Editing Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (section)

===Half-Casters===
At mid-to-high levels, they scale up very well, but at lower levels, rangers are just ''baaaaaad'', and paladins have many issues.  For one, neither gets Constitution saving throws, which are needed when concentrating on spells or making saving throws against common combat conditions, and neither gets ritual magic.

Paladins have to spend their spell slots to smite, and get one or two hits' worth of spike damage for their first few levels before falling behind the fighter who gets all of ''his'' damage-spike powers back on a short rest and doesn't have other things he could be using them on until after completing a long rest.  And their pool of healing power is pathetically low for the first few levels.  Later subclasses with similar mechanics, such as the Circle of Dreams druid or Way of Tranquility monk, get much larger such pools. Also, while many of said classes can use their healing as a bonus action, if only on themselves, pallies gotta drop everything to lay on hands.

Rangers don't get off much easier, with a first level that offers ''no'' combat benefits of any kind for a supposedly-martial class.  Plus, because one is now a version of Favored Enemy and one's a version of Favored Terrain (again, both stripped of any combat benefits) they might potentially do nothing at all if the player chooses wrong. And while Natural Explorer ''is'' a powerful, flavorful exploration-based feature when it works, some complain it takes all the work and skill tests out of exploring.  Primeval Awareness is probably the worst non-archetype class feature in the entire game if run entirely as described in the book, requiring a spell slot to do basically nothing but give a yes/no answer to some pretty-useless information, and Hide In Plain Sight is almost useless for anything but setting up ambushes, since it requires extensive prep-time.  That one of its two ''Player's Handbook'' archetypes, the beastmaster, is, as described above, probably the worst such archetype in the entire game does the class no favors.

Both classes ''do'' improve as they gain levels and spell slots (the paladin somewhat moreso, since he ''also'' swells his pool and has a lot of unique gear like the famous Holy Avenger), and they ''do'' get some cool and unique spells that bards ''love'' to poach with Magical Secrets at comparatively-lower spell levels.  And ''Xanathar's Guide'' was kind to both of them, with powerful new archetypes and spells.  But still.  Ouch.

The ranger ''did'' eventually get a complete rework... but many people agree it overdid it, gaining later-level powers far too quickly and overall boosting the class's power ''too'' much. While the current ranger won't be reworked and replaced, there are plans to offer alternative class options.