by Sir Edward already ... "do what makes you happy, since you'll be the one wearing it". The only other advice I can give is that almost no one has ideal plans and follows them set in stone forever, so you can always get started on it, and swap out bits and pieces along the way as you find opportunities to change it to your liking. When I was younger, I wanted a suit of armor, and sans helmet and gauntlets, I'm up to 4 harnesses now.
Once you get one kit almost done ... you're probably going to want another one or three.
