Power Damper Cuffs (pyramid 4/3)

[Plane]

Noticed some issues with these that got me thinking

(1)
Neutralize is normally a will vs will contest. If you take weaponized this shifts it to an unopposed will roll to resist.

Weaponized is meant for ranged maledictions, PP21 says you need the Ranged enhancement. I'm thinking this probably is missing because of the idea "this is an apparatus that must touch what it neutralizes" rather than "shoots neutralizer beams" but wouldn't the legal way actually be to take Ranged +40% and then after converting it to a ranged malediction and weaponziing it to be a standard Speed/Range (like Affliction) then you take Melee C (no parry) -35% for a net of +5%?

(2)
what is the basis for this cosmic lingering effect? Normally permanent that ends with a special condition is +150% not +100%. Is it cheaper because "remove the cuffs" is more obvious than "princess kisses frog" ?

It's strange since this is like more of a "advantage targets user" rather than "user gets an advantage" situation. Makes me wonder if it might make more sense to either design the cuffs as characters with the neutralize advantage and Aura (automatically attacks whatever touches it once per second)

(3)
why is "Based on lower of" only +40% ? It would normally be +20% to permanently switch Will-resist to HT-resist and an extra +20% if you want to add back Will and give the attacker the option of specifying which attribute he's targeting.

Powers 100 says "attacker must choose the target attribute before he attacks" which sounds like there should be a setting on the cuffs you select before you try activating them, as opposed to it automatically detecting which attribute is lower and automatically adjusting what it targets on that basis.

If the cuffs were characters I'd think you'd need something like "Detect HT" and "Detect Will" for them to be able to do that.

This does however seem consistent with the approach that Horror: Beyond the Pale (pg 9) took for "Based on HT or Will" for the Affliction ability of "The Drawn" which is explained as:

"by winning a Quick Contest of Will against the lower of the victim’s HT or Will"

If the +40% for base/extra is meant to be "automatically the lowest" then how do we cover "I can swap between the two to see what works but I can't strategically target the lowest" ?

The only point of comparison which comes to mind is "Target rolls against the better of HT or Will" which is defined as a -20% Nuisance Effect in Monster Hunters.

so we basically have four established tiers in later books

-20 = best of baseline and non-baseline
0 = baseline
+20 = non-baseline
+40 = worst of baseline and non-baseline

In all cases it ignores the "attacker must specify" problem.

Since it seems like +40 is being consistently retconned to "worst of two" (autotargeting the weakness) then perhaps to capture the classic Powers idea of "attacker chooses but doesn't know" we should change that via Alternative Enhancements? 20 + 20/5 = +24% ?

This seems like a way you could for example change a Will-resist to "attacker specifies IQ or HT" instead of "automatically the worst of IQ or HT resists"

If you had Selectivity though, it seems like you could just revert to a default by switching off your +20% enhancement.

While that's normally +10%, if you're only able to switch off a single ability, it seems like Selectivity itself could be 1/5 price (+2%) as an Alternative Enhancement. Which basically means whenever you're using Selectivity's Alternative, your advantage does not function as selective (you can't turn off other enhancements). You'd only be able to switch off the others when NOT using the alternative.