Without a copy of the rules to hand, I don't recall exactly how negative enhancements are supposed to work to start with, so I'll try and derive something from first principles
If you want to augment yourself then you need to overcome a resistance of 5 per point of augmentation - so to augment yourself to +2 would be vs a resistance of 10.
This doesn't seem very appropriate for negativley augmenting your foes - firstly because it makes it "too easy", and secondly because it doesn't take into account who you are trying to affect. It should definitely be easier to use your "fear" feat to negatively augment a lone trollkin than a mistress race disciple of Zorak Zoran...
Using magic on a foe is resisted by their "best/most appropriate" ability, or the "world default" of 14. (In fact any attempt, resolved as a simple contest is resisted by their "most appropriate" ability "I'll use my 'Vice Like Grip 17' to hold on to his arm and make it harder for him to fight effectively - a -4 augment?")
> My feeling is that they should resist with their most appropriate
> ability +5 per additional point. So if the base ability is 2w and
> the enhancement was -3 then the resistance would be 12w.
>
This certainly seems to be the most elegant way of combining everything. The alternative is two roll to contests, one to see if the augmentation works at all, and a second to see if whether the target resists it (on the assumption that augmenting yourself (and probably your allies too, as I don't recall there is any direct penalty for augmenting other people (other than the general modifiers for range and no of targets)) is never resisted). In this case to augment someone with a -3 penalty when they have a base ability of 2w would be (1) ability vs 15 to perform augment. A failure here would transfer the penalty to the caster (in line with the argument that you can't try and enhance a foe +50 in order to fail and give them a huge penalty) followed by (2) ability vs 2w to affect them. A failure here will mean their is no effect, although (magic being visible) they will no you tried to attack them. A Major or complete defeat may well lead to some sort of penalty to the caster, either in terms of the failed augment being appled to them, or a penalty to the ability they were using.
> also, as this was the first action of a pair
> of contestants in an extended contest, the particular skills used
> set their starting APs for the contest.
>
> I don't think that the additional +5 per point should affect the
> opponents APs.
>
Absolutley. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that a -1 augment would use the "base" ability of (say) 2w generating 22 AP's. If the attacker wants to try a -3 augment (against a resistance of 12w) then the defender shouldn't start with 32 AP's (It is counterintuitive to give your opponent more AP's when you successfully reduce his ability....)
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