I would like to see a druid archetype whose wildshape focused on turning into elementals. You could get rid of plant shape and wild shape effects and move the elemental body effects forwards two levels so that the druid could wildshape into a small elemental at level 4 when he normally could first use the beast shape effects in wild shape.
You could further restrict the archetype into taking one of the elemental domains (Air, Fire, etc.).
Personally I think it would make an awesome character, what does everyone else think?
Keep in mind everyone else gets Elemental Body at level 7 at minimum. You might consider instead of restricting domains, adding additional aspects to your wildshape abilities or giving minor wildshape abilities later on relating to the elements, similar to some of the other archetypes abilities to partially wild shape for small benefits early or the infiltrator ranger. Wouldn't be awesome to become part fire? Back in 3.5 there were a line of spells that did that too. You could end up with a caster who spent all day immune to criticals if you used them all. I might be biased though. I don't think restrictions are good design and like giving people options and more flavor through benefits.
I do like the idea of being able to partially turn into an element (kind of like hands of stone), but I think getting access to elemental body early is a big enough boon that some people would opt for it, if only for the flavor of it. Besides, I would rather sacrifice some forms I could shift into than delay wildshape altogether like some of the archetypes currently do.
That said, maybe some other ability at an early level would be nice. Something similar to what you said is intriguing but I don't know how you would make that mechanic work. Maybe something like elemental body but only for minutes per level?
I actually made a druid archetype that focuses on elementals, though I did steal the elementalurgist's element bond ability. I suggest looking at that archetype (it's 3rd party though) to get some ideas. I decided to make my druid's wild shape to transform into an elemental at the same levels as a normal druid, but you cant wild shape into anything else (obviously). Maaaaybe you could do some sort of elemental body V and VI effect so that your elemental shape becomes more powerful (corresponding to going from Huge to Greater and Greater to Elder) at 14th and 16th I would imagine. Hell, I might do that myself...
But, if you're looking at doing a elemental body-esque effect, I'd suggesting following the idea of the Elemental infusion ability of the elementalurgist druid archetype I mentioned before.
Wow Gameos, that was excellent. I wish my GM allowed 3rd party because I'd love to play that in our next module. Really you had me with two marvelous words: spontaneous casting. I'm going to be playing a storm druid in a game starting Friday and one of the reasons I really liked the idea was that I would be able to spontaneously cast from my domain spells. I'm not a big fan of summoning, and I really like the mechanic of spontaneously casting domain spells.