Some spells are useless with 0 combat value.
I consider those a feature. I wish there were
more non-combat spells. I don't like games where magic is about as useful as as an assault rifle. It makes no sense. "Hm, I could research a spell to make my daily life easier, but, no, I think I'll create another explodey firey death spell and a buff my friends while they fight things spell!" Sure, that might be what weathy patrons would pay for, but it seems really unlikely to keep doing that for thousands of years.
I still don't get the ranger hate. The ranger in my group is awesome.
I think part of it is that the Ranger is a bit more subtle than people expect. Paladin is obvious because Smite is a class feature. Ranger is subtle because you have to realize you're supposed to take Hunter's Mark. They should have either made Paladin's Smite as spells only, or, failing that, made the Warlock's Eldritch Blast and Hunter's Mark class features.
At it's core, though, the Ranger problem is that he's constrained on all sides. He actually has a
very narrow design space. He's wedged between Fighter, Barbarian, Druid, and Rogue. You can't make the Ranger better at doing what those classes do. And if you try to expand the class in a new direction, you risk running into Paladin, Bard, Cleric, and Monk. In a very real sense, the Ranger is the new Bard. You end up with a class that fights like a Druid, casts like a Barbarian, sneaks like a Fighter, and tanks like a Rogue.
What are the Ranger schticks?
- Creature Type Matters. But you can't change it once you picked it, and you won't know what to pick in most campaigns. When it works it's generally good, but it's flawed. The player has no control over how useful this ability will be. That makes feel worthless, even when it's working. This is precisely why abilities like Turn Undead got alternate uses.
- Terrain Type Matters. Much less useful than creature type, and feels worthless for the same reason: the player has zero control over when this ability works. It also has the problem of crossover. I mean, if you're in a mangrove forest, are you in a forest, a swamp, or a coast? Worst of all, this ability feels like it punishes you for adventuring or exploring. You're best in one or two terrains. Why wouldn't you just stick to those? It's so frustrating when the other players ask for help and you're all, "Sorry, I don't know anything about grasslands, I know forests and swamps." This is why NPC Rangers always seem great. They're always built for the environment they live in. PCs can't do that.
- Animal Companions. Even this isn't really a Ranger schtick, because Druids historically can do it to, and most spellcasters can summon monsters for combat. The other problem is that while most DMs in my experience aren't willing to just casually kill PCs, they don't feel the same way about animal companions. Not every DM is this way, but a lot of them are. It's the same with Wizard familiars. I tend to pick a bird companion for this very reason. Even then, your companion might end up unable to follow you. Ladders and wolves don't mix well, nor do submerged caverns and owls. Again, we're confronted with the same theme: the power of the ability is under the DM's control.
- Tracking. Definitely something the Ranger always excels at... but again, it only works when the DM says it does. Does your campaign feature an encounter where you actually need to follow someone? No? Well, then this ability does nothing. 5e doesn't really seem to do much to highlight this as a Ranger-specific skill, just like traps and locks are no longer really a Rogue-specific skill.
- Dual Weilding/Archery. Whether or not it annoys you that Rangers have been pegged as archers in spite of D&D never reinforcing that trope until 3.5e is kind of beside the point. Both these abilities are tied to the class, now, in both the game and in fiction. The real issue here isn't that the choices aren't good or don't matter. It's that the choices are common. Fighters do this just as well. Indeed, one level of Fighter is enough to do this just as well. Paladins and Barbarians get their own tricks, either with the Paladin's own styles or the Barbarian's non-style of recklessness and rage. This is a minor factor, whereas in the past the Ranger's abilities for dual-weilding and archery were simply unmatched.
For #1 and #2, I think the best solution is to allow the Ranger to change his favored types and terrains during play. Allow a Ranger to spend, say, 8 hours or 1 day to change his creature type or terrain. Maybe even limit it to when he has access to sufficient resources, such as a village or farm. The key here isn't that the Ranger knows everything, it's that a Ranger knows how to
prepare for anything. You give a Ranger enough time to prepare, and he will survive with ease. You give a Ranger enough information to know what he's up against, and he will excel. If you want to scale it, I'd start at 1 terrain at 1st level plus 1 every level thereafter (being complete at 8), and enemy types give 2 at second level plus 2 every level thereafter (with humanoid being considered one type). In any case, Rangers should have full access to everything by the time they finish second tier (level 10). The abilities are less useful in general at high level due to the prevalance of magic, so making the abilities relevant more quickly is, IMO, essential. At higher levels, perhaps you still allow multiple types to be selected at once, but I might limit it to two. The easiet way to shoehorn this in to the game would be to add a spell that allows this to happen, but that's not ideal. Possibly a ritual? I'd also consider allowing the Ranger to explicitly plan for
planar travel at higher levels.
This mechanic encourages PCs to plan ahead, learn about the area, etc. It rewards scouting. It rewards being Batman, which always strikes me as being ranger-ey. This does make Primeval Awareness significantly more powerful, but that was a fairly lacking feature anyways. The drawback is that not every player wants to plan ahead. Kicking in the door is what some players like. You're also somewhat limited by the DM, since you may not be given time to prepare. That makes me want to make it more like spellcasting, since Long Rest is the general measure for slowly changing abilities.
The easiest solution to #3 is to do to Animal Companions what has been done to Paladin Mounts and Wizard Familiars: Make them called creatures. Find Animal Companion should simply be a spell next to Find Familiar and Find Steed. It's somewhat ridiculous that it's not. I'm not real happy with the idea of the loss of flavor of actually going out and getting your familiar, but simply put a major archetype feature should not be more suceptible to callous DMing or unfortunate dice rolls than a pair of spells that other classes get. Perhaps requiring the Ranger to go out and find his companion before using the spell to call upon (and also protect) his bonded companion would be a reasonable compromise.
I'm not going to touch whether animal companions should be able to act as a bonus action. I can understand the reluctance to do that, but I can also understand the problem with an animal companion standing there and doing nothing. One compromise I can think of is to have animal companions continue to act as long as concentration is held, but
shrug I don't feel comfortable speculating about that.
For Tracking, I think it's actually fine as it is. I don't have a problem with *some* features being DM controlled. I just don't like *all* of them being DM controlled. Besides, tracking is hard to make proactive.
Same with Dual Weilding/Archery. And, for that matter, spellcasting and skills. I'm already not happy with how easy it is to get Expertise in 5e, so I'm not really in favor of skill-based fixes. And I think that styles, though common, do exactly what they need to do and mechanically support the flavor of each class. My only complaint about spellcasting is that Paladin Smite is a class ability, but Hunter's Mark is a spell. I don't like that from a symmetric point of view. It feels less elegant, but that's not exactly a rational critique. It does mean that Paladins basically get to prepare an extra spell, though.
