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.
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.
This comment almost makes me want to create a waterworld themed game just to prove that “of the sea” can be fun and useful.
A world filled with lone volcanic islands, vast archipelagoes with but a spit of land on each island, and vast sunken cities of the world before.
Then I remember that underwater combat rules suck.