NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xeviat" data-source="post: 6691645" data-attributes="member: 57494">I'm coming in real late here, but here's my two cents.I think the ranger should keep their spells. I believe the ranger has spells for the exact same reason the Paladin has spells. It's not a symmetry thing. The paladin has spells because they are the fantastic interpretation of the Knight in Shinning Armor. The Knight in Shinning Armor tends to have religious connotations during the romantic era of literature. Those religious connotations translate to divine magic in the world of D&D. Priests have magic for the same reason; in stories, priests call on miracles typically, they don't cast spells, but D&D clerics have them.So what does this mean for the Ranger? Who is the Ranger? The Ranger is the fantastic interpretation of the woodsman. The woodsman knows things about the wilderness that no one else does. They can calm animals, they know the lay of the land for miles, they can track like an animal, etc. Like the Druid, their fantastic interpretation has magic because that's the way the worlds of D&D work. If you don't want a fantasy ranger, one should be rather easy to build with some simple multiclassing (Assassin3/ChampionX would probably work out nicely).Reflecting on what was said in WotC's own podcast, I think the Ranger only lacks identity right now because other people can do the same things that they do. But that doesn't have to be the case. Yes, the skill system does allow others to do traditional ranger things; stealth, tracking, survival. The simple answer is to make the ranger do them better.But I also think the Ranger class is lacking because it doesn't read as interestingly as the other classes. From a strict combat gameplay side of things, the other classes make it apparent where their damage comes from. The paladin has smite, the fighter has extra attacks, the rogue has sneak attack, the barbarian has rage, the monk has flurry ... What does the Ranger have? Well, the Ranger has Hunter's Mark, but it's hidden away as a spell. Why is it a spell while the paladin's is a class ability? It could use the same mechanic and not need to cost a bonus action to boot. You could put a lot of the old favored enemy type mechanics into hunter's mark, like many have done in their own builds, which avoids the pitfalls of favored enemy (namely that the DM can willfully or accidentally make the ability too weak or two powerful by their creature choice).I like the ranger. A lot. They're one of my favorite classes. Probably because "The Legacy" by Salvatore was the first fantasy book that I read (just before Lord of the Rings).But I also think that the Ranger's animal companion should have been a more important part of the class. That's a ranger to me (not everyone, I know, so that's why I'm okay with it being a subclass).</blockquote>

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