Hi Justin - it is not inherrently a surface friendly kind of workflow just because of the way these are structured. It can work if all the forms remain more or less blocky with planar faces - you can do this type of editing now by selecting edges and faces and moving or Gumballing but it is not very robust when things become non-planar. (mesh triangles never do that)
That said, see the thread on PushPull modeling on the Serengiti forum to see what we are working on in this general area.