What do you think about allowing a druid to wild shape into a smaller or larger version of an animal or magical beast she has access to (aka, she is able to wild shape into the ‘original sized’ version)?
For example a 6th level druid could wild shape into a tiny hippopotamus or a large rat .
How it would work:
She would gain the size modifiers to ability scores of the ‘new’ size as described in beast shape .
Natural attack damage dice go up or down one damage category for each step between the new size and original size.
Size Steps: Diminutive -> Tiny -> Small -> Medium -> Large -> Huge
Damage Categories: 1d2 -> 1d3 -> 1d4 -> 1d6 -> 1d8 -> 1d10 -> 1d12 -> 2d4 -> 2d6 -> 2d8 -> 2d10 -> 2d12 -> 3d4 -> ect.
Upon further thought this might work better:
Damage Categories: 1d2 -> 1d3 -> 1d4 -> 1d6 -> 1d8 -> 1d10 -> 1d12 -> 2d6 -> 2d8 -> 2d10 -> 2d12 -> 4d6 -> 4d8 -> 4d10 -> 4d12 -> 6d8 -> 6d10 ect.
Completely ignoring crunch: Druids gain their abilities from becoming one with nature and emulating it in completely fantastical ways. It feels off key to let a druid take a concept of nature and warp it to her own ideal.
Completely ignoring fluff: Wild shape has been utterly normalized in pathfinder with every shape offering the same bonuses (as per size). The only reason to pick a specific shape is for a bonus movement speed or whatever has the most attacks per round. If you offer the player an ability to simply choose any animal at whatever size they need it you're going to see a lot more homogeneity than you already do. Right now it's fun because you can get a good shape for a few levels and then eventually trade up to a different shape. You'll see the smaller forms when spaces are confined, or when the druid wants a strong boost to defenses. This system is likely to only produce tigers, raptors, and specific movement forms.
Just a thought.
Your points are well taken, thank you.
If you combine both of Sean's points though, and ignore neither fluff nor crunch, you could have the start of an interesting archetype based on the philosophy of the Simic guild from magic the gathering.
They started of as a bunch of nature mages who's job was to protect the natural world, but now their goal is to improve nature in unnatural ways using technology, magic and anything else they can get their hands on. They believe that's necessary to give nature a fighting chance.
They're basically reverse luddites; instead of telling the world to stop advancing and go back to nature, they're advancing nature to bring it back to the world.
Can't think what else such an archetype would need, but learning spells from a book and/or using intelligence might be a start.
I think the question comes whether the mimmoths from Girl Genius or the Russian mobster's mini-giraffe are considered natural creatures no matter how unnatural their origins.
After all, if you have a Lost World sort of valley somewhere, if there are dinosaurs there, there should logically be an eohippus which is also obviously a natural creature and therefore a legitimate target for wild shape.
If there are commonly giant versions of smaller animals--like, say, giant bees--and pygmy versions of big ones, then there's no trouble with a druid shifting into one, since those are parts of the natural world.
Whether it's good in game terms is another matter, but I think it would fit well with some campaigns and be bad for others.
I’m wondering if it would actually work better as a sorcerer bloodline with a different modified version of the beast shape spells. Thoughts?
If a player feels the need to play a pygmy hippopotamus I'd worry more about his sanity than anything else.
Thinking of Huge Deinonychus.... NO!
I personally would like an ROUS transformation option past dire rat, which is larger than a rat, but still not ROUS status.
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I might allow something like this on a case-by-case basis depending on the weirdness of the campaign, how generous I'm feeling or the theme of a character (like if a player decided they only wanted to use wild shape for one specific animal that didn't have multiple-sized variants.) As was mentioned, it isn't really a warping of natural law when you consider this is a game where bees, rats and bats all have dire or monstrous counterparts.
If you really want to put the screws to your players, remember, in the end it all depends on whether the druid is familiar with the animal.
Player: Wonder Twin powers activate! Form of a tiny hippo!
DM: Have you ever encountered a tiny hippo?