In my limited experience, a head mount NV device and an IR laser is much less limiting and is preferable to a weapon mounted NV combination.
IR laser sights are legal to own, the problem is most manufacturers won't sell to civilians.
Right now the only readily available unit is from Hayes Research, and runs around $500. You hit the greatest weakeness of this with your post- there have been reports of dots with 9" diameter size at 100 yds and the company says that is normal. It doesn't sound like their customer service is the best, but everything I've read about the unit says that it is well built and small.
Other than that, you can buy a cheap knockoff on ebay of one of the insight technologies lasers (very questionable quality), or watch the EE for a real insight unit which will sell at a pretty good premium.
The wolverine lasers built by Avenge sounded like a great product, but he got raided by the gov, and although he keeps saying he is coming back, I haven't seen any evidence of that yet.