D&D 5E Why Are Rangers Arcane Spellcasters?

[Jack Daniel]

The reason why Rangers are spellcasters stems back from D&D's origin as a wargame that wanted to emulate the Lord of the Rings. Because Gygax couldn't think of any way to separate Aragon's feats like preternatural tracking skill or knowledge of medicinal herbs from the fledgeling spells system, he decided to simply give rangers a handful of spells.

Gygax didn't create the ranger class.

Spoiler: Strategic Review Vol 1 Iss 2

 

[Mordhau]

Traaadddiiittton!!

 

[Redthistle]

Traaadddiiittton!!

Thanks for the ear-worm - now I've got that song from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" stuck in my head. LOL

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Thanks for the ear-worm - now I've got that song from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" stuck in my head. LOL

Is that a bad thing?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Ranger almost certainly suffered a great deal from the fact that the D&D Next playtest was incredibly time-wasteful.

They didn't settle on several core mechanics (like the Proficiency Bonus) until like the final or penultimate packet. They dropped Specialties incredibly late in the process and that killed the Warlord, despite explicit statements from Mike Mearls that supporting martial healing was a goal and that if DMs didn't like that they could just not let people play that option. Etc. D&D Next spent an enormous amount of time just trying to figure out fundamental concepts, leaving almost no time for polish and iteration. You can see a similar issue with the Sorcerer, where it very clearly suffered from the first-pass attempt being completely thrown out and nothing replacing it until after the public playtest ended.

It took basically all of the two-year public playtest just to figure out the basics of 5e. The rest was assembled over the following 6-8 months.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Since Rangers are half-casting Druids, why not give them the casting features the half-casting cleric (Paladin) has?

Because Rangers are people who know things. They know things about the natural world and their environment, and that is why they are rangers. They aren't people who pray for guidance or who reach their minds deep into the world. They know what they are looking at and they have learned their skills. And having only limited spells so different rangers have learned different things makes them less cookie cutter.

Also agreed with @Vael in that rangers are primal rather than arcane or divine. The arcane half-caster is the artificer. And rangers have almost nothing to do with warlocks; I'm surprised their spells don't overlap at all but if they did it would be the general stuff.

I can't figure what function was served crippling a Ranger's spells known like they did.

The only crippling that was done was not giving them enough known spells (same as the sorcerer; a sorcerer should know more spells than a wizard can prepare in a single day even if they don't have as many as there are in the wizard's spellbook).

 

[Plaguescarred]

Ranger are said to have learned to use the magical essence of nature to cast spells, much as a druid do by drawing on the divine essence of nature itself to cast spells to shape that essence to their will. I like to think of rangers and druids as casting primal magic, but source is divine.

 

[Vael]

Ranger are said to have learned to use the magical essence of nature to cast spells, much as a druid do by drawing on the divine essence of nature itself to cast spells to shape that essence to their will. I like to think of rangers and druids as casting primal magic, but source is divine.

I tend to separate primal and divine. To be honest, Arcane is always the problem, because it's such a catch-all power source.
Primal - Nature magic, based in the material plane.
Divine - Magic of the Gods, based in the Astral Plane (if used), or other plane of the gods
Psionic - Magic of the Self, the mind
Arcane - .... all of the above?

 

[Plaguescarred]

I tend to separate primal and divine. To be honest, Arcane is always the problem, because it's such a catch-all power source.
Primal - Nature magic, based in the material plane.
Divine - Magic of the Gods, based in the Astral Plane (if used), or other plane of the gods
Psionic - Magic of the Self, the mind
Arcane - .... all of the above?

Arcane - The Weave ?

 

[jmartkdr2]

Arcane and divine are just fluff. Mechanically they don't do anything. So you can just say some classes use primal or quantum power source and mechanically it doesn't change anything.

From now on, I will describe rangers as using green energy to power their spells.