D&D General What is appropriate Ranger Magic

[Vaalingrade]

It's for a different system for 5e, but here's the Woodcraft feat from my Ranger path for the Rogue:

Woodcrafts [Ranger]

The difference between surviving in an environment and thriving in it is the ability to adapt your surroundings to your needs.



Benefit: Choose two of the options below and gain their benefits:



Balm Wounds: You are skilled in the formulation of healing poultices. As a Standard Action a number of times per encounter equal to your WIS modifier, one ally you can touch may spend 1 Vitality to regain their reeling value in HP and end all ongoing damage effects.


Bountiful Foraging: When foraging for food, you automatically find enough food for two medium creatures in addition to the normal result as long as there actually is food in the area. You may take this woodcraft ability multiple times. Each time you do, you fine enough food for an additional Medium creature automatically (maximum 10)


By Leaps and Bounds: You clear an additional 2 squares when jumping regardless of the result of your roll. You may take this woodcraft multiple times. Each time you do, you clear an additional square while jumping.


Craft Alarm: You may rig an area with noise-making traps. Rigging a 5x5 square area takes thirty minutes and a Survival or Engineering check and you can gather the materials to rig a number of such areas equal to 1 + your INT modifier. Creatures attempting to enter an area rigged with alarms must succeed on a Perception check opposed to your Survival or Engineering or suffer a -(10 + your INT modifier) penalty to Stealth checks made while entering or moving through the rigged squares.


Detect Poison and Disease: You may use Heal to determine if food or drink is infected with a poison or disease. The DC to determine such is equal to the saving throw of the disease or poison. This is a passive check for any food or drink you are personally handling.


Efficient Stride: Once per encounter, as a Minor Action, you may move up to your movement speed in addition to your normal movement this turn.


Jury-Rigged Essentials: You may spend one hour of downtime to craft a usable facsimile of a piece of equipment worth 5cp or less. This piece of equipment can be used for a full day before falling apart. One hour of maintenance extends the durability of such a piece of equipment by another full day.


Superior Tracker: While tracking, if you fail, you only lose half the time proscribed to failure and if you critically succeed, you make up an extra hour.


Wild Guide: You and all allies within 10 squares of you ignore difficult terrain caused by natural means.


Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Each additional time you take this feat, you may choose one more option to gain the benefits of.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If I may extend my previous post a bit, here are some ideas for what different classes could get that take the mechanical place of spells, but are not themselves spells.

Paladin​

Auras
This already exists, you know what stuff it can do. I just think it should be expanded. Paladins are really the only class in the game that uses auras, so make it a fully-fleshed feature rather than an afterthought! We've already got a few good ones, so it would be nice to have more interesting ones, and perhaps to open up some design space e.g. maybe you can invest in auras to make their radius larger at a point earlier than near-max-level.

Litanies
A litany is an effect that must be sustained, generally as a Bonus Action. It is a ritual behavior--spoken, gestured, sung, etc.--which evokes a particular effect. Perhaps we could bring back the 3e-era idea of "rounds of X," where a Paladin can sustain so many rounds of litanies per day, scaling with class level (perhaps three rounds per?) This adds a modicum of required mechanical engagement, but seems to me like it would give much more potential for interesting gameplay. You could also have Oath-specific litanies.

Benisons
Straight-up stealing from PF1e, I think that game calls them "Graces"? It's stuff Paladins can do by expending points from their Lay on Hands pool. 5e already contains a trace of this, since you can spend LoH points to remove the Poisoned condition IIRC, but it's otherwise not really there. Of course, I'd prefer that Lay on Hands actually spend Hit Dice (and that Paladins get bonus hit dice from hitting certain levels), but I won't quibble about that element here. Point being, PF1e Paladins can cleanse all sorts of problems and even give buffs to their allies rather than purely using LoH for healing, which is cool and thematic and doesn't at all work the way spells work.

Ranger​

Lores
"Wilderness lore" is absolutely a thing Rangers have been associated with, and this hearkens back to Strider/Aragorn and his knowledge of healing herbs and such. Lores would provide one passive, always-on effect for the Ranger (e.g. "training in Medicine" or "blindsight to 15 feet" or "10' increased movement speed" or "you gain a swim speed equal to half your Speed" etc.), and one active action/effect with appropriate limitations (e.g. "at the end of a rest, when allies spend HD, they can roll each HD twice and take the better result", "once per day, you can enter an Ethereal Trance which makes you immune to the Blinded condition, allows you to see creatures or objects that are invisible, and allows you to attack creatures that are out of phase or etheral as though they were physically manifested", etc.)

Knacks
Similar to the idea of Invocations, these would be various discrete actions (not so much passive effects, which fall under Lores) that you can do. Tricksy things, wise things, etc. "What do your elven eyes see" type stuff, where you have to actively do it, but not stuff that would be as limited as Lore-derived actions would be. I imagine the Beast Master would have several animal-related Knacks to pick from.

Specialties
This is where stuff like favored terrains, favored enemies, exploration focuses, and tricksy combat stuff would fall. This is probably something a dual-wielding and/or archery-focused Ranger would invest a lot into. Trick Shots would probably be an example of a specialty, for example, as would fancy special ammunition. I think most, though not all, of the suggestions made in the OP would fall under specialties, possibly (I'd argue likely) getting combined together into weightier packages, e.g. I could see a "Fey Courts" specialty that provided Autumn Blades, Greenwood Limb, Heatsight, and Exploding Arrow, for Autumn, Spring, Winter, and Summer courts.

And--notably!--all of these things can include both purely-supernatural and mostly-mundane stuff, meaning that you can have a Ranger that doesn't really do much of anything "magical" (like Aragorn, where any "magic" he performs is extremely subtle) or another that is almost purely supernatural, or one that mixes the two together, like some interpretations of characters like Green Arrow (where the high-tech arrows become supernatural effects instead).

---

From there, you can have different subclasses that lean into one or more of the above, or which give only the baseline amount of bespoke features and instead provide spellcasting. My proposed "Oath of the Quill", alongside a Ranger subclass like, I dunno, "Spellwarden" or the like, would thus preserve the option of a spellcasting Ranger for those who really really want that.

Other, not-currently-extant classes that would work in a similar fashion could be Avenger, Assassin, Monk, Swordmage, and Psion. Swordmage and Psion would be two very very close to the dividing line between spells and supernatural class features, just as Artificer and, to a lesser extent, Warlock are close but lying on the spellcaster side.

And then we already know what Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue look like for the "non-supernatural but not necessarly 100% mundane" collection of classes would generally look like. Barbarian is very close to what I'd want to see from that general group of things, though I'd want to see a bit more iteration, ideally deepening the Rage mechanic just a little bit (perhaps genericizing the Totem Warrior and letting the Path of the World Tree take its place as the "spiritualist" Barb). New classes fitting into this niche would be "Machinist" (again, not a name I really love), Alchemist, and Warlord.

 

[Horwath]

But isn't the modern Rogue the nonmagical stealth/guerrilla warrior?

That would make ranger redundant.

I said, IF they have spellcasting, they should ignore spell components. Same goes for arcane trickster also.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But isn't the modern Rogue the nonmagical stealth/guerrilla warrior?

That would make ranger redundant.

Yes. The ranger is redundant, but isn't because the design of the other classes falls down in basic ways or is competent enough that the ranger is, yes, redundant. But since they were in a PH that wasn't in 4e, we will never be rid of them ever again.

The Fighter ought to be the archer, but you aren't allowed to do ranged weapon tricks without spells.

The Rogue ought to be the woodsman but the game isn't actually good at exploration without an ability that says you don't have to do any of it.

The rouge should also be the two weapon fighter and can.

The Druid ought to be the nature mage and the pet class and it is.

 

[James Gasik]

The Fighter ought to be the archer, but you aren't allowed to do ranged weapon tricks without spells.

What about the Battlemaster?

 

[Vaalingrade]

What about the Battlemaster?

Look at how few maneuvers are ranged and how rarely you actually get to use them.

No, Actual Fighter Turned Subclass isn't the answer.

We need the 'fire a bunch of arrows' ability only not made into a spell for no good reason.

 

[Valetudo]

Archer fighter got nerfed more than others because of their reliance on multiple attacks

 

[Horwath]

Yes. The ranger is redundant, but isn't because the design of the other classes falls down in basic ways or is competent enough that the ranger is, yes, redundant. But since they were in a PH that wasn't in 4e, we will never be rid of them ever again.

The Fighter ought to be the archer, but you aren't allowed to do ranged weapon tricks without spells.

The Rogue ought to be the woodsman but the game isn't actually good at exploration without an ability that says you don't have to do any of it.

The rouge should also be the two weapon fighter and can.

The Druid ought to be the nature mage and the pet class and it is.

fighter could work as a some kind of "ranger" if allowed to trade in one rank or two of armor proficiency at 1st level for origin feat or maybe some other feat.
I.E. trade one or two armor categories for Skilled or Skill Expert without ASI included.

Then fighter loses heavy and medium armor and gains 2×skill expert and have 2 extra skills and expertise.

 

[Minigiant]

fighter could work as a some kind of "ranger" if allowed to trade in one rank or two of armor proficiency at 1st level for origin feat or maybe some other feat.
I.E. trade one or two armor categories for Skilled or Skill Expert without ASI included.

Then fighter loses heavy and medium armor and gains 2×skill expert and have 2 extra skills and expertise.

That opinion states that ranger magic is just the weakest druid spells.

 

[Horwath]

That opinion states that ranger magic is just the weakest druid spells.

that is kind of true, ranger is half a caster that druid is.