Aren't druids divine spellcasters? If so, they can cast spells from scrolls.
Bard College of Lore makes sense, I guess.
It is the same old problem of a healer in the party, that existed in early games - you can either have one or not have one - it's up to you.
if you want to have a divine spellcaster in your party - you can take several available options, or you can make your main a divine spellcaster, or you can make a hireling.
Otherwise - you're on your own, and that is fine, that is how it's supposed to be.
You can choose not to have them, but this isn't a true choice. Choosing not to have this one particular class puts you at an immense disadvantage.
It's not the same as choosing to have Karlach vs. Lazael or Gale vs. Sorcerer hireling. The gap between those is significantly smaller than the gap of not having a cleric. There is just not support class that is on their league. Druids have healing spells, but they're about less than half the efficiency, they don't have Bless in their spellbook for some weird reason, and their offensive spellbook is even worse than the Cleric one. Bards at least have Bardic Inspiration and really powerful CC.
The support and caster acrhetypes have really wildly unbalanced intra-class states, whereas the martials are much more even with slight tradeoffs (barb more durable than fighter for the price of less burst, rogue has more burst than fighter at the price of lower durability, paladin has rogue burst levels but limited resources to manage, so it's burst vs DPS tradeoff). In the support category, it's Cleric by miles over the others, and in the caster category it's Sorc>Wizard>>>>>>Warlock.
And by being forced toward hirelings you give up another essential aspect of the game, the RP and dialogue since hirelings have zero meaningful dialogue or connection to the story.
Larian could have lessened this balancing mess by increasing the party size to 5 and retuning encounters accordingly, so party composition could be much more flexible and accommodating of the suboptimal classes without feeling as much the impact.
