Also, just for something no one will like, I’d have rangers only able to do ritual spells. Or at least, nothing in combat, everything takes 10 seconds minimum. I feel like magic yes, but only rituals of the forest magic, mostly practical healing and protective ward and buff stuff.
I think that'd be cool. Heck, I'd give them a list of spells they treat as rituals in exchange for expanding some GP worth of components. Pass Without Trace? Spend some special material per target and ten minutes and here we go. Cordon of Arrows as a ritual? Sure, but you lose the arrows you use for it.
The 4e ranger still more or less needed to take Ritual Caster to travel, travel, and survive if the DM wasn't being extremely generous. All the naturey stuff were rituals.
Eh, you got more than enough feats for that in 4e if you wanted to. Otherwise the Ranger was like a blender of death.
but one of the few consistent themes that has managed to stick throughout the editions is that the Ranger is a specialist that can take down a specific type of creature better than anyone else. There has been an effort to diminish this for reasons that everyone here can infer, however.
Yeah because it's too story reliant and you end up sucking when facing something else. It's a fun conceit for a story (see the -inexplicable- popularity of Goblin Slayer) but it doesn't work if you're expected to face multiple types of enemies like in a game.
Outside of D&D, the big ranger Thing is being able to tame creatures. People come into the game expecting to have them.
D&D's been unable to stuck a landing on how it does rangers, so other fictions are what people draw from and the animal companion is a big part of those.
Yeah and that's fine. Beast Taming as a class feature is fine... the problem is the
animal itself should not be considered a class feature. It's design weight becomes too unwieldy and hard to balance and the Ranger shouldn't be one character with two bodies (including a squishier one). Taming animals should be treated as hiring a sidekick, only you pay them in food and scritches instead of money.
In terms of game balance, having a wolf with you shouldn't be any different than having an hireling warrior. The Ranger would just get an easier time taming one and have some kind of bonus to the animal's loyalty. And if the Ranger is still a spell caster, give them a few buffing spells that specifically targets beasts, so the companion can do elemental damage and stuff.
Just have a sidebar to tell DMs "Hey! Animal companions are cool! it's totally fine to allow the Ranger to start with one. Don't forget to consider the party as having 1 extra member while designing encounters."
And if everybody else in the party wants their own sidekicks so they can play 2 characters too? Well, it's their prerogative and they can deal with the consequences (i.e. longer turns) and see if it was a good idea or not.