[quote=@ErsatzEmpress]
Again, Luke Cage is a pretty well established character in his own right so I'm going to have to veto that like She Hulk and Kamala. If the goal is just to have a character with a similar powerset to The Thing, I would think that the easiest choice would be to just use The Thing. I'm not entirely sure what these changes really bring to the story beyond power sets.
[/quote]

No, you're right. I should just focus on the primary difference and catalyst for change, "what if the Fantastic Four didn't have a Mr. Fantastic?" My initial thought was that The Thing really always wanted to be cured, and despite Reed's best scientific efforts, Ben Grimm always remained The Thing. I thought that if Doom aided the FF instead of fighting them, he could provide a solution with magic, but I should consider the fact that Reed is considered the "smartest man on Earth", so a solution to The Thing's problem should not be trivial, even via magic, so I'll keep The Thing in the roster and supplement with one of the inhumans more closely tied to the FF lore like I originally planned. Thanks for regulating and keeping my "what if" ideas from running too wild.

My next post will probably be the application (finally), though I am currently traveling and will probably not get the sheet completed for maybe a week or two.