Cybermonk, thank you!  That's kind of the procedure I thought, but I was kind of hoping I was wrong, and there was an easier way.  Not that there is anything inherantly wrong with that procedure, as it's very accurate and does make sense.  However, there are more times when I just want to define some faces and apply a deformation or effect quickly.  This is a very accurate way to apply the modifiers, but I feel like it should be an option more than a requirement.  3dsmax has a selection option called "soft selection", which is basically very much like painting weights in Blender, as a way to get more specific placement of modifiers or whatever.  This is just one of those workflow differences I have to wrap my head around.  It makes sense, but seems like it should be optional.  At any rate, I won't complain further, I'll just get used to it.  Thanks again for confirming this for me.

One thing I'm happy about is that the particle system in Blender is SOO much easier than the Pflow system in 3dsmax, and I can appreciate that.  This is how all particle systems should behave.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.