"Professional+" difficulty mod

[TheBloodEagle27]

I was toying around with this idea after finishing this game for the 10000th time on Professional... It's still a challenge of course, but I feel like at this point this game really could use a "refresh" in the form of a new difficulty setting for the most experienced players who still want the vanilla experience but in an even more challenging option (not that stupid 999 salvadores and verdugos crap), think of it as "Professional+". I have a few ideas for this new mode that need to be tested out properly and see if it makes sense for them to be implemented or not (and if they can even be done at all). Here's a few of them:
 

• Lower starting health for Leon & Ashley (800 & 300 respectively)

• Starting inventory with only pistol (first aid spray and ammunition box removed)
• Dynamic difficulty locked at 10 at all times from the start
• Knife is much less effective and enemies get much less stunned from it
• Either removing or completely changing fixed items (i.e.: hand grenade dropped by the crow that sits on the first signpost)
• Economy changes (either make money drops less valuable or make items more expensive)
• Drop rate changes (less frequent drops & certain drops removed altogether)
• No more special weapons (PRL, Chicago, Normal & Inf. Launcher & Handcannon all removed from merchant)
• Merchant can now sell certain types of ammunition (would help to spread out the economy even more and make resource management even more important)
• Forced normal outfit (No more Ashley in shining knight's armor)
• Removed most free weapons (village Shotgun, medallion Punisher, castle Magnum and regenerator Scope. but you could still buy those from the merchant if you desired)
• Increased plaga rate (the normal is 50% afaik, so maybe 70% would be enough? Would need some testing)
• Lowered item stack numbers (Pretty easy to stack up on ammo early on the game, this would balance it out nicely)
• Health items are less effective
• Slightly increased enemy speeds (In my testing, 120% speed seemed fine, but anything above that started looking goofy. Haven't decided if it would be a good change or not)
• Removed most boss weaknesses and helpers (El Gigante dog, Mendez's fire grenade weakness and explosive barrel, Krauser's knife weakness, all of Saddler's explosive barrels)
• And finally... PERMADEATH! (Though I'm not sure how this one would work, I believe disabling typewriters, post chapter saves and continue screens would suffice)

Right now it's all I could think of. It's all just a concept that needs more flushing out and balancing to be implemented. If you modders would so kindly point me in the right direction as to how I could start tinkering with the sort of stuff I want to change, and explaining why thing X, Y and Z can't be done, I would be really grateful. If this manages to leave the concept phase, I believe it would be quite the popular mod. Anyway, all help is welcome and thanks for your attention!