Plus, rangers exist in real life: park rangers, army rangers, etc.
Yep.
Army rangers:
The 75th Ranger Regiment encompasses the "Big five philosophy": marksmanship, physical training, medical training, small-unit tactics, and mobility for the success of the individual Ranger and the Ranger mission.
- Marksmanship = Archery, one of the common weapon choices for a ranger
- Physical Training = Athletics, climbing, swimming
- Medical Training = Some means of healing. Unfortunately D&D has a strong leaning towards magical healing, so this becomes a notable source of conflict for a non-caster ranger.
- Small-unit tactics = A basic D&D party, so nothing particularly special here
- Mobility = Ignoring difficult terrain, plus climbing and swimming again
Nothing too special, just noting that it lines up reasonably well with some of the basic concepts of the ranger.
Forest rangers:
A forest ranger has a wide range of responsibilities. In this career, you work in a national park, national forest, state park, or other nature preserve. Your job responsibilities include providing safety services for the visitors of the park, which could involve patrol duties, trail maintenance, fire prevention, or insect control. You are also responsible for the protection of the environment inside the park or preserve. You work to maintain the park in its natural state and stop activities such as littering, poaching, or other misuses of the land. In some roles, you may work closely with wildlife, while other positions focus more on visitors.
Again, all pretty much in line with people's idea of the D&D ranger. The D&D ranger may not be helping park visitors, but he is expected to act as the main guide for the party when traveling in the wilderness.
In medieval England, rangers, originally called under-foresters, were the most junior officials employed to "range" through the countryside enforcing the forest law imposed by William the Conqueror to protect the "vert and venison".
A druid may protect nature because she is a part of nature. A ranger is more likely to protect nature because of the problems that disturbing it causes, and to enforce the "laws" protecting the forest. Fire prevention because fires are bad. Trail maintenance to avoid injuries to either travelers or wildlife (because injured wildlife becomes bait for predators or monsters, and you don't want them near traveled trails). And numerous similar cause-and-effect problems where civilization can shoot itself in the foot in its ignorance of how nature works. Also, anti-poaching enforcement.
Beyond that, rangers are trackers and hunters, which brings its own set of implications. Tracking is not just following a physical trail; it's understanding the nature of the beast and the environment. Beyond merely the Survival skill, it's Investigation (information gathering) and Nature (understanding how creatures interact with their environment). It's knowing whether a creature will head downstream or upstream at this time of year, for purposes of shelter or food. It's knowing where a creature will head to feel safe, if it was injured. It's knowing migration patterns and mating seasons of not just the creature, but the animals that the creature may hunt for food. It's knowing where to not go during flood season, or to avoid the soft snow that's likely to trigger an avalanche.
And of course it takes very little to shift all this from 'creature' to 'person'. (Explicitly so when dealing with poachers.) Whether ordinary hunter, monster hunter, or bounty hunter, a ranger's skills are all tuned to helping him accomplish his goals.
Speaking of animal companions, I was trying to come up with a list of all the ranger companions I could think of.
Drizzt: Guenhwyvar (panther)
Grizzly Adams: bear
Old bounty hunter in Battle Angel Alita: cyborg hounds
Lone Ranger: Silver (horse)
Batman: Robin (/s)
Rachel from Worm: dogs
And it occurred to me that Rachel's dogs, when transformed, are basically using the Wildshape mechanic. Their large forms can be destroyed, but the dogs themselves can safely escape the evaporating husk. It would be interesting to apply this mechanic to the beastmaster's animal companion.
As for the relation with magic, the only thing that a ranger commonly does that really needs magic is healing. And 'needs' in the sense that D&D doesn't really allow for healing others without magic, or a magic-like ability (Lay on Hands). Of course that's not really a strict rule, and the exceptions give some interesting ideas of how else it might get implemented.
So, setting aside healing, the only other thing that a ranger does that 'needs' magic are the various arrow spells that are spells solely for the sake of limiting them via concentration and number of spells known.
So spellcasting solves the 'problem' of both healing and mechanics for special arrow attacks. It's not that ranger needs to be a spellcaster; it's that it's a convenient game mechanism for giving ranger some archery and healing features. It just also causes a rift in the perception and expectation that people have of the core concept of the class.
So I'd say that people want a non-caster ranger because casting isn't a part of the class concept; it's only a mechanic that was tacked on for convenience. Some rangers may find spellcasting to be an actually useful tool, but it really doesn't feel like something that defines the ranger class itself.