I have an ergodox and it has too many keys. The number row is hard to reach. The bottom extra row I basically never use. There are too many thumb keys. I end up using the keys under v and m as raise/lower keys and putting all the symbols (and some macros) on home row while the opposite hand's modifier is held (so ( is that key below v held with your thumb, and j).

Having extra keys for your pointer finger sounds good (those 1.5U side keys on the ergodox next to tgb and nhy), but it is actually difficult to precisely decide among 3 columns that you have to absolutely position your finger to hit. I feel like my accuracy in deciding between b or v suffers and having another possibility doesn't help.

So my suggestion is to go small. Not having a number row may be overkill; they are far away but I have yet to remap them. Figuring out what keys are most important to press and making them easy is crucial. I know I hated where {}, -, =, etc. were on traditional keyboards, so I was careful to put those on home row. It was worth it. Having an extra row of normal-sized keys instead of control, meta, super, space... probably not worth it. The 1u keys next to the 2u thumb keys on the ergodox... I basically never use them (they're arrow keys and page up/page down, but I navigate with emacs style keybindings so only use them for skipping through YouTube videos and things like that; nice to have, but impossible to use during normal typing).

Not using your pinky for enter and backspace is also great.

For completeness, my layout: https://github.com/jrockway/qmk_firmware/blob/master/keyboar...