Thoughts on the LevelUp 5e Playtest VIIa – Ranger Again

So the good folks at LevelUp 5e have issued another playtest for the ranger. I presume this is because of spells? Let’s take a look.

Yup, spells. Because there are ranger subclasses that have spells, and LevelUp is supposed to be compatible with based D&D 5e, someone had to add a ruling on this.
Seems like a pretty big thing to miss.

And they really nerf them.
You can only cast spells once per long rest, but you at least get to use whatever spell components you want for them. You get additional uses at levels 9 and 17.
You can only cast them at their lowest levels. Seems a bit mean.

Also, the Soldiering exploration knacks are now replaced with mounted combat ones. Rangers lose all the shield bonuses from the look of it.

I’m not going to look at this further, it seems like something they should have addressed sooner when they took the spells out in the first place, and I don’t really care for most of the mounted knacks, especially the one that lets you sacrifice your mount’s hitpoints to avoid being hurt yourself.