hands on is good justification for anything and I understand about pam's being kind of the opposite
you may be better off with a module full of a/b (or a/off/b) switches - I have a few with 6 (diy from pusherman but they do do built for these too) - for what you describe above
if you want to play with ratcheting send a multiplied trigger from pams to a vca and open and close it with a heavily divided gate from pams with a shortish high state - so it doesn't happen that often - obviously you can mess with this more inside pams - combine using the vca as a trigger combiner (it's dc-coupled and cascading, isn't it?) - you could also use the switched multiple for this... - for me that would probably be enough - apart from ducking hats for example: send the inverse of the gate signal to a vca using it to turn on/off the hats - either the triggers or the audio depending on what you want to send it (and maybe how many channels you use for your hats!)
google - "maths illustrated supplement" - 32 self-patching ideas - from bouncing ball to drone and back
extension cables are available
"some of the best base-level info to remember can be found in Jim's sigfile" @Lugia
Utility modules are the dull polish that makes the shiny modules actually shine!!!
sound sources < sound modifiers < modulation sources < utilities