I’d love to throw ideas around more on the subject, then. See where we end up. Even if we don’t end up in the same place, it’ll be interesting.
Do we agree on the following list of ideas?
- Prepared casting
- Ritual casting - possibly with a unique access to higher level rituals than they have slots, and thus more powerful with rituals than with spells?
- Rewrite Natural Explorer to be less auto-win, more “help the team on group checks” type stuff, and give each favored terrain 1 or 2 always prepared spells.
- IMO there is still room to add at least part of Deft Explorer to Natural Explorer. Maybe just the expertise at level 1? Especially since the prepared spell would have to be level 2 or 3. Then keep the later level deft Explorer features as well.
- Favored Enemy gets a ribbony “you can communicate and understand simple ideas regardless of language” feature and 1-2 Banes that are essentially specialized poisons that bypass resistance and immunity when used on your favored enemy, and act as a debuff that makes the team better at taking down the enemy.
- Rewrite primeval awareness to not use a spell slot and to be more interesting and useful.
I can get down with most of that.
I, personally, as far as 5e is concerned, do think that a spell slot expense is, really, a minimum requirement for a 1 mile per level (or 6 miles! in favored terrain) esoteric radar. If you wanted to change it, narratively, to be a ritual (listening to the ground, studying the surroundings, sniffing the air for 10 minutes, whatever) instead of a spell slot, I could maybe see that. Make the expense a matter of time consumption...in this case, maybe limit it by your Perception bonus times per day...or per week...something. I mean, it is a massively powerful thing that gobsmacked me, from the moment of 5e's release, that it would be only a 3rd level feature.
Conversely, I think Land Stride and Vanish are both far too late in the character's development.
I would also insist on the favored enemy being linked othe favored terrain -particularly if we are heading down the rabbit hole to link "bonus always prepared terrain specific" spells to the class framework.
I like them becoming, like way down the road, post 10th-12th level, better (i.e. higher level) ritualists than casters. They, after all, supposed to be "half casters."
The story fluff on what a Bane is, I think can be opened up a bit to allow for some kind of poison, or just knowing the weak spots of your preferred enemies, or special instruction/particular technique from some mentor, and/or incorporating some natural magic into your blow (PF magus-like) to boost damage, et al...but leave that to the player, narratively, to decide the "how" their/this particular ranger achieves their bonus "Bane" damage.
Those are some of my initial thoughts bouncing off your list/ideas.
