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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9487254" data-attributes="member: 6877472">It's interesting that a lot of people seem to be against arcane magic on a Ranger.  The original 1e Ranger could cast M-U spells, 3e had the Sword of the Arcane Order, and I remember that 13th Age had options to play a "magic Ranger".It occurs to me that the Ranger could easily become the "arcane half caster" I know a segment of the community has been wanting, and it needn't even be a violation of the Ranger's themes- for example, Elves are traditionally associated with nature in D&D, in some campaigns they were the first Wizards, passing along the tradition to humans, and their fey ancestry often gives them arcane abilities like teleportation, conjuring darkness, etc. etc..Yet for some reason, most people want the Ranger to more "primal" in their use of supernatural abilities.  They don't want Rangers wielding flaming swords or teleporting under their own power.A lot of the spell options in the OP are perfectly cromulent for Rangers to have, but it seems the presentation is partly the problem.  I'm reminded of the 3.5 Swordsage and how some were irked at the idea of a "martial" character conjuring sheets of flame or being carried aloft by the wind.Interestingly, I can't see why a Ranger wouldn't be able to do such things- elemental magic is definitely primal in nature, and Druids have been evoking fire, lightning, cold, and the like for decades.I do, however, understand the desire to have one more option for a mundane character if one doesn't want to have flashy supernatural abilities- even Fighters, Rogues, and Barbarians these days can do things that cannot be explained by "skill and training", and each of these classes has been given subclass options that veer into pure magic.Indeed, it seems the Barbarian is the warrior class that has become the most tied into primal power and spiritual boons of late, putting the Ranger in a strange spot.  And there's no particular reason why a Ranger should be better at surviving in the wild lands than a Barbarian- in fact, if you go back to the original Barbarian class in Unearthed Arcana, many of the abilities people desire for the Ranger were actually part of the Barbarian's kit originally!The Ranger's niche has always been sort of dubious.  Why couldn't Ranger be a subclass of Fighter, for example?  Seems easy to do, doesn't it?But the problem is, people want very different things for the Ranger.  Since 2e, we've seen the Ranger as a more lightly armored class- making the Ranger a Fighter would have us seeing Rangers in full plate and using shields- and that definitely doesn't seem to fit most people's idea of a D&D Ranger.To determine what the Ranger could be, it seems that we need to start with what they cannot be.  *They cannot be equal to the Fighter in melee combat, because then the question becomes "why Fighter?".*They cannot be as tough and enduring as the Barbarian, again, because that would raise the question of "why Barbarian?".*They cannot be equal to the Rogue in skills proficiency.*They cannot be equal to any of the full casters.*They cannot be equal to the Monk in mobility.They cannot even be the best at survival, because Druid, Cleric, and Wizard all have better options to deal with this, and the current design of the game is that no one class is meant to be considered "necessary".  Niche protection is no longer a factor in game design, for good or ill, and if the Ranger was somehow the best option in the Exploration tier, one could theoretically have a new variant of the old "who is going to play the Cleric?" question.*Assuming, of course, that the Exploration tier matters in the game, which is a much larger topic of debate.What they ought to be equal to is their "cousin", the Paladin, but because the Ranger's identity is far less defined, and the Paladin's abilities are explicitly supernatural, that is not even the case!It seems to me that the best possible solution is to make Ranger a "build your own class", similar in some respects to the Warlock.  In fact, I could totally see a hybrid martial/warlock with a Fey or Primal Pact powering their abilities, along with Pact Boons to let one select the abilities that they feel suit the Ranger best.  Possibly even an option for Pact Magic for those who like the idea of Rangers slinging spells!Because I don't think we'll ever see a true consensus on what the Ranger should be, so maybe the best option is to allow each of us to have the Ranger we desire.</blockquote>

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