3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?

[Bartmanhomer]

How are people defining mundane? A 20th level commoner is beyond what is possible in real life, but still fairly mundane for dnd.

How unmundane can a character be and still be considered mundane?

Even if you can't close the gap it can for sure be narrowed. Give the fighter more skills, saves, hit points and its level in feats every level and you straight up have a better class.

On the magic side its possible to trim a little and not .ower it a full level.

What about Level 21+ Commoner?

[Hackulator]

What about Level 21+ Commoner?

Epic Skill Focus: Profession: Farming

[Quertus]

I But apparently I am alone in believing "you don't have to write everything twice" would lead to more content.

Well, look at the editions of D&D where they implemented just a single "Fighter", vs the one where there's Fighter, Samurai, War Blade, etc. I think evidence suggests that you'll get more content when people are acclimated to writing lots of content.

Similarly, I think you'll get more balance when people are accustomed to thinking about balance. How many balance threads like this exist for 4e? How many 4e players would be good at giving little Timmy a balanced play experience?

Call me crazy, but I'll claim that 3e's imbalance helps game balance, simply by increasing awareness.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, the thing is, you can alter the disparity by playing the classes up or down. The issue is that certain concepts have ceilings far higher than others. Mundane fighterdude inherently has a lower ceiling tha magicman for example, but that's not to say that magicman and mundane fighterdude can't still be played on the same level.

The issue is that, if you drag magicman's ceiling down to match mundane fighterdude's, then you've just cut out a whole swathe of content, and if you try to raise mundane fighterdude's ceiling to match magicman's, then he's not REALLY mundane fighterdude anymore, is he?

Well, a lot like the rules say, you can balance the game setting before the characters.

But why does it matter if content is cut?

Why must a fighter be ''mundane"? Like, ok, how about you say the fighter can Mundane Move(aka teleport), Mundane Ball(fireball) and Mundane Stop(time stop)....well ok, we ''say" they are all mundane...but they are exactly like magic, but we ''say" they are not magic. So...really...does it matter?

[ezekielraiden]

Been a bit since I last checked in. Forgive me for not pouring through 250+ posts!

I think the simplest definition of mundane might be "something the hero of an action movie could do without it being a superhero movie".

So, not particularly mundane, then? Because action heroes--in non-superhero movies, involving putatively "real" people--do things that actual flesh-and-blood human beings cannot do. They do so on the regular, in fact. And this is even assuming that the daily activities of these action heroes are comparable to peak performance of medal-winning Olympic athletes.

Yes, that is what "having a level system" means.

I am fairly sure, by demonstration, that there are systems which do not reduce everything to a single number. Not that that, in and of itself, is a bad thing either. But it's entirely possible to have multiple, incommensurate axes of power and still have 'a system.' Many governments, for example, split executive, legislative, and judiciary power, and usually make military power subservient to one or more of those separate tracks. (In the US, for instance, although the President is the Commander-in-Chief and therefore gives the orders, the power to declare war is reserved for the legislature. Both a system, and a function of two distinct variables.)

Insisting that level be meaningless because you want the system to have properties that level based systems don't have is just fundamentally misunderstanding how the game works.

Well, while I can't speak for the person you replied to, I don't actually think it's impossible to implement some of this stuff in a class- and level-based system. But the system needs to be a hell of a lot more honest, first with itself so we don't get crap inclusions in core or crap additions later on (in either direction), and second with its players, telling them what it's going for and why.

If your goal is to enable players to do every possible thing they can piece together from the chunky point buy, tell them that, and tell DMs that they should prepare for the players having the potential to re-write the campaign from under them, because quadratic (or, realistically, exponential) power increase + combinatoric flexibility increase (the two are not identical, but are mutually amplifying) means the system will almost assuredly go off the rails eventually.

Or, if your goal is to make a certain set of actions, events, procedures, or experiences well-supported and leave the rest for each table to figure out, then tell readers that.

But don't try to pretend that the first game includes the second as a proper subset. It doesn't, and trying to make a game that does both will fail.

Which is higher level: the ability to defeat an allip, or the ability to defeat an ogre? It turns out that mostly you can, in fact, reconcile these things.

It seems to me you are forcing a comparison of apples to apples (defeating enemies where one is stronger or weaker than another), and thereby avoiding the key concern, that there are unlike things--indeed, incommensurate things--which are being forced to fit into one single measure. How about things like summoning a mount, seeing that which has been magically concealed, or creating an unreachable hiding-place, vs. something like cutting off an enemy's limb?

So you want traveling to be easy when you are going "up a mountain", but hard when you are going "across an ocean". And you want otherworldly beings to be dangerous and scary, but also for PCs to put them in headlocks. It seems like you just don't have a coherent set of expectations for how the campaign is supposed to work.

Alternatively, these things can track on different metrics, and involve different kinds of choices. Swimming, or sailing, is rather a different beast from mountaineering (I've only done a very little of both, but they're radically different skills, and it's a lot easier to back out of one than the other!) Perhaps otherworldly beings are scary, but physically fighting them is possible, if you're prepared or they're off-guard. A dragon is not easily slain, but that doesn't mean it has to be impossible to get one in a chokehold. That you have it in a chokehold shouldn't mean you've totally defeated it in that moment, either.

If you pin a specific event in the campaign to a specific enemy without considering the rest of the campaign, you will have problems in any system with any notion of different power levels. What if you decided that you really wanted your end boss to be a Mind Flayer, but also that you really wanted his goons to be Stone Giants?

I have less experience with DMing than most, so perhaps I should not speak on this, but...what's wrong with that? (I may in fact end up having something vaguely similar to this--mixing different kinds of opponents together as the climax of the campaign comes forward and the party roots out the true puppetmaster behind it all.)

[Mechalich]

Well, look at the editions of D&D where they implemented just a single "Fighter", vs the one where there's Fighter, Samurai, War Blade, etc. I think evidence suggests that you'll get more content when people are acclimated to writing lots of content.

2e AD&D has more content than any other D&D edition and actually has the fewest classes, so this is provably false.

More broadly, having lot's of mechanics makes it easier to add...more mechanics. This is what you see in Pathfinder, where the existence of the Archetypes, the Race Point system, and a greater number of base classes means that it's possible to spew out and endless amount of extremely niche mechanical modifications to suite every possible thing the designers can think up - even when they are being almost entirely redundant (ex. Pathfinder has at least two first party races to fullfil the role of 'ape-men').

At the same time, having an endless array of mechanics makes it more difficult to right coherent fluff, because there's so much variability and an endless array of factors have to be juggled. Paizo responded to this challenge by taking their principle campaign world - Golarion - and chopping it apart into severed bits that each function more or less autonomously and completely lacks a coherent whole and choosing to mostly produce nations that are shameless knock-offs of actual earth cultures even though these should not even come into existence in the context of Pathfinder.

Call me crazy, but I'll claim that 3e's imbalance helps game balance, simply by increasing awareness.

Okay, you're crazy. 3e is not open about it's imbalance. In fact, WotC has worked long and hard to claim things are balanced, even when they are not, and it's worked, because Fighter is the most commonly played class.

Again, broadly, pretty much no game will come out and openly admit that it's mechanically imbalanced and that certain options are under-powered. Even RIFTS - which is the poster-child for the unbalanced game - doesn't do that. Games almost universally claim that whatever metric of power they're using, whether levels or points, characters built to that same level will be roughly equal. In fact generally the only time a gaming source will talk about something providing an imbalance is when they note some option that does not necessarily provide the same amount of points (like the Life Path Chargen option in Eclipse Phase).

Gaming producers are generally wise to avoid noting imbalance, in their gaming product, because they want to sell books about the weaker options. That's why even when they do admit that something is weaker - like how Dragon-Blooded are weaker than Solars in Exalted - they'll offer some other special option - like teamwork abilities for the Dragon-Blooded that Solars can't have - in an attempt to pretend the disparity doesn't actually exist. And they do that because they want to sell more product. That they can get away with this has a lot to do with how games are marketed and played. The economics of gaming largely work against producing mechanically sound products.

[Crake]

Why must a fighter be ''mundane"? Like, ok, how about you say the fighter can Mundane Move(aka teleport), Mundane Ball(fireball) and Mundane Stop(time stop)....well ok, we ''say" they are all mundane...but they are exactly like magic, but we ''say" they are not magic. So...really...does it matter?

"Fighters" don't have to be mundane (that's what tome of battle is for), but the concept "mundane fighterdude" does.

[Talakeal]

I think the simplest definition of mundane might be "something the hero of an action movie could do without it being a superhero movie".

That's a pretty good guideline.

Captain America has the best possible mundane stats. He is, depending on the exact version, either as strong or slightly stronger than it is possible for humans to be. Any character that is stronger, tougher, or faster than him is not mundane. That's what "peak human" means.

Right. A perfect* physical speciman with maximum ability scores. Not the sum total lf human abilities. After all, he's not Batman.

There are plenty of normal humans in the marvel universe who have knowledge, skills, training, experiance, and practice that Captain America doesn't. These are the things that, imo, D&D levels represent, and in D&D level tends to matter a lot more than ability scores.

*Of course when looked at realistically perfect is a matter of trade offs rather than absolutes. For example, a guy with Cap's build could never have the same potential for flexibility as a preteen girl. Sometimes its better to be tall, other times short, somtimes fat sometimes thin, some situations call for a bunch of short muscle fibers and others long, and when you get to the immune system it gets really complex with some traits being life saving in certain situations and lethal in others. Of course thats probably a good deal more complex than either comic books or RPGs need to be.

In 3.5, I can run the first campaign with, e.g., barbarians, warmages, warlocks, paladins, and rogues. I can run the second campaign with, e.g., sorcerers, artificers, warblades, crusaders, and especially (cloistered) clerics.

That works to an extent, but you are almost certainly going to have some unhappy players as many character concepts and playstyles are inexorably linked to certain power levels. For example, none of the ToB classes appeal to me because I dont like fire and forget powers. A guy who likes a generalist academic mage would likewise be so in a game that bans tier 1s.

Furthermore, the classes tend to suck at even their own power levels. Fighters lack the versatility, mobility, anti-magical defenses, or skills to be a descent adventurer even in a low key sword and sorcery campaign. Likewise spells like shape change and gate break the game wide open even in a high end over the top game of cosmic battles between wierd wizards.

[Cosi]

It seems to me you are forcing a comparison of apples to apples (defeating enemies where one is stronger or weaker than another), and thereby avoiding the key concern, that there are unlike things--indeed, incommensurate things--which are being forced to fit into one single measure.

My point is to ask why fighting an Allip is something we consider inherently commensurate to fighting an Ogre, but ignoring falling damage isn't. You don't fight them with the same tactics or tools. Different characters excel or falter against each of them. Ultimately, it just depends on your perspective. You can abstract all combat encounters as being fundamentally the same, and non-combat encounters as being fundamentally different. But you can also not do that. You could abstract everything in terms of "overcoming challenges" -- as an example, fly overcomes the "Giant Scorpion" encounter in pretty much the same way that it overcomes the "Giant Chasm" encounter, which suggests that those encounters are, in some sense, commensurate. Or you could consider the high level enemies that live in (or generate) hostile environmental conditions as creating a upper bound on the level of combat effectiveness it is appropriate (or, frankly, possible) to have without being able to deal with those conditions. You can't fight a Xixecal without being able to survive extreme cold, because it drags an area of extreme cold around with it.

I have less experience with DMing than most, so perhaps I should not speak on this, but...what's wrong with that?

Well, I misremembered the CR of the Stone Giant as being substantially higher than the Mind Flayer, which it is not. Pretend I had said Storm Giant instead. In any case, the point is that if you want a CR 8 monster to be a challenge as the end boss, and you want CR 13 monsters to be challenges as mooks, you're screwed even if combat power and non-combat power can vary separately. Because in any system that ranks power for anything at all, you can want things that create a power level conflict. As soon as you accept that things can be bigger than other things, you can want things to have a different bigness order than they actually do.

There are plenty of normal humans in the marvel universe who have knowledge, skills, training, experiance, and practice that Captain America doesn't. These are the things that, imo, D&D levels represent, and in D&D level tends to matter a lot more than ability scores.

Yeah, but do any of them have feats that are actually that much more impressive than Cap's? Again, look at the climax of the first Avengers movie. Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man all individually kill one or more of the whale/snake/dragon things. What mundane character is skilled enough to do that?

[Darth Ultron]

Yeah, but do any of them have feats that are actually that much more impressive than Cap's? Again, look at the climax of the first Avengers movie. Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man all individually kill one or more of the whale/snake/dragon things. What mundane character is skilled enough to do that?

But what is mundane?

Thor and Hulk are very clearly 'beyond human' and even ''magic", but Iron Man is a normal human with some cool toys. While a cop or army guy could not take out a monster space whale....Hawkeye sure could. Every missile we see Iron Man shoot is more then small enough to be an ''arrow head", and even more so Hawkeye has the 'critical hit' ability too(and again he could also wear tech goggles like Falcon does).

And Captain America, if he had to, could likely take out a space monster whale. But he would not just ''do a flip and punch it". Again, Cap might need a weapon or tool and might do something like maneuver the creature into a tight space and trap it.

Even Black Widow. Sure she is not going to shoot one with a hand gun or kick one.......but she could sneak her way past the army and find the ''tech hive control" thingy and disable or destroy it. Again, she might use a lot of tech...and she does in the movies.

[Crake]

But what is mundane?

Thor and Hulk are very clearly 'beyond human' and even ''magic", but Iron Man is a normal human with some cool toys. While a cop or army guy could not take out a monster space whale....Hawkeye sure could. Every missile we see Iron Man shoot is more then small enough to be an ''arrow head", and even more so Hawkeye has the 'critical hit' ability too(and again he could also wear tech goggles like Falcon does).

And Captain America, if he had to, could likely take out a space monster whale. But he would not just ''do a flip and punch it". Again, Cap might need a weapon or tool and might do something like maneuver the creature into a tight space and trap it.

Even Black Widow. Sure she is not going to shoot one with a hand gun or kick one.......but she could sneak her way past the army and find the ''tech hive control" thingy and disable or destroy it. Again, she might use a lot of tech...and she does in the movies.

It's hard to compare marvel to this, because some of them use technology that would have to become analogus to magic. Cap for example, might be mundane in marvel, but the superhero serum he took wouldn't be mundane in dnd unless you're using some high tech rules. Likewise goes for iron man's suits (which basically make him something like an artificer), or hawkeye's trick arrows (which kinda make him like an arcane archer). Black widow is about the closest you get to a mundane (most analogous to a rogue with some tricky magic items), even if you remove some of the gadgets she uses, she has a strong fighting style that doesn't rely on any of that, and many skills in infiltration and espionage that can be used to get by without any tech.

Thor can shoot lightning, clearly magical, and hulk is basically a synthesist summoner, also very "magical" (again, high science basically equals magic in dnd unless you're using some kind of high tech variant)

[Morty]

I feel like, after some years and a couple hundred discussions, we might finally have to accept that the discussion about how we define "mundane" is not going anywhere. It hasn't gone anywhere the last hundred times and I can't see it going differently now.

Besides which, the core non-casting classes are bad at being mundane anyway, unless we define it as being one of the poor chumps the supervillain knocks aside as they square off with the heroes.

[Crake]

I feel like, after some years and a couple hundred discussions, we might finally have to accept that the discussion about how we define "mundane" is not going anywhere. It hasn't gone anywhere the last hundred times and I can't see it going differently now.

Besides which, the core non-casting classes are bad at being mundane anyway, unless we define it as being one of the poor chumps the supervillain knocks aside as they square off with the heroes.

I mean, I always figured it was pretty obvious: Mundane means no magical abilities, so no spells, SLAs or Su abilities.

[upho]

I mean, I always figured it was pretty obvious: Mundane means no magical abilities, so no spells, SLAs or Su abilities.

And unfortunately plenty of other people think otherwise, saying it's pretty obvious: Mundane means someone with no abilities beyond RL human. So no high ability scores, hp, skill bonuses or "unrealistic" (Ex) abilities, aside from no magic ones.

[Cosi]

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter, because there's no reasonable definition of mundane that is appropriate as a high level character. However you define mundane, a mundane character (in a medieval setting) is not getting abilities like teleport, fabricate, cloudkill, or raise dead and is therefore going to have an increasingly difficult time justifying their existence as the party gets into the back half of the game. Which is what we observe with pretty much all mundane classes.

hulk is basically a synthesist summoner

Hulk has a rage state that makes him very strong and tough. He's obviously a Barbarian. So obviously, in fact, that I would venture to say that if your supers-to-D&D system outputs anything other than "Barbarian" for Hulk, it's doing it wrong. It's just that "Barbarian" is not an inherently mundane concept. For fantasy examples of non-mundane Barbarians, consider Karsa Orlong (Malazan: Book of the Fallen) or Logen Ninefingers/The Bloody Nine (The First Law).

[Talakeal]

but do any of them have feats that are actually that much more impressive than Cap's? Again, look at the climax of the first Avengers movie. Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man all individually kill one or more of the whale/snake/dragon things. What mundane character is skilled enough to do that?

I doubt it, although Cap has lost fights to mundanes on a few occasions.

My point is that some sort of ultimate high level mundane could have cap's body, reed richards mind, black widow's stealth and espionage skills, shang-chi's kung-fu, Conan's swordsmanship, Hawkeyes marksmanship, and Punisher's arsenal while still technically being mundane. Not to mention a suite of high tech / magical gear appropriate to the setting.

Of course, a character doesn't need all of this, but some combination thereof could still produce a mundane character who could do more than someo e with Captain America's powers alone.

[upho]

hulk is basically a synthesist summoner

Hulk has a rage state that makes him very strong and tough. He's obviously a Barbarian. So obviously, in fact, that I would venture to say that if your supers-to-D&D system outputs anything other than "Barbarian" for Hulk, it's doing it wrong. It's just that "Barbarian" is not an inherently mundane concept.

I feel this point is very important, as it seems people frequently do the same mistake as Crake may have done here, confusing what is with what could or should be.

Yes, currently no 3.5/PF class is more capable of accurately reflecting Hulk's abilities in game mechanics than the synth. Yes, all three(!) current barb classes lack the raw physical power to do so even remotely as well as the synth. That does not in any way mean Hulk is anything other than the quintessential raging barbarian in every important regard, but with his power turned up to what is more appropriate for higher level D&D play. Nor does it mean the current synth is otherwise anywhere near as suitable to capture the "Hulk concept", as I believe most people (myself included) find a summoning- and buff-focused "sorcerer" able to wear a custom outsider creature like a power-armor to be pretty darn far from that concept.

Likewise, switching the barb for say, a primalist bloodrager of the abyssal bloodline, you've come a lot closer to the Hulk in some regards (free up-sizing and additional Str bonuses while raging), but also gained abilities much less suitable (like burning claws, abyssal heritage and some combat-focused sorcerer casting). And while a "bloodrager Hulk" would certainly be better equipped for handling high level play than a "barb Hulk", he'd still not be nearly as well equipped as he should be.

For fantasy examples of non-mundane Barbarians, consider Karsa Orlong (Malazan: Book of the Fallen) or Logen Ninefingers/The Bloody Nine (The First Law).

While I agree Logen is a good example of a barb, I'd say he's also very much a low level barb, especially the power of his rage not being comparable to that of Hulk's. I haven't read Malazan, but some quick research has given me the impression that the same is very much true also for Karsa Orlong.

[Crake]

Hulk has a rage state that makes him very strong and tough. He's obviously a Barbarian. So obviously, in fact, that I would venture to say that if your supers-to-D&D system outputs anything other than "Barbarian" for Hulk, it's doing it wrong. It's just that "Barbarian" is not an inherently mundane concept. For fantasy examples of non-mundane Barbarians, consider Karsa Orlong (Malazan: Book of the Fallen) or Logen Ninefingers/The Bloody Nine (The First Law).

I feel this point is very important, as it seems people frequently do the same mistake as Crake may have done here, confusing what is with what could or should be.

Yes, currently no 3.5/PF class is more capable of accurately reflecting Hulk's abilities in game mechanics than the synth. Yes, all three(!) current barb classes lack the raw physical power to do so even remotely as well as the synth. That does not in any way mean Hulk is anything other than the quintessential raging barbarian in every important regard, but with his power turned up to what is more appropriate for higher level D&D play. Nor does it mean the current synth is otherwise anywhere near as suitable to capture the "Hulk concept", as I believe most people (myself included) find a summoning- and buff-focused "sorcerer" able to wear a custom outsider creature like a power-armor to be pretty darn far from that concept.

Likewise, switching the barb for say, a primalist bloodrager of the abyssal bloodline, you've come a lot closer to the Hulk in some regards (free up-sizing and additional Str bonuses while raging), but also gained abilities much less suitable (like burning claws, abyssal heritage and some combat-focused sorcerer casting). And while a "bloodrager Hulk" would certainly be better equipped for handling high level play than a "barb Hulk", he'd still not be nearly as well equipped as he should be.

While I agree Logen is a good example of a barb, I'd say he's also very much a low level barb, especially the power of his rage not being comparable to that of Hulk's. I haven't read Malazan, but some quick research has given me the impression that the same is very much true also for Karsa Orlong.

Are you two forgetting that hulk is quite literally a second personality/entity? That matches perfectly with both fluff and crunch of synthesist summoner. Anger may be the catalyst that summons hulk, but hulk and bruce banner are very clearly two separate entities. Bruce banner himself is actually a wimpy nerd, which further matches the fluff and crunch of a synth summoner, with the summon's stats replacing his, rather than buffing them. In every sense, he becomes another person, and synth summoner far better represents that in both fluff and crunch than barbarian does.

[Morty]

I doubt it, although Cap has lost fights to mundanes on a few occasions.

My point is that some sort of ultimate high level mundane could have cap's body, reed richards mind, black widow's stealth and espionage skills, shang-chi's kung-fu, Conan's swordsmanship, Hawkeyes marksmanship, and Punisher's arsenal while still technically being mundane. Not to mention a suite of high tech / magical gear appropriate to the setting.

Of course, a character doesn't need all of this, but some combination thereof could still produce a mundane character who could do more than someo e with Captain America's powers alone.

If I'm being honest, this character sounds pretty dull and lacking in identity, not to mention largely interchangeable with other such characters - because they're all super-competent at many if not most areas as long as they don't involve overt magic.

[Mechalich]

While I agree Logen is a good example of a barb, I'd say he's also very much a low level barb, especially the power of his rage not being comparable to that of Hulk's. I haven't read Malazan, but some quick research has given me the impression that the same is very much true also for Karsa Orlong.

Logen and Karsa are both good examples of imbalance in action. Logen is a high-level character - he consistently wins duels against other prestigious and well-known warriors in the First Law universe and takes an almost ridiculous amount of combat punishment (he clearly has an incredible immune system), but his level doesn't translate into all that much power when compared with the setting's wizards. The First Law, like 3.5, is operating on a system where wizards, once past a nebulous 'apprentice' stage, are clearly overwhelmingly more powerful than warriors. Karsa Orlong is similar. He's a very skilled combatant (with a bunch of completely imbalanced and frankly ridiculous racial bonuses, but it's Malazan, so everything is awful in all ways), and matches up with various other stupidly skilled and strong combatants, but none of it means anything compared to the power of the setting's wizards. Malazan actually has a number of explicit examples of wizards casting dominate and turning high-level martials into their puppets, sometimes for months on end.

[Talakeal]

If I'm being honest, this character sounds pretty dull and lacking in identity, not to mention largely interchangeable with other such characters - because they're all super-competent at many if not most areas as long as they don't involve overt magic.

Oh absolutely.

Characters always need limits to make themselves unique, which is one of the reasons I have long argued that the existing T1 characters are bad for the game.

We discussed it at length in this thread.

Although, I will say that personality and aesthetics do go a lot further towards making a character interesting than a list of abilities.

My point was merely that if we are looking at the theoretical maximum capabilities of a mundane character we can do a lot better than Captain America.

Edit: Forgot to link the thread I referanced:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ot-the-problem

[Hackulator]

I just came here to say Captain America is a human Warblade 14/Bloodstorm Blade 6 with the Paragon Template from the Epic Handbook,

[upho]

Are you two forgetting that hulk is quite literally a second personality/entity?

So? A synth's eidolon is in all relevant aspects precisely as much its own entity as a suit of power armor is. That is, it's indeed a separate being, in a physical sense much more so than Hulk is a being separate from Bruce. And the absolute opposite is true in regards to control, personality, and feelings, all of which the synth's power armor lacks, along with so much as a means of communicating or even any mental stats at all to begin with. So in fact, the synth's mechanics are much better suited for Iron Man.

That matches perfectly with both fluff and crunch of synthesist summoner. Anger may be the catalyst that summons hulk, but hulk and bruce banner are very clearly two separate entities. Bruce banner himself is actually a wimpy nerd, which further matches the fluff and crunch of a synth summoner, with the summon's stats replacing his, rather than buffing them. In every sense, he becomes another person, and synth summoner far better represents that in both fluff and crunch than barbarian does.

No. Hulk definitely buffs Bruce's physical stats (as they always share the same body) and replaces Bruce's mental stats. Whereas the synth's eidolon instead replaces the summoner's physical stats but not the summoner's mental stats. It seems you're forgetting/ignoring the following key parts of the eidolon and synthesist descriptions, none of which are true in the case of Bruce/Hulk (emphasis mine):

1. "A synthesist summons the essence of a powerful outsider to meld with his own being. The synthesist wears the eidolon like translucent, living armor."

2. "A summoner can summon his eidolon in a ritual that takes 1 minute to perform."

3. "The synthesist gains the eidolon’s hit points as temporary hit points. When these hit points reach 0, the eidolon is killed and sent back to its home plane."

4. "The eidolon does not heal naturally..."

5. "If the eidolon is sent back to its home plane due to death, it cannot be summoned again until the following day."

6. "The eidolon cannot be sent back to its home plane by means of dispel magic, but spells such as dismissal and banishment work normally."

7. "If the summoner is unconscious, asleep, or killed, his eidolon is immediately banished."

8. "The eidolon takes a form shaped by the summoner’s desires. ...each eidolon receives a pool of evolution points... ...that can be used to give the eidolon different abilities and powers. Whenever the summoner gains a level, he must decide how these points are spent... ...The eidolon’s physical appearance is up to the summoner..."

9. "The eidolon also bears a glowing rune that is identical to a rune that appears on the summoner’s forehead as long as the eidolon is summoned."

On top of this, it appears you're forgetting about the summoners other major class features, such as super-boosted spontaneous Cha-based 6/9 casting from the best short list in the game. How often do you see Hulk do the equivalent of casting haste, spiked pit or greater teleport in combat? How about the equivalent of summon monster 10+ times per day?

Again, Iron Man and his gadgets are actually a lot closer here, which in itself says quite a bit IMO (especially since the synth isn't that particularly great for Iron Man). Heck, even a Ragechemist alchemist would be a much better fit for Bruce/Hulk than the synth.

Barbarian on the other hand... Yes, definitely as close as D&D gets to the Hulk, albeit in a toned down manner.

[Cosi]

My point is that some sort of ultimate high level mundane could have cap's body, reed richards mind

Reed Richard's mind is a superpower. It's the "comic book super genius" power that him, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Hank Pym, Peter Parker, and all sorts of other characters share to various degrees. And it's not really appropriate for a lot of mundane character's idioms as a high level upgrade. I think it's far more natural for Conan to upgrade to high levels by getting some kind of spirit or ancestor or war magic than by becoming superhumanly intelligent.

While I agree Logen is a good example of a barb, I'd say he's also very much a low level barb, especially the power of his rage not being comparable to that of Hulk's. I haven't read Malazan, but some quick research has given me the impression that the same is very much true also for Karsa Orlong.

I agree that Logen as depicted in the First Law series is low level, but it should be pointed out that he's low level in no small part because the story takes place in a time period where the spirits his magic relies upon are mostly asleep and don't really do much. He gets an infodump in The Blade Itself, does a fire breath thing in one book, and talks to the guardian spirit in Best Served Cold, but other than that he doesn't do much magic (IIRC). But as I understand it, his power isn't fundamentally different from the power Bedesh got from Euz. So if you rewound things to the time of Euz or the Old Empire when more spirits were awake, his powers would presumably become some amount more impressive.

You're probably underestimating Karsa's power. This is a decent summary, but highlights include "basically immune to magic", "defeated two dog-gods of darkness", and "fought through a ship full of elite basically-elven mages and warriors".

Are you two forgetting that hulk is quite literally a second personality/entity? That matches perfectly with both fluff and crunch of synthesist summoner.

Are you forgetting that a synthesist summoner can still cast spells? Yes, Hulk's a separate entity, but so is the Bloody Nine. It's not weird for a Barbarian-type's rage to manifest as a separate entity. But it is totally outside the Hulk's power suite to get spellcasting. Particularly MCU Hulk.

If I'm being honest, this character sounds pretty dull and lacking in identity, not to mention largely interchangeable with other such characters - because they're all super-competent at many if not most areas as long as they don't involve overt magic.

That's part of the problem with "mundane". Even if you accept that there's a high level mundane character, there's like one high level mundane character. You can't have a Barbarian class that's mundane, and a Marshal class that's mundane, and a Rogue class that's mundane, you can have one Mundane Warrior class that's mundane, and it gets pretty much all the mundane abilities. But if you allow those characters to game idiom-appropriate magical abilities like "rage hard enough to shatter mountains" or "inspire people to fight literally beyond death" or "steal souls", you can have those classes all exist and be distinct at high level

Logen is a high-level character

Logen is a high level character relative to his setting, but he's in a low level setting. The world of the First Law is templated on LotR, and as such is pretty close to E6. Logen's big feats are beating Fenris the Feared (who is reasonably modeled as an Ogre with DR) and killing moderately large numbers of basically-goblins or soldiers. There's nothing he does that you couldn't do as like a 5th level character. Even Bayaz doesn't do much that's more impressive than 3rd or 4th level spells except the big ritual at the climax.

his level doesn't translate into all that much power when compared with the setting's wizards.

Logen is one of the setting's wizards. He has the power of spirit talking, which allows him to do things like divine information from spirits, or spit fire. Bayaz is stronger then him, but that's because Bayaz is older than him, and the setting runs on something like WoD's Generations. Bayaz learned from Juvens, who got his power from Euz, so he has really good magic. Logen gets his magic from some much larger number of generations descent from Bedesh (or maybe one of Bedesh's students, not sure exactly how spirit talking was distributed), and it is therefore weaker.

Karsa Orlong is similar. He's a very skilled combatant (with a bunch of completely imbalanced and frankly ridiculous racial bonuses, but it's Malazan, so everything is awful in all ways), and matches up with various other stupidly skilled and strong combatants, but none of it means anything compared to the power of the setting's wizards.

Your distaste for anything more powerful than LotR aside, that's not really accurate. Most notably, Karsa does explicitly have the ability to no-sell even very powerful magic. Even in the backstory portion House of Chains, he's explicitly able to basically ignore magic that should put him in crippling pain because of his use of Otataral-infused blood oil. And he does demonstrate some ability to leverage the magical abilities of the souls bound to him. The climax of his arc in Reaper's Gale involves him leveraging his spirits to help defeat Rhulad, for example.

[Mechalich]

Logen is one of the setting's wizards. He has the power of spirit talking, which allows him to do things like divine information from spirits, or spit fire. Bayaz is stronger then him, but that's because Bayaz is older than him, and the setting runs on something like WoD's Generations. Bayaz learned from Juvens, who got his power from Euz, so he has really good magic. Logen gets his magic from some much larger number of generations descent from Bedesh (or maybe one of Bedesh's students, not sure exactly how spirit talking was distributed), and it is therefore weaker.

Logen has a mystical ability - though it is presented as extremely minor, the fire-spitting trick is probably the most potent thing he does with it, and Abercrombie seemingly forgets about that trick shortly after the first few chapters are over since he never does it again - but it's different from the wizardry present in the setting, which is why Bayaz can't duplicate it. Logen is not a match for even fairly low-ranked Eaters, something that's true of pretty much every single warrior in the setting.

The First Law is a setting, much like the Hyborian Age or Nehwon, where warriors and wizards both have advancement tracks, but they are simply not comparable. You might not be able to chop up 20 levels from 'raw recruit' to Logen, but you could certainly manage ten, just as you could manage a large number of gradations between the worthless Malacu Quai and Bayaz. It's just Logen tops out at being able to go into a rage and fight eight to ten enemies at once and Bayaz can kill a dozen men with a gesture.

Your distaste for anything more powerful than LotR aside. Most notably, Karsa does explicitly have the ability to no-sell even very powerful magic. Even in the backstory portion House of Chains, he's explicitly able to basically ignore magic that should put him in crippling pain because of his use of Otataral-infused blood oil. And he does demonstrate some ability to leverage the magical abilities of the souls bound to him. The climax of his arc in Reaper's Gale involves him leveraging his spirits to help defeat Rhulad, for example.

I'm quite fine with things more powerful than LotR. I mock Malazan specifically, because it deserves it because it is awful in all possible ways (and yes, I read through all ten of the blasted books, biggest waste of time I've ever experienced in literature). Using Malazan as an example how to do anything functional, whether in writing or in gaming, is a terrible idea, because you should not take inspiration from terrible things.

And yes, Karsa Orlong has a bunch of bizarrely defined abilities that basically allow him to get away with varying degrees of BS so that he can tromp around engaging in some very squicky authorial wish-fulfillment - it is a rare feat to write such a blatantly horrible being with such committed sympathy - but those abilities are mostly unrelated to his fighting skill progression and are tied to either his racial bonuses or to buffs acquired from other external sources.

[Darth Ultron]

I mean, I always figured it was pretty obvious: Mundane means no magical abilities, so no spells, SLAs or Su abilities.

But this just takes you back in the circle.

Ok, so the character has a non magical mundane +10 to hit. Or can Mundane Fly, or Mundane Teleport.

AND, here is the big question: You you'd say Mundanes can have no magic what so ever.....then would you say the Magic folks must have no mundane things too?

So a Wizard would have a Base BAB of zero. Base Attack is a 100% mundane ability....right? The same would be true with saving throws: All zero for a wizard. And no mundane items or skills or feats(except metamagic ones).

And if you'd say ''oh the rules say wizards get all that", well I'd note the rules also say mundanes can have magic and magic items.

By the D&D rules, ''Mundane'' is only ''does not cast spells" or even better "is not a full class 1-9 spellcaster".

[Lans]

I think the Alchemist is a pretty appropriate class for a Mr Hyde style character

[VoltsofEight]

I would agree with the Alchemist assertion of the Hulk, but honestly none of the suggested classes are bad ideas depending on which Hulk you're talking about. The traditional Hulk is straight up a Barbarian, but the problems arise when you consider the others.World War Hulk could be considered a Synthesist Summoner since he and Banner work together. I'm not sure what the Maestro would be. He doesn't turn into his Banner form often but there is only one mind there. World-Breaker Hulk could be considered a Barbarian at epic levels kinda. The Red Hulk is a straight Bloodrager. But I wonder about the Immortal Hulk, the Immortal Hulk in my opinion is more of a Dread than a Barbarian. A Fear-in-the-Flesh to be exact. Maybe a multiclass Dread/Bloodrager?

[Talakeal]

Reed Richard's mind is a superpower. It's the "comic book super genius" power that him, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Hank Pym, Peter Parker, and all sorts of other characters share to various degrees. And it's not really appropriate for a lot of mundane character's idioms as a high level upgrade. I think it's far more natural for Conan to upgrade to high levels by getting some kind of spirit or ancestor or war magic than by becoming superhumanly intelligent.

Comic books (and media in general) are kind of wierd when it comes to intelligence, typically depicting geniuses as experts in every field. Likewise comic book science is different from real life science.

I dont think in the fiction Reed Richards mind is supposed to be a super power, unlike say The Leader, I think he is just the second smartest man in a world where science works very differently.

[Morty]

Oh absolutely.

Characters always need limits to make themselves unique, which is one of the reasons I have long argued that the existing T1 characters are bad for the game.

We discussed it at length in this thread.

Although, I will say that personality and aesthetics do go a lot further towards making a character interesting than a list of abilities.

My point was merely that if we are looking at the theoretical maximum capabilities of a mundane character we can do a lot better than Captain America,

Fair enough point, and I certainly won't argue that D&D 3E's "tier one" characters are a very poor thing to balance towards. Really, I don't think the tier system is a particularly good or useful tool for that at all. It analyzes 3E's unbalanced environment but I don't think it can tell us much about creating an environment that is balanced.