First of all I would like to state that I love spellcasters and elemental spells. But the wind/Water/Rock spells suck or the lack therought of them.
Water: I noticed that water spells are mostly ice spells which I find disapointing, Ice shouldnt do "Ice damage" Unless its cold water or freezing blizzard. Icicles should do piercing, water can do slashing and Minimal Blundgeoning but you do a bull rush with the blundeoning damage with a +5 per 5 levels to check. Cold water can do cold.
Rock: Acid spells are fine but Rocks would be more awesome. Piercing and blundeoning damage to the win. Plus alot of defencive spells, some immobilization spells, even some sand spells would be cool.
Air: Ah air what can we do with you you poor element. You cannot cut, cannot hurt and mostly used for flight spells. But you can push. Gust of wind is a good begining but immagin that X 20. You slam everybody to a wall (Blundg damage) lift stuff in the air and drop them. In a way your natures psionic lifting power. Wirlwhinds, tornadoes and sometimes slashing damage and suffocation becuase of the lack of air.
Conclusion: Its not Hard Piazo, make some elemental spells. or I will have to do it for you.
Why not just use the Energy Substitution-style feats? A rock-bomb (earth-element fireball) works for me thematically. Heck, I can see water, ice, air, whatever working with the fireball spell.
You mention water slashing (like industrial water blades). Perhaps a water-based lightning bolt...fluff-wise it'd be a sharp blast of water that cuts through stuff.
Just because the "elemental" spells aren't there by default doesn't mean they don't exist. Heck, even ignoring tweaking with spells by using feats, ask your DM if your character can research new spells and built them yourself.
I once in a few while experimant with letting f.x. earth-element sorcerers do bludgeoning damage with a rock or do a "sand-blast" rather than a burning hands... Often just changing the flavour is fun enough, but I have tried changing the damage types as people like. Generally it's good to stay aware that the spell needs to stay appropriate for the spell level and not too distant from other things invented. On another note I fancy letting (especially) wizards spend time developing and making up their own spells and have seen some excellent things there both for flavour and for mechanics. In the end I think that changes should be allowed so long as they benefit the game.
As for Energy Sustitution, it's excellent but it won't turn a fireball into a rock-ball that deals bludgeoning damage... It might just turn it into a nasty ball of acid though...
Fire element is easy, because fire-related spells invokes fire to damage things and people.
There aren't many spells dealing damage with the other elements, so they linked a type of damage to an element, so that, balance-wise, there is enough incentive to select another element.
Under Rule Zero, feel free to re-link elements to their appropriate physical form, and create some new spells to re-establish balance.
Acid/cold/lightning spells would be element-less, now, like Sonic, but you can create mixed elements too (fire+earth=magma, fire+air=lightning, fire+water=vapor, earth+air=force, earth+water=mud, water+air=cold... for instance)
Water blades were mentioned. Properly focused air can do the same.
Water and air can do an amazing amount of damage by themselves.
(Ever see high pressure water jet cutting, or someone whose leg was cut off by a steam leak...of, steam is heat and water, but its the pressure that did the damage.)
I like the idea of alternate damage for spells. I understand that for simplicity and compatiblility with 3.5, Paizo used the acid/fire/ice/lightning thing. And that's fine.
But I see no reason that a character with a simple concept (earth mage) couldn't have all of their damage spells be sand, earth, acid, and stone...I would actually applaud that sort of character concept.
I think someone has been watching Avatar.. and i don't mean the one with the blue hippies. :)
But I agree with the OP. Some more spells focusing on the other elements would be nice. Sure you can handwave it and allow casters to stylize their spells. But in practice switching the elements of some of the standard spells should have an impact on their level.
Because in essence you are making the spell capable of harming far more creatures. Historically spells that deal acid damage are higher level then those that deal fire damage... because (i've always assumed this is the reason) there are far fewer creatures with acid immunity/resistance then those with some sort of fire resist.
One of the posts above mentioned a water based lightning bolt.. okay would the damage be type.. Water? wow.. what has Resist type Water? or would Piercing be the damage type? As a piercing type of damage the spell just added a whole host of creatures against which it is less powerful.
To the OP if you haven't seen them the "Mark of ___" spells from The book of Eldritch magic by Malhavoc Press are nice.
Time to look at the other side of the equation.
There are quite a few resistances in the game. They are built to match the types of damage. So, a spellcaster who wants to use fire is going to be in trouble fighting a red dragon or a demon. A spellcaster who wants to use water will be in trouble fighting a white dragon. Etc.
Start changing the damage types and those resistances get screwy.
If my water-elementalist can turn a sheet of high-pressure water into a cutting blade of high velocity water molecules and slash a white dragon to pieces, then the dragon's resistances suddenly mean nothing. Likewise, if my fire-elementalist can spew forth volkswagon-sized chunks of solid brimstone moving at trebuchet velocity to pummel a red dragon into a gooey paste, then the dragon's resistances don't mean very much.
I'm not saying this is a bad idea - maybe the reward for clever elemental substitution should allow an elemental-focused character new ways to bypass resistances.
I'm just saying this is something to think about.
You got me thinking so I created another thread with some spells off the top of my head.
a link if you like
Look thats the thing I DONT want to just slap on a rock bomb, its too easy and boring.
all I wanted to do was inspire somebody.
Personaly I homebrewed that wall of Ice does peircing damage and made a new(Silly) spell: wall of Freezing water. People passing through that get stuck inside may suffocate.
And yeah your Spells are AWSEOME! (God bless thee Avatar for bieng a risky show and giving us realy cool ideas.
Thants for the link.
PS: The spells arent considered magic in terms of DR
What I would really love to see are Elemental Wizard Schools for the 4 classic elements.
I had an elf back in the day who was a Water Wizard with all sorts of cold and water oriented spells. Shouldn't be too hard to come up with an appropriate Wizard school for them...
One thing to remember is that the spell system throughout D&D is very orderly. It's not just grab some magic and go all willy nilly, it's very specific formulaes that you can only do once per day per memorization.
For a more organic and Avatar-esque feel to it, I know someone was making an Avatar d20 at one point, but I have no idea what happened to it or where it went. Assumably they finished or gave up.
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I hate the whole water = cold/ air = lightning/ earth = acid thing also. I don't really think directly substituting a different way of doing damage is really the answer though. For example a caster who is focused on air might not be very good at doing damage at all but he would be much better at flying/ levitating and maybe invisibility.
An earth based magic might grant things like tremorsense, earthglide, and stoneskin.
As long as you stick to the assumption that all elemental forms are just different ways of doing damage you are going to have to make some fairly arbitrary decisions about how they manifest.
FWIW I love the way the elemental powers are done in Codex Alera (a series of books by Jim Butcher) and would love to see that sort of thing moved over to Pathfinder.
I think someone has been watching Avatar.. and i don't mean the one with the blue hippies. :)
I've never actually seen Avatar, but I am a chemist for a water treatment company, so I've been around live steam, high pressure water, high pressure air, LOW pressure Air (get the pressure low enough and water will boil at room temperature...and that's a LOT of energy being released). All of it can kill you.
FYI: 1 BTU (British Thermal Unit) is the amount of energy to raise 1 pound of water (~.5 kg or ~1 pint) 1 degree Farenheight. So, it would take 40 BTU to get 60 degree water to 100 degrees. Or 162 BTU to go from 60 water to 212 water. (And at that point is still hasn't boiled).
But water (like all things) has a Latent Heat. That's the energy it takes to convert it from 1 state to another. The Latent Heat of Water is 976 BTU. So, 1 pint of water (not a lot) at normal pressure, at 212 degrees STEAM has 976 + 162 = ~ 1138 BTU. And that's a lot more energy.
At high pressure it gets even nastier.
Now that's all science. But magic could do the same thing. You drop the pressure of water, it boils. You release steam, it scalds. You pressureize Air, you can cut into stone with it. You pressurize water enough (and it has to be a LOT. Regardless fo what McGuyver does) and you can cut steel and seer limbs.
And that's without considering how acids, bases, salts, and elements react with each other... (I once was splashed with boiling acid mud. Ate through my watch and a good chunk of my skin and dissolved right through my shoe...barely missed my toe. Luckily, we were doing a metal oxide cleaning, so the acid was more reactive to inorganics like my watch and shoe than the organic flesh on my wrist.)
And none of that has to do with the Last Airbender.