If it's a spell, it can be powerful without feeling like you're tacking additional powers onto a full caster, and it means someone who doesn't want to use wild shape... can make use of those spell slots for other things. I would replace Channel Nature (Wild Shape) with other druid-y things, such as
Harmony with Beasts
As a Magic action, you speak words of friendship. Each Beast within 30' of you must make a Wisdom save. On a failure, it is charmed for 1 minute. A charmed creature will not attack you, or any other allies or creatures you identify at the time you use this power; it otherwise acts according to its nature. This effect ends immediately if you or any protected creature attacks or damages the creature.
That's basically turn undead, only applied to beasts and slightly different flavor. Higher levels might apply to other creatures (elementals, fey, plants), give them an equivalent to Divine Smite, and so on.
I've got mixed feelings on this. One the one hand, one of the reasons I haven't really played as a Druid very often is partly because I don't really like Wildshape. Not that it's bad or anything, it just always felt a little limiting that, in order to play as a nature-themed spellcaster, I also needed to have the ability to turn into a bear. I think that's partly why I was always more drawn to some of the newer Druid Subclasses that gave alternate transformations to use in lieu of wild shape.
That said... it's such a core part of the Druid's identity at this point. I feel like they're going to need something to make them feel like something more than just "Clerics, but with a different spell list". Because swapping Wild Shapes for Channel Nature makes sense, but it starts to feel like just an alternate flavor for Channel Divinity, and if we're going that far I think I'd rather just cut Druids entirely and roll some of their features into Clerics.
If it's a spell, it can be powerful without feeling like you're tacking additional powers onto a full caster, and it means someone who doesn't want to use wild shape... can make use of those spell slots for other things. I would replace Channel Nature (Wild Shape) with other druid-y things, such as
That's basically turn undead, only applied to beasts and slightly different flavor. Higher levels might apply to other creatures (elementals, fey, plants), give them an equivalent to Divine Smite, and so on.
I've got mixed feelings on this. One the one hand, one of the reasons I haven't really played as a Druid very often is partly because I don't really like Wildshape. Not that it's bad or anything, it just always felt a little limiting that, in order to play as a nature-themed spellcaster, I also needed to have the ability to turn into a bear. I think that's partly why I was always more drawn to some of the newer Druid Subclasses that gave alternate transformations to use in lieu of wild shape.
That said... it's such a core part of the Druid's identity at this point. I feel like they're going to need something to make them feel like something more than just "Clerics, but with a different spell list". Because swapping Wild Shapes for Channel Nature makes sense, but it starts to feel like just an alternate flavor for Channel Divinity, and if we're going that far I think I'd rather just cut Druids entirely and roll some of their features into Clerics.
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I don't want Wild Shape to be dispelled or counterspelled, and I definitely don't want it to have components. No thanks.
If you want Wild Shape to be a spell, I recommend you give Pathfinder 2e a try.