Well, despite all the less-than-ideal factors in my design, I went ahead and got 220 50w 3ohm resistors. Retail price would have been almost
$400 + shipping, and I got them for ~$80 shipped. More than I wanted to spend really, but I could always use extras for various power projects.
Once they come in, I'll size up some cheap PC surplus heatsinks from BGMicro or AllElectronics to cool them. To test 2s up to 150A, I'll be using 60 resistors in parallel

. Which is nice because I'll make banks of 5-6 on each CPU heatsink and just add them in the circuit depending on the max current I want to test at (and use the ESC to go from 0A up to the max value). I'll probably use some 8-10GA car audio wire for the cabling.
So, the process moves on... slowly but surely.