Ramshackle Power Armor (The only type currently in the game) does require 40 Physique to equip, possibly as a result of having the 'Power Armor' flag, which was added to prevent players from equipping certain weapons without 40 Physique or are not wearing Power Armor.
It's either a bug or a...
I guess I was approaching the idea from a more typical game dev standpoint where lots of stuff gets re-used and nobody gets credit for a specific bit of text, instead of a partially crowd-sourced standpoint.
With the description of Illegal/backalley TFs, my mind went to knockoffs/bootleg TFs...
The lazy way would be to copy existing TFs verbatim, but add a Taint effect.
You could also change probabilities. For example, a Bovinium knockoff that is more likely to cause the quad nipples and cow legs (both a 1/20 chance).
Or mix transformatives. Imagine a Foxfire like mod that causes...
While I don't see any suggestion of that in the perk description, science says you're right. Science also says that the shield bonus is bugged, and you don't lose it when equipping a drone. (Previously it was bugged so you only got the bonus when a drone was equipped...)
Looking through the code, it looks like:
Base drone damage is 1 + level + a random number? rand(Math.round((2 + level) / 2)).
Tamwolf and Siegwulfe do 0.9 of that, but it's penetrating kinetic.
Tamwolf (Damaged) does the same damage, but has a chance to miss entirely.
Tamwolf 2.0 does 0.8 + 0.3...
Tamwolf 2.0 isn't available without Attack Drone.
Tamwolf (damaged) -> Tamwolf -> Tamwolf 2.0
Attack Drone Techs get to skip Tamwolf (damaged), and upgrade to 2.0 during Kara's second quest, which adds bonus Electric damage (not sure how much). Everyone else just goes from damaged to normal.
Some considerations:
The biggest benefit to Attack Drone is gaining access to Tamwolf 2.0. If you want Siegwulfe instead, or are happy with Tamwolf 1, just taking Drone Control at 9 instead of Deadly Shock allows you most of the benefit of Attack Drone without having to give up your shield...
It probably feels tacked on right now because it was added fairly recently, and we haven't reached the Tainted Space in the title yet.
I don't think it's arbitrarily applied, as no legal transformative causes it. Mostly it's 'natural' transformatives (Motherhusk/Slutshoom/Spunkshroom)...
I don't want to sound ungrateful of your work, but I caught some typos in the revised Catnip entry.
As an aside, nitpickiness is apparently a word recognized by the forum spellchecker.
On the one hand, Vanae markings have at least a flimsy excuse to remain exclusive, being named after a specific race and all. On the other, the flavor text for Pickmentation specifically says it was based on the Vanae.
Especially since Pickmentation is a thing. I'm pretty sure you can't remove Frontal Blotch if you change your mind later. I'd thought about suggesting adding Frontal Blotch to Pickmentation in the Ideas forum, but I don't know if it counts as a purely mechanical suggestion.
Not to encourage...
You'd need a paragraph or so of flavor text.
I suspect getting the actual Ice Cold perk wouldn't be approved, but you might have success by creating a similar perk. See: Milky and Treated Milk, Infertile and Sterile/Shooting Blanks.