Mercule
Adventurer
Zaruthustran said:You mean the divine casting, animal companion thing? Yeah, I'd be happy if the 4E ranger was spell-less and more of a rugged survivalist guy. Nothing mystical; all training and rancid bear fat.
All of the above. I never saw rangers as being particularly spell-oriented, but didn't have any issue with the idea that they'd be open to studying a breadth of "last-ditch" tricks -- similar to how rogues get UMD. In that regard, I saw them being much more arcanist than divinist and figured that the druid spells they got in 1E were pretty much arcane, just cribbed from druids.
The increasing druidification of rangers really annoys me. Rangers don't revere nature. They make use of it.
Combat-wise, I also saw the ranger as being a bit physically tougher than the fighter. After all, it's the ranger who sleeps outside during hailstorms. He isn't quite as good with a weapon as the fighter (in 3E, this meant the same BAB, but the fighter got the feats) and wears lighter armor, but he can take more hits.
The 2E ranger was okay, despite the TWF and divine casting. The ranger was flavored more druid-like in 3e, though. Plus, the barbarian was added as homage to 1E, even though it only resembles the 1E barbarian superficially. Since there's a bit of overlap between the barbarian and the survivalist ranger, the ranger class got pushed increasingly toward a woodsy, rogue-like, tree-hugger.
I don't see that changing in 4E, which means my favorite archetype will be pretty difficult to make in the game.