I hope this isn't repeating too much, but stearic acid can be hard to handle. It will dissolve in the other oils above 150F or so, but if you allow the oils to cool very much, can cause a false trace by precipitating out if the temperature drops very much. It will also saponify pretty much instantly with lye, which will give you a very thick trace of only the stearic acid, not the other oils.
I don't have much experience here, but my guess is above 10% stearic you are going to be much happier with hot process. There is considerable risk that cold process will result in stearic acid spots unless you keep the temp above 150 long enough for it to completely saponify. Certainly shaving soaps with high pure stearic acid levels require hot processing, if you try cold process you get mashed potatoes as soon as you pour in the lye!
The stearic acid will only "melt" in your lye if it's very hot, and if it does, it will become instant soap.
If you have access to it, pure soy wax (fully hydrogenated soy oil) contains about 87% stearic acid, and behaves much better than the pure isolated free stearic acid.
As for your recipe, again I don't have much experience, but if your family likes it, it's fine. The numbers for hardness and cleansing in
soap calculators are really just an index of the fatty acid salts in the finished soap to allow you to compare them to others you've made. If you don't find the soap drying, it's fine, and a soap recipe with similar number should feel much the same to you. Changing the percent superfat will NOT change the numbers, just the way your skin feels after you rinse the soap off. More than 8% may leave you with greasy feeling soap that does not clean well, but suit yourself.
I don't think I've every had dry skin in my life (quite the opposite) so I don't find much soap to be drying, but everyone's skin is different. I will be experimenting with superfat levels for bath soaps -- I use 5% for shaving soap and it's fine.