Hey Bwear I am literally in this exact thought process, planning out a rebuild of my '94 454. Machinist is trying REAL hard to talk me into the stroker kit because it not only makes more torque/hp but makes a nice and tidy "square" engine, one of the reason the 8.1 was such a good platform (I had one, and still regret selling it).
So, biggest question is do we ditch our peanut port heads. Well, I'm working with a cam designer, PM me if you'd like his name, dude is really good. In a nutshell, the PP heads on a 496 with a good roller cam upgrade actually work slightly better off-idle up to about 3800RPM as compared to a big oval port head (781 or 049). I can send graphs if you'd like. The big ovals pull out ahead in the 4,500rpm range and at 5 or 5,500 perform way better. But for my use case, just pulling trailers, I don't care to rev it that high anyway.
My machinist HATES this idea though. hahaha I think he's rolling his eyes at me, thinking "damn kids and their computer dynos". He swears I need to go with better heads that flow more than the peanut ports.