I started Year 11 with very similar subjects to yours except that I did Human Biology instead of German and ended up dropping Specialists later in Term 3. To answer your questions,
1. Personally, I would definitely say consider whether you can manage the subjects, not just content and knowledge wise but also time and load wise. I've always been pretty good at maths, and my Year 10 Pathway 1 maths grade was around 90~. It's not super impressive but I thought I would do well in Specialists and so I picked that. However, with concentrating on 5 other subjects as well, I had a very hard time making space to study for Specialists. I barely met the average of the class with a 65% when I did the Semester 1 exam, even though I didn't have a hard time understanding the contents.
Although Specialists does scale up, it's not really worth juggling 6 subjects, unless you're a very efficient time manager unlike me lmao. It's also really easy to slip up and fall behind in Specialists, given your classmates are naturally smart students who are good at maths and it was kinda crushing to stress out on catching up with everyone else, especially when some kids had even started studying chapters and chapters ahead. So I'd say pick up Specialists if you 100% think you can manage it well, not just because it scales up.
2. I personally didn't pick a LOTE subject but I have friends who does French and Japanese, and their ATARs are surprisingly very good despite the LOTE subject is one of their lowest. I'm not entirely sure about the basis of the bonus but I've heard them say that they managed to raise their scaled ATAR from around 93 to 95 with just the LOTE bonus so it's pretty helpful if you're okay with your language choice.
I hope this was of help.