Use the blockbuster wizard for fire.
For water I'd think a waves oracle, or lore for sidestep secret (sounds very flowy to me).
Water usually ends up as the healing-type, so the Water warrior could be a cleric or oracle, or maybe a water-themed druid.
Water?
Barbarian w/ superstition and pounce, raging tidal wave
Earth?
Druid. possibly a treesinger with lots of plant allies
Fire?
Sorcerer with the fire elemental bloodline, specialized in battlefield control rather than damage
Air?
Ninja with greater invisibility trick, or two weapon mobile dawnflower dervish fighter with pre errata spring attack who wields a pair of daggers or kukris and dances the battlefield with his or her dance of a thousand cuts. kukris evoke that desert nomad feel most air characters pass off
Undine Oracle of Waves
Dwarf Stonelord Paladin
Ifrit Fire Wizard
Sylph Air Master Monk (from The Gemius Guide to Air Magic)
Water - Flowing Monk: he constantly repositions opponents and makes them motion-sick while doing so! Alternative might be a cleric or oracle that focuses on the healing aspects of water.
Fire - Sorcerer with fire bloodline: like Umbriere suggested but fully specialized in evocation damage spells. For bonus, scream BURN BURN HAHAHA BURN constantly. Alternative might be an Alchemist.
Earth - Fighter/Barbarian: Like you said, a tanky type fellow. While a fighter seems appropriate, as they are basically moving mountains, I'd possibly go for Barbarian. It seems more fitting that an Earth warrior gets his toughness from hit points and DR instead of HP. You could style raging around the fury of an avalanche.
Air - Rogue, Ninja or Arcane Archer: Either someone based on movement, acrobatics, stealth and sudden strikes or a long-ranged fighter who uses his archery in combination with Air-type spells to control the battlefield. Alternative might be a Divination type caster.
You mentioned making them really memorable. Don't be afraid to just create unique powers for them, that is a DM prerogative.
Examples of single powers
Water: melt into a puddle of water that cannot do anything but move but is also invulnerable to physical damage
Fire: a burst of fire emerges from the sorcerer everytime he gets wounded
Earth: an earthquake-causing ground stomp, makes the ground difficult terrain and damages and trips everyone in a 20ft radius. Alternatively an Avalanche Charge that can go through ground and stone like Earthglide and may Overrun or Bull Rush
Air: blasts of wind, which he can use to make incredible jumps, disrupt flyers and decrease the range of ranged weapons
Examples of combo powers:
Water + Fire: a blast of steam that causes pain
Water + Earth: turn the ground into quicksand that entangles and slowly pulls down those who haven't moved in a turn or two
Water + Air: a frosty mist that causes concealment and fatigues everyone in it
Fire + Earth: turn the ground into semi-magma, causing damage to everyone each turn
Fire + Air: a cloud of choking smoke and ash, causing everyone coughing fits (possibly stunned?)
Earth + Air: a blast of grating sand, blinds people and gets in the joints of armor, increasing the armor check penalty, decreasing the maximum Dex bonus and decreasing the speed of armor by a huge degree
I'm not sure how high the magic level in your campaign is but 1d6-2d6 fire damage seems a bit low, I can't imagine level 14 characters would not have Fire Resistance 10-20.
[Edit]: on second though, better make that ability activate when the sorcerer get melee damage, otherwise the PCs will just kill his friends by shooting at the sorcerer.
I like Earth as a hulking, heavily armed Fighter (maybe Barbarian).
Flowing monk for Water is also good.
For Air, the Ninja is a good idea, but I think an archer would also be a good fit.
For Fire, I might consider going Magus (to be an Elemental Warrior) focusing on [Fire] spells.
If you go the Four Monks approach (very Avatar) I think Sacred Mountain or Tetori would be good Earth monks. Four Winds or Zen Archer for Air monk. Flowing Monk is still the Water. And for Fire maybe a Master of Many Styles.
I like the idea of a Barbarian being Earth, because you can make an easy connection: earthquakes are the planet's Rage.
Winter witch for water maybe.
dotting for later
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Water is, in my opinion, a Barbarian. Imagine a Drunken Brute who does nothing but Drink in the fight but is beating the snot out of people. Invulerable Rager/Drunken Brute works well together, saying that the DR is the flowing nature of the rager and that the party's attacks deal less damage that way.
Air could be a Fighter. Dervish Dancer route plus Windstance, Whirlwind Strike, Spring Attack, Step up and Strike feat line make for a big maneuver and movement based character. Strike like the wind and whatnot.
Fire could be an Alchemist. Take bombs that use large AoE affects, like the 10-foot explosion, and make sure he's a smart so you can do some glorious ammounts of damage.
Earth can be a summoner. Summon Earthen elementals. Summon Sandstorm Elementals. Create pits under the player's feet. If you want a more Warrior approach, why not go with a Ninja that copies himself and poison's the party. Poisons tend to be weak, so it shouldn't hurt them too much, but if he pops in, poisons, and runs away, he'll be their biggest enemy for weeks.
I hope that helps!
it looks like you've made up your mind, but here's a handful of CR16 boss fights i was thinking about:
invulnerable rager 16- fight with an earth breaker or dwarven longhammer
take the Armor of the Pit feat
take the spirit totem powers and reflavor them to swirl pebbles and stones (nothing really mitigates negative energy, so you'd be justified switching it to force damage- if you don't want to do that just make it bludgeoning).
take the rage powers for acid damage on your attacks and both ground breaker powers.
throw in eldritch heritage [deep earth] for the ranged trip and tremor sense.
magus 5/eldritch knight 10- dervish dancer build; keen scimitar
plus- Adult Red Dragon partner
research a couple unique fire spells (flaming grasp- shocking grasp variant, for example). use elemental body 2 and haste to buff- use spell combat and spell strike to open with scimitar+spell, follow up with 4 regular attacks, and if any of those 5 attacks crit, cast a quickened spell (from EK spell critical ability)- triggering another free scimitar attack if a touch or ray spell (take Close Range arcana). plus, you know, there's a dragon flying around breathing fire and mauling people.
i like the idea of the relationship to the dragon being inappropriate... if you're all adults, have her call it 'lover'; if, not have her treat it like an adorable pet.
ninja 13/horizon walker 3 (take ninja 6, then HW 3, then other ninja 7)
dual wield short swords; use the invisible blade master trick to do lots of sneak attacks.
take Astral for terrain dominance (for horizon walker)- use Dimension Door SLA to take Dimensional Agility @9, Dimensional Assault @11, Dimensional Dervish @13, and Dimensional Savant @15th (use the 12th level master trick for Feat to pick up Greater 2WF). in addition to being imp. invisible in combat you can also teleport around while full attacking (and flanking with yourself).
i don't have a great idea for water yet, but if you like these enough that you may really use them let me know and i'll give the fourth guy some more thought. you'll notice that there's no blaster here... that's because you called them "elemental warriors"- water could be a blaster though if i'm taking your title too seriously?
You are the DM so some prerogative could be taken here, and for Earth I think you should relax the requirements for Stonelord and go with a Dwarf-blooded Oread. (but keep Stonelord, that's an awesome idea)
Fire should be anger and hatred... an Ifrit Barbarian/Crossblooded Draconic Elemental (Fire) Sorcerer/Red Dragon Disciple, with the Elemental Rage (Fire) line and as many fun fire based spells as you can get.
Air is a Ninja focused on stealth and invisibility, maybe a Sylph.
Water is your healer, am Undine Waves Mystery Oracle. If you want them to be a "warrior" as well, multiclass Rogue or Ninja and use the Water Sight revelation and Obscuring Mist to set up sneak attack as often as you'd like.
Im going to have all be tricked by Heart...
By their powers combined....
Im going to have all be tricked by Heart...By their powers combined....
Once again it's proven
Don't forget the 4 planetouched races for this (Oread, Undine, Sylph, Ifrit)
Either those or all 4 as suli but with different energy strike alternate racials.
make all 4 martials of some kind but build up to the special abilities granted through energy strike.
The fire guy could have flammable stuff prepared and set it on fire with his thrown ES.
The water guy can fight in a room with a little water on the floor disguising deeper pits. He can walk on the water so he is save but everyone else can fall into those pits.
The air guy is rather unimpressive but perhaps there are some nice things he could do with his shock shield which I can't think of.
The earth guy should fight in a room with lots of difficult terrain made up of stuff he can partly ignore.
If they have to fight all four at the same time it is not hard to combine it all.
The fight takes place in a big cavern. The floor is made up of watery parts (which are partly shallow, partly deep), rocky parts that count as difficult terrain and black stuff that is flammable.
Earth can ignore the rocky party, water can ignore the deep water but all know which party are deep. Fire lights black spots on fire if someone is in there or to block movement paths.
well, no indication of interest in the 3 i suggested so far- but i randomly thought of Water, so for completion sake...
of the first 3, fire is probably the toughest fight... primarily because of the action economy- as tough as air and earth are, they only get 1 turn for the 3-5(?) turns the PCs get every round; fire at least gets 2...
so water could be the toughest- have the fight begin by the 'mystic' turning into pure water and then splitting into 4 separate watery versions of himself (the 'watery' description would be purely cosmetic). personally, i'd give all 4 of them the same stats, but that would be up to you. these are the 4 i'd do:
reach cleric- cleric 13; healing and water/ocean domains; selective channel and reach spell; longspear or polearm with combat reflexes and (potentially) weapon focus and other combat feats. in combat heal and occasionally buff, and take advantage of as many AoOs as possible.
arcane archer- zen archer 8/wildblooded sorcerer [empyreal] 1/arcane archer 4; frost (obviously) on his arrows; toss some buffs if needed- mostly straight forward archer (combat reflexes and imp snap shot could really up damage output, and potentially allow more opportunities to buff).
striker monk- 4 winds monk 13; marid style feats; pretty straight forward, reliant on healer for survivability
'tank' monk- flowing monk 13; crane style feats and deflect arrows; combat maneuver feats; really difficult to kill, but low damage output... largely an obstacle/nuisance
that should be a fairly challenging fight for most parties (unless its some combination of unusually large, really well optimized, or played by solid experienced players). if you're worried about it being too tough, drop combat reflexes from the cleric and archer.
also, +1 to the suggestions about taking advantage of terrain (especially for earth)
Make the earth one an Oread stonelord. (You're a GM, you can break the rules.)
Once again it's provenIm going to have all be tricked by Heart...By their powers combined....
Aquaman is now the most powerful Superhero....he controls Cthulhu!
There was actually a thread like a day ago about homebrew elemental ninja type class. I think somehow it got in the advice category, so try looking into recent homebrew or advice threads for the thread, which may give u some cool ideas