I agree that the ranger is a biased class in the sense of the fighting styles and whatnot. What I don't get is this: why are rangers able to cast spells? Since when have you seen a ranger in any fantasy novel cast a spell, unless he had some training in the art of magic? I've never seen...
First of all, w/o magic missile and/or sleep, the wizard or sorcerer in the party is probably only good for holding the other party member's equipment. "It's not balanced with the other 1st level spells!" At 1st level, you can at most cast two magic missiles per day. Sure it's got a lot of...