I am more skeptical of the outright need for Oceans druid (since Land-Coast and Moon both already can lean heavily on an aquatic theme). But honestly, why not?
I read the ocean (was it "sea"?) druid, and it just didn't look very flavorful. I mean, I guess it's got power, but I don't really understand the fantasy.
Idk. I’m going in the opposite direction. Shadowdark has brought such a fresh enjoyment to the game for me, taking everything I like as a DM from 5e, cutting out all the cruft and bullshit, and condensing it all into a sweet ichor-like-syrup. Player characters can actually go down, I don’t have books worth of subclasses to know (all of which have long since blended together), classes are distinctive and specialized; I can’t recommend it strongly enough.
Not really, when all the subclasses are just on a spectrum bleeeing into each other. None of them feel unique anymore, just a mash of x+y class. It just adds cruft, limits actual creative choice in character building, adds to dm workload, and makes everything feel samey. It’s like the custom stat benefits rule from Tasha’s. On its face, seems like a good idea. But now you just have every race being a reskin of each other. Kill the subclass. Embrace class differences. Let players make their characters unique based on the stories we make together, not trying to fit them into a predefined cookie cutter box.
Effectively, what Spellblade is to Fighter, Dance Bard is to Monk. Plus buff sharing.
Ocean Druid has some cool stuff, but I always feel like "of the sea" or similar classes wind up kind of wasted. I don't think I've ever had a campaign spend enough time in or around large amounts of water to make a water-specialist class worthwhile. You can like, bypass the random swimming puzzle at the bottom of a dungeon somewhere, and the sidequest to magic pirate island has some nice utility - and then for the entire rest of the campaign you're on dry land, fighting land-based enemies, and the sea-themed subclass is mostly just flavour rather than mechanically useful.