Well saw this earlier and am working on a Master to throw into the lot so thought I'd say hey and what not! Anyone with a Servant that might be interesting in pairing up I'd love to hear from you!
Okay so, considering you haven't actually responded to much of anything, and I'm trying to work with you here seeing I've pointed out a myriad of shortcomings and heavy disadvantages my character is subjected to as well as provided justification for powers you thought lacked ground to stand on based on thematic, story, personality and even real life examples of similar skills:
How do you suggest balancing out a man whose thing is being a skilled actual swordsman with the low key powerset of "can sword real good despite being unable to powerblast", without being immediately rendered moot by the people summoning reiryoku-stealing, crushing bodies of water, creating poisonous clouds and a poison-on-touch armor, summoning and controlling magical shadows etc, all of them armed with a magical weapon as well, often with a higher level of proficiency in other skills to boot over my extremely overspecialized guy. Should I just scrap it and just have a samey powerset? Let go of an actual gimmick in favor of regular lieutenant levels of power?
As for the gunto: Why tho? It's not as though there's no precedent, such as Mayuri having a legitimate Quincy artifact at hand to give to Uryu after he sacrificed his powers. I'm asking for a crappy copy of a thing to have a sidearm both for thematic reasons (daisho) and because my character is, once again, a sword and literally nothing else. It's not at all outlandish to believe someone would think that researching into a backup weapon that's just "portable blade" might be a good idea. I mean it's just whatever, but it feels like a weird thing to shut down off-hand.
So uh, regarding the missions, namely the possibility of heading into Las Noches. Don't you think starting by going to the giant impossible fortress consistently populated by the most powerful forces in a dog-eat-dog world is a bit...I don't know, extreme? Like we're starting at something that should be built up to.